Dear readers,

Welcome to the winter issue of Earth Garden. I wonder if your summer vegie garden ended up producing far more than you'd expected before summer? Most parts of Australia seemed to get far more summer and autumn rainfall than anyone dared dream. I think we've all been secretly dreading the summer just passed, fearing a repeat of the Black Saturday conditions of 2009. What a massive relief that this didn't happen, and that we could enjoy reasonable weather, amazing summer rain, and bountiful harvests of summer vegies, herbs and fruits. Expecting the worst but enjoying the fact that the worst didn't happen - maybe that sums up growing conditions for the summer just gone.

As winter takes a hold many Earth Gardeners will be taking a breather from lots of outdoor activities: those readers with huge owner building projects might be slowing down as the days shorten and the cold air starts to bite a little earlier in the day.

On the other hand, my own back garden in Broome has become a whirr of activity in the past few weeks as I prepare for the peak Dry Season food planting time. A neighbour, Steve, kindly and generously dropped off a huge trailer load of horse poo out the front one day recently. After preparing my garden beds with blood and bone, pelletised chook manure, compost and horse poo, I let it all settle for ten days and whacked on some palm mulch and inline 'dripline' - a very clever system of watering garden beds without sprinklers, or little drippers to clog up, mangle, or bury.

As I write this, another ten mizuna and rocket seedlings have emerged from my soil this morning; my sweet corn, bean, basil, and roma tomato seedlings are powering ahead, and my paak choi, bok choy, kailaan (Chinese broccoli) and cos lettuce are all looking pretty good too. Over the Wet Season we didn't do much vegie gardening and the closest we got to fresh vegies was raiding the sweet potato and water spinach patches regularly. Next Wet Season I plan to be far better organised, and will plant heaps of watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and sweet corn, along with a host of other vegies that I'm discovering can be grown through the Wet.

We're also finding that our wood oven goes better in the Dry Season: the moist air - up to 98 per cent humidity some days - seems to seep into the stacks of firewood and make it hard to get the oven roaring. But since early April we've noticed that the wood oven fire just takes off like a rocket, and we're back to piping hot pizzas emerging from the oven at a furious pace.

There's something pleasant about having the pizza oven right next to the vegie garden. Even though there isn't an obvious connection between the two, there must be a subtle one somewhere: Earth Gardeners have made our little book, Back Yard Ovens, into a national bestseller. At last count there were more than 27,000 copies in print and it is still going strong. Don't worry: there's still plenty of stock in our warehouse so no need to rush if you're not yet ready to build your own pizza oven.

Speaking of the warehouse - I am honestly shocked at the number of readers who took advantage of the special offer in the previous issue of EG and bought The Lot for $95. Our poor warehouse wranglers, Shelley and Georgie, have done a wonderful job tackling the hundreds and hundreds of orders. There have been piles of back copies strewn from one end of the warehouse to the other, as they gamely battle to fill every order as quickly as possible. We have been truly overwhelmed by the response to this offer and if you're one of the readers who received a huge pile of back copies in the mail, you will know how exciting and satisfying it is to have them on your shelves! Many readers have asked for them - and we have finally been able to produce a new version of the popular EG binder, which holds about ten to 12 copies of Earth Garden. To order some binders you can look for the ad in this issue, or use the form on our website or page 80. Like my vegie gardening, all the mad activity in the office and warehouse this past autumn season has been satisfying because it feels productive and worthwhile. We hope you'll find the articles in our winter issue worthwhile, and I hope you find some quiet time this winter to slow down with some good solid evenings of reading and enjoying Earth Garden, as you plot and scheme productive and worthwhile projects.

Happy reading,