July 2011 Blog Posts (10)

I made another batch of soap last night, lavender, using lavender essential oil and organic lavender flowers, smells divine, the hardest part now is to wait the month for it to dry before it can be used. I have started a blog so there are more photos on there…

It's official. I can't live happily without a vegie garden. So I'm putting one in. Here is the 'before' shot of the extremely annoying patch of grass in the front yard which kept growing across the gravel and creating a lot of work. 

I'm…

This year I thought it would be fun to try my hand at entering a horticultural competition.  I must say I was inspired by the adventures in River Cottage. So I looked around - the Ekka seemed far too complicated and scary for a beginner so after much web-searching the Mt Gravatt Show seemed to be a good place to start.  The entry fee was only 50c per item so I had very little to lose by entering. 

Although I made plans to enter a few months out, I didn't organise my garden…

There are two types of nasturtium but the one I can never get enough of in our garden is Tropaeolum majus (also known as Indian Cress) not the Officinal that grows in water!

They're tasty additions to salads, great space fillers, pest controllers, attract beneficial pollinators, make cheerful cut flowers and are also a great medicinal plant.  But there are many more uses ...

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After a post on the options for growing pumpkins in small spaces, I thought I'd share some of the benefits of growing your garden UP rather than just traditional use of space on the ground and in containers.  One example is the nifty recycled bag planters…

The garden is starting to take off.  I harvested my first zucchini last week and some more are on the way.

Spinach is going great.  The 6…

Some kind soul posted some Boniface Eggplant seeds to me, received them a couple of days ago. No return address, possible postmark Underwood. If you'd like to PM to me on this forum I can thank you 'in person'.

I was so inspired after our get together at Joanne Chungs place on Sunday, I got hubby to mind the kids and I ventured into the garden.  I extended the fence around the garden to incorporate a much bigger area and then I made a new garden bed.

The first garden bed is on the right and the new one is on the left.  I have started filling it with dirt from the floor of my…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been catching up on some much needed maintenance in various sections of our garden. We have been growing a lot of our edibles in containers while my husband built us a permanent raised garden bed which is now finished and ready for planting.  Prior to that we had an 18m long no-dig raised garden bed made out of hay bales which served us well for a year and also a 20m raised bed on the ground, which we've been resting whilst planting other areas.  It's now been…

On Queen's birthday long weekend, the family went to Melbourne for the first time.. it is there, in a tuck away little italian cafe I tasted my very first Olive Ciabatta.. I fall in love, I end up buying an entire loaf and set to polish them off in one day.. very good for my taste buds but so bad for the mid and lower section of this packaging of mine...

I am having problem finding the same product when I come back to Brisbane, so I decided to try making them myself. I play…