Scarlett's Blog (45)

Hi folks! Long time no visit for me! (I started this site up many moons ago).

I'm still living in country Victoria - hence the absence.

I've dropped by because I've written a book which I thought might interest the people on here.

It's a junior/ young adult fiction near future science fiction adventure story.

It's set in a world with 3 degrees of warming, where fossil fuels are no longer available, and 7 corporations have basically taken…

It's easy enough to buy expensive things and follow the directions and get beautiful (although often not very tasty or resilient) plants. Growing amazingly healthy plants using natural processes and products to be found in your own backyard (or front yard as the case may be) is much harder - but it is possible. It's a question of harnessing and powerboosting natural processes. Brilliant soil, teaming with microbes and organic material, is the real holy grail I think.

My garden's…

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…

Equipment:

(note you don't have to have the Easiyo containers, see recipe below).

NB in Brisbane I recommend Barambah Organic Full Cream Milk, or Food Connect Herd Share milk. Because I'm in Victoria now I'm buying beautiful grass fed milk produced locally in the Western District where we live. You will also need a kettle. One this size (about 1.7…

As you may be aware, I moved to country Victoria last December.

I'm still keeping up Brisbane Local Food because so many people are using it, and I'm proud of it, and I enjoy it, and I think it's helping the world which makes me feel good. 

I apologise, though, for now being out of touch with the weather and what's going on for people in Brisbane, and having only an…

I'm feeling very pleased with myself this morning, because I've made a giant batch of plum jam which has been universally acclaimed (by the family tasting panel) as delicious :)  Well, with all that sugar in it why wouldn't it be!!

Last time I made plum jam I cooked it just a touch too long and it had an undertaste of caramelised sugar - still…

I thought I'd better give an update on my Victorian migration. OK, I know it's not local, and is largely irrelevant - but I thought you might find it interesting nevertheless :)

Goodbye Permaculture at the kids' school.

Goodbye Black Star organic fair trade killer coffee. 

 …

It's so beautiful.

Our lychee is covered in flowers, and the pecan and the pomegranate both have fresh leaves.

The tropical pears are off and galloping - I can see they will need a strong haircut each year to keep them under control for the space they are in.

LYCHEE, left. PECAN next to chook house (which is covered in mulberry and…

OK, big news here. I am no longer going to be a Brisbane local!

My family and I are moving to country Victoria - doing the big sea/tree change thing. We are both from Melbourne originally and our parents are getting older etc, so we figured we better do it. We'll be gone by the end of the year I think. We're selling our house, should put it on the market in the next week or so I hope.

So we've had to make it more normal friendly! Isn't that terrible? So now it…

we finally harvested the sweet potato driveway

and we got tonnes of them! you can see the foliage had died right back and new sprouts were starting - so it was time to harvest the tubers before the plants started to take their goodness as a growth source (which after all is why plants make these storage organs - so they can draw on a sort of 'bottled summer' during lean…

Must be time for a progress report. I've actually been out of action (but all over the computer you may have noticed) as I had my tonsils out, which was very unpleasant (much better now). So the garden has suffered several weeks of neglect. Today I finally had a go at it.

This is the perennial basil bush, the rosemary and a blue plumbago (which attracts those little clouds of powder blue/…

I am getting excited about the Winter vegie garden. Unfortunately I don't have anything in yet - I'm very late this year!

This is mostly because of the pumpkins. They heard me thinking about ripping them out and promptly started to produce masses of fruit. Sigh. So I left them - why have them in for 3 months and then rip them out just when they start producing? So this lot have been in for 4 months - going on for 5 now! They…