211: Colin Austin on Wicking Beds and Healthy Food.

Examining wicking garden beds and bio-intensive vegetables.

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Many years ago, at the birth of the computer revolution Colin learned to write code and set-up a company which grew to become Australia’s leading exporter of technical software.  Then twenty years ago, Colin developed a growing system, which is known today as wicking bed technology and has gone feral worldwide. He runs a website WaterRight.com.au and a newsletter which are leading sources of information on wicking bed growing technology around the globe.
Colin’s wife was very healthy and after moving to Australia from China she developed diabetes when she transitioned to a Western style diet.   Consequently, he has spent many years studying the causes and remedies for diabetes.  This complex disease involves many factors such as genetics and life style stress but the dominating one of course is diet.  As a result of this research he is developing a new farming technology for growing in nutrient dense soil which is very biologically.  He says living soils are based on recycling waste and are regenerative.  He believes we have been destroying our soil and that we are now approaching peak soil.

In This Podcast: 

We get to meet a gardening pioneer when Greg talks to Colin Austin who is known world-wide as the man who engineered a simple but highly popular garden bed called a wicking bed. Greg learns why Colin was motivated to create the beds and how the wicking process works. Then they go further to talk about why healthy food is so important to him and his family.

Listen in and learn about:

• Being a successful engineer and working on computers which gave him the freedom to do what he wanted
• Taking the free time he had to investigate watering technologies around the world
• Deciding to focus on the irrigators dilemma of how much water is the right amount to use on plants
• The process he used to design the initial garden beds with water reservoirs to help farmers in arid Ethiopia during a drought
• His goal was to look for a simple, inexpensive method that could be replicated easily
• Why the wicking beds work and how they are so efficient
• The health scare that his wife went through and what he figured out as to the cause
• As an engineer, how he tackled learning about the body’s reaction to diet
• The bio-intensive vegetables that help gut biology
• How he is working to expand a process to create biologically active vegetables and even fruits for gut health improvement
• Why he struggles with the thought of growing tomatoes
• His goal to help find a solution for non-communicable diseases

As well as:

• His failure – His thoughts on failure as an innovator and engineer
• His success – His technology that gave him the freedom to work on watering technologies, and his wicking bed concept that he helped promote
• His drive – growing up in war times and being sensitive to the damage mankind is doing to the world
• His advice – Try to understand man’s role in the position of the world

Colin’s Book recommendations:      

Books by Bill Mollison

How to reach Colin:  

Website: www.waterright.com.au

Email: colinaustin@bigpond.com

 UrbanFarm.org/ColinAustin