Hot in the City (and the country, and everywhere else)

The last few months have been hot and hotter, and despite the cool change that’s sweeping across the city right now, we’re pretty sure we’re in for some more.  We’ve had a ripper of a break though, swimming in gorges and waterfalls in northern Victoria before enjoying staying on a farm down on the Mornington Peninsula – and we’re now ready and raring to go for an awesome year of blitzing!

For now though, we’re stepping back in time to the 80s for our song of the month, with Billy Idol’s Hot In The City. (Because it is).

Permablitz News

Want to help out the Permablitz Team?

This chick males so many typos

Last year we bid farewell to some of our favourite people as they left the Collective – Hermann headed back to Europe, Michelle departed to focus more on her western heartland and Lyndon heeded the call of the wanderer. All of which leaves us with a few gaps in our Collective.

As such, Permablitz has decided to flesh out our organisational hub and is actively seeking out fresh members to help us in our mission to convert gardens into edible oases!

Interested? Find out more here!

Last month's Facebook picks

Bees, not honey, are the focus for natural beekeepers

I’m Honestly Fed Up With All The Bad News So I Illustrated The Best News Of 2018 (And Recent Years)

Chronicles of a novice dumpster diver in Melbourne

Street pantry offering free groceries to less fortunate

Swimmable garden ponds making a splash in the suburbs

Gardening could be the hobby that helps you live to 100

Hero of the Month

Snow Peas and Sugar Snaps

Roi De Carouby

These delicious peas should be grown at home, as their sugars convert to starches once picked, so half of the sugars are gone within an hour of picking. You’ve never tasted a snow pea unless you have picked it yourself.

Sounds yummy yeah? Find out more about these sweet peas here!

Beets and Pieces

The Buy Nothing Project

The Buy Nothing Project is an experiment in gifting what we have to prevent the overproduction of unnecessary goods and reduce our carbon footprint.

The project offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of hyper-local gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors.

Sounds good right? Find out more here.

Melbourne’s Most Productive Gardens Open For Inspection

3000acres and Open Gardens Victoria are presenting the most productive gardens in Melbourne for people to check out, and it was no surprise to see our very own superstar Kat Lavers included in the mix. With veggies, fruit trees, quails, chooks, bees and more – there’s definitely something in these gardens to get you inspired…

There’s quite a few to see, make sure you check some out!

From Kitchen to Compost – and Bypassing Landfill!

All Warrnambool households are expected to receive a fortnightly Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) kerbside collection by July 2019.

FOGO allows food and garden waste to be processed separately from rubbish, which costs less money and is better for the environment. It sees this organic material collected and turned into compost rather than going into landfill.

Approximately 45 per cent of material in the average household rubbish bin is FOGO material.

Diverting FOGO from Warrnambool’s garbage bins has the potential to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 4000 tonnes of CO2 e (carbon dioxide equivalent) annually.

This equates to removing 857 cars off the road every year.

To read the full article, check out the Warrnambool City Council press release here.

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National Sustainable Living Festival

If you’ve not been to the SLF (the National Sustainable Living Festival) before, then we reckon you should put next weekend aside and get on down!

“With over 100,000 visits every year, we are the largest sustainability festival in Australia — and not just in numbers, but also in impact. By showcasing cutting-edge solutions to ecological and social challenges, we foster and provide tools for the change we want to see and the difference we want to make in the world.”

This weekend is the Long Weekend, with over 100 free events to challenge your thinking and inspire your actions – see what’s on here!

In the Garden

We’re now in the last month of summer, but the heat shows no sign of slowing down which makes getting anything done that much harder. When you water though, make sure you do so less often and water deeply. This encourages roots to grow down, making plants less vulnerable to heat and drought.

When you do your weeding, lay the weeds on top of the soil to dry out and become mulch, but make sure you remove and dispose of the seeding parts first!

It’s also a good time to do the summer pruning of your fruit trees as well as giving your citrus trees a good feed.

Seeds you can plant in February include: