Growing local

October 2011 Blog Posts (9)

The Salad Garden: eating thereof

Since I eat a garden salad every day I have made it a habit to make up my salad dressings ahead. I use old caper and anchovy jars that are maybe no more than 150 ml in volume and throw in -- aside from the requisite 2:1 (give or…

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Added by Dave Riley on October 31, 2011 at 2:14 — 3 Comments

The Joy of Choko

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Added by Dave Riley on October 31, 2011 at 1:58 — 5 Comments

Donna's Garden - October 2011

With a garden visit coming up, it was time to give my garden a huge make over... so I decided to mulch. After ringing around they all seemed to have a minimum order of 10 cubic metres so I finally buckled and ordered it to be delivered on Thursday morning. Now, I love a freebie as much as anyone but they >nicely< delivered more like 15 cubic metres! Gee thanks, I was struggling to use the 10 and would have preferred to order 5 - so they deliver 15, thank you very much. …

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Added by Donna on October 23, 2011 at 12:33 — 9 Comments

Impermeable layer: wicking gutter = free mulch and feed for the garden

I should say up front that I spent years messing about with what's called paper clay . That's an eclectic mix of paper pulp and clay 45:55 percent. You…

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Added by Dave Riley on October 21, 2011 at 12:00 — 8 Comments

A Couple of Local Characters

Just the tiniest St Andrew's Cross spider I've seen: check scale against the Blackberry leaves:

And yet another Bearded Dragon - this one claims the highest part of the front yard. It climbed up the shadecloth surrounding the Raspberry wicking beds to be the emperor/ess of all s/he surveys:

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Added by Elaine de Saxe on October 18, 2011 at 22:58 — 2 Comments

Irrigation! Makes me irritable so I went for a barrel of fun

Now that my present garden is working its way into its adolescence I have the option to fiddle with its makeup and constituent parts.…

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Added by Dave Riley on October 18, 2011 at 8:31 — 3 Comments

Sponge Garden under the trellis

Aside from some rare references on line and a review of the method in the water harvesting works of Brad Lancaster there is not much information to be…

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Added by Dave Riley on October 17, 2011 at 12:30 — 2 Comments

Trellis Shade: Cooler Plants

A neighbor has given me a dwarf banana plant. It is one third the height of your standard banana 'stem' so I'm delighted to have such botanical utility on hand.…

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Added by Dave Riley on October 16, 2011 at 12:30 — 5 Comments