Dave Riley's Page

Contrary to my expectations I still can harvest comestibles outback.

Looking about, I'm soon set to drown in tomatoes which have occupied my patch like weeds.

The greens survive the heat and lack of moisture while the spuds begin to flag their readiness  by  consecutively dying back above ground.Beans and peas are a waste of energy but the squashes have…

No matter what I do I cannot play rain god and the soil --such as it is -- dries the more.

The comestibles live -- indeed in demographic abundance -- but they do not live well as the wee things suffer from the absence of precipitation. Even the dew has got surly and comes in each morning parched.

But such weather as this seems to suit the squash family. Less mould. Not damp. Just right to throw out the buds and shoot out a succulent stem or ball.

After years been held hostage…

I was outback and the garden was looking so good I thought I'd capture the moment.

As you can see, I'm growing sticks too -- cuts from mulberry bushes. I use the sticks to mark where I plant seedlings and to later deploy them to raise up climbers or ramblers.'Tis an African habit.The red berets are the latest…

An interesting report in the Brisbane Times  raises the conundrum of garden size vs water use as a primary cost factor.

It draws on research by James Ward  and John Symons , published as Optimising…

After a rough Summer, a recent bout of ill health kept me from my garden tasks for weeks. All I could manage was to fill up the terracotta pots I have located in the centre of my mounds with water.

Nowadays the 'mounds' aren't self evident as over time I have been mulching in between them -- but the…