All Blog Posts (1,091)

Hi All,

What a glorious start to spring - my garden is producing lots and is very beautiful at the moment.  My daughter had friends over 2 weeks ago and while my children never really appreciate my garden, her friends loved it.  Apparently it is #cottagecore - that's a thing that is cool :).  They were out feeding the chickens, chilling on the back balcony looking out over the garden and even wanted a garden tour from her.  I laughed when she told me cause I was like "so when…

Today is a great day in the Kitchen Garden.'Tis also the first day of the rest of its life.It being at peace with the world.…

I have 2 grafted avo trees in large pots, there is shoots sprouting below  where they were grafted, do I pull those shoots off or just leave them alone, I vaguely remember the bloke at the nursery saying to pull them off to stop them from growing to big.  Any advice.

Finished new cage and has 98 birds in it. They look happy snuggling into the bedding and sandbathing.

Spent the morning fine tuning the feeders.

The tower.

The inside that qual poke heads into.…

Little pots, be gone!  Inspired by Doug’s huge grow bags, I bought ten x 100l bags.  They are very good quality and at around $12 a piece, you can’t go wrong.  I got them here and I think Doug uses the same supplier:  https://planterbags.com.au/   I’m also surprised that I can still slide the bags around to move them even when fully planted. 

Most of our north side plants that were in dinky pots have now been moved into the grow bags.  I think…

HELP!  Does anyone have any small (200-250ml) glass jars with pop-top lids that they can spare? I guess many people use all of these they can get their hands on, but maybe there's somebody out there who doesn't do preserving. My Roma tomatoes have delivered a bumper crop this year, and I've used all of my fairly small supply. I have plenty of the 500ml size, but I find the smaller size best for tomato puree. It doesn't matter if the lids are no good or missing, as I have new lids anyway. I…

Took some photos of some flowering fruit trees yesterday. Also have partially built a new growout quail cage with bedding and auto water cups. Grimal jabotacaba flowering.

Hicks mulberry…

Hello Ross, I have a Pinkerton Avo in a pot and they (like a lot of other trees) seem to shed their old leaves just before or as they put out new leaves. Mine at the moment is starting to put out new leaves and flowers. I wouldn't worry about what is happening to the old leaves as long as the tree sends out new leaves soon. I water mine deeply once a week at this time of year and about twice a  week in the warmer months. Last year I got 3 avos which were great. I hope that this increases as…

Hi there,

Everyone has been so helpful in my other posts, I am after help again, my Pinkerton dwarf avo tree, there is something going on with the leaves. I have attached 2 photo's just wondering if I am over watering it or is there another problem or is this normal at this time of year.…

Hi  all,

Just wondering if Brisbane South  is a good enough location to grow a cherry tree, will it be cold enough for it to get plenty of fruit, just wondering if anyone have any success.

cheers 

There’s lots exciting happening in my garden right now.

First, unfortunately, both of the chicks we hatched turned out to be roosters. What can you do? Given so few chicks hatched, and they were so distinct from one another, they grew up each very beloved—so the soup pot wasn’t an option for these two gentlemen. Sweet, cuddly, Polish Maharajah has been…

My latest batch of quail is my most successful yet. Set 140ish eggs. After 14 days they were candled and only 7 were discarded as unfertile, another 7 or so looked suspicious but couldnt be certain. Day 18 saw a large hatch of 65. With another 20 hatch on day 19. Then the next 3 days saw another 20 stragglers. This is symptomatic of a cheap incubator as temperature varies throughout chamber so rates of development differ. In the first week had only 5 fatalities(which is pretty good these…

I eat soup every day for lunch. I love soup....and I guess I'm skilled at soupology.

Essentially my soup making works to a template.

1.STOCK

I make up a weak chicken stock by steaming up chicken necks for the dogs. I always have that on hand. I also make stock by collecting all our leftover bones -- cooked…

Hi all, 

Well, winter is done.  It has been far to warm lately to be classed as winter - I wore shorts today for goodness state.  I had a nice little play  in the garden planting out my brassica's, sunflower seeds and 16 chamomile plants that I got ages ago in 1 punnet - separated them out, potted them up and babied them for a while and now they are in the ground. I also potted up my celery and will do some new seeds of various things tonight.  Another job on my to-do-list is…

I just ate some fresh corn I harvested outback. So over Winter it is possible here in SEQ to grow corn...albeit on the coast.

I ate the corn with some shishito peppers I'd grown. They were from my frozen collection...but there are still some on the bushes.

Wee…

Hi there,  

When is a good time to place netting over my nectarine tree to stop those pesky fruit flies from destroying the fruit.

cheers,

 Dozens of US states have reported mysterious seeds showing up in packages from China and are warning citizens not to plant them because they could be an invasive species.

After my success in growing the Juiciest Tomato at our recent Christmas in July event I thought I would share with everyone what I do to grow this most useful of vegetables, which is really a fruit.

There are more varieties of tomato than any other type of vegetable or fruit. They range in size from ones as small as a currant to whoppers weighing 1 kilo each (Brandywine). We all know how tasty and easy to grow the small cherry tomatoes are, they come up by themselves out of the compost,…

Alright, so I’m going to preface this blog post by saying it is an outright brag - directed completely at Roger.  He and I are obviously quite competitive and I copped it today at the garden visit.  Yep, that’s right, I went home with tears in my eyes about all the wasted broccoli, the beautiful kohl rabbi, the gorgeous cabbages and the pumpkins, just left Willy nilly where they lay with little care from Roger at all.  I whispered quietly to them that they wouldn’t have to fend for…

By Dave Riley

Founder & President

Tommy Toe tomatoes are often referred to as an Australian variety. This…