All Blog Posts (1,134)

I just dried a pile of cherry tomato halves in the dehydrator (thanks, Andy). I'm thinking of storing them in oil in the fridge. Has anyone else done this, and if so, how long did you keep them for? I have seen all sorts of advice on the web - some contradictory- and am unsure if this is worth doing. An alternative is to just dry them till they are completely desiccated and grind them to a powder as has been suggested here before. Any advice gratefully accepted.

Folks generally seem to be unaware of the merits of one of my favourite "weeds", Solanum nigrum or Black Nightshade.  And those who are aware, often confuse it with its cooler climate cousin, deadly nightshade, and give it a wide birth.

This plant is a gem though.

Firstly, you can eat the leaves as a cooked green.  This isn't a huge…

Well spring has surely sprung but I’m still waiting on consistently nice weather before I count my chickens. I have been trying to get all my irrigation updated and ready for summer when there is just no way I’ll get enough time to make sure the watering gets done.  I bought shrubblers from Bunnings and they allow you to adjust the flow rate or even turn them off which is great for my multi Vegie garden bed set up.  I have 3 per bed at the moment…

Taking the milkcrate garden to another level. And more delights working with cardboard in the vegey patch.…

so for the past 12 months or so we have been quiet on the visiting etc front - health issues , covid etc . just as i was getting up steam to do Valeries visit bang accident at work - no driving for  5 months at least - so staying still has been challenging ( was threatened by doc with hospitalisation and tied to the bed) gardening with one arm has been a challenge but the garden elf has been busy as usual mostly helping others but did get the ne strawberry garden nearly finished and yes i…

Today was a very good day despite being hungover and feeling the excesses of the previous night. I went to Valeries garden visit and it was wonderful to see everyone again - I have missed the visits. I then came home, had a nap and then played in the garden in the warm afternoon.



Spring has well and truly sprung in my yard. I’m already harvesting…

All vaxed up and nowhere to go!

I'm therefore sentenced to potting around outback. Mind you, I gotta make a list of what is to be done?

Otherwise, I won't build a head of steam and I need to last to the end of the week outdoors, outback, quarantined at home...

And such gardening weather!…

Hey All, 

I just couldn’t face the chaos that work would have been today so I took a mental health day…

Horrendusly lucky in that my partner and I might buy a house in the next year or two. Have experience with small veggie patches in various rentals. However we are currently in a unit, and I'm missing it.

Therefore I'm attempting to garden vivaciouly via spreadsheet. Help me. Please? :)

ABOUT THE NON-GARDEN:

Probably a small suburban yard. We work full time, so anything that can't be eaten gets zero attention, but obviously edible things will get some care. Might get chooks…

We clean-picked our mandarin tree this morning, and have three boxes of mandarins - all ripe - they wouldn't hang on the tree much longer. 

If anyone would like some, please let me know. I can't hang on to them for long, as they are quite ripe. 

Taro is probably one of the most versatile plants on earth! However it is one that you have to know how how to grow it, how to harvest it, how to store the different bits of it and how to prepare it and how to cook it and then lastly how to eat it.  It is a complex plant but worth it if you master it as it is a complete plant that nothing is wasted.

To start with planting moist or wet soil, almost boggy preferably, make a hole as deep as the size you want your taro to be then stick…

I have a milk crate LEGO garden where I grow my herbs.

It works a treat.

Since I wanted to explore the grow bag experience for growing tubers -- especially Sweet Potatoes -- I've tweaked the milk crate + weedmat system to engineer a deeper soil trough to accommodate underground tuber development.

Here's the DIY.…

Well last blog was 2 years ago, where shall I start?

One season at a time.

In late February, I dug out the taro for what looked like a promising result… or not. Well, I mean that plant was almost bigger than me. I since then dug out more and gave it a final taste try to decide that it is definitely not a…

I'm looking at buying a juicer - for apples, pineapples, etc. Does anyone have one they can recommend (or specifically NOT recommend)? Mid price range is good.

The contents of the new you-beaut ring-pull cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk seemed to me to be a bit runnier than in the old types, so I had a look on the side of the can. to see if they'd changed the concentration. Well, no indication as to whether they had or they hadn't, but what I did see was 'MADE IN MEXICO". Had a bit of a fossick around on the web to see if I could find evaporated milk made in Australia, but all I could find was stuff made in Lithuania. Surely we can do better than…

Last time we blog-interacted I was talking up the pleasures of cardboard as a garden mulch.  As of today it looks something like this:

It offers a certain rustic charm as the fibres begin their rotting journey.

Sentenced…

I may be a registered member of the Mulch Supporters Club but I never understood the Permaculture fetish for wet paper.

More trouble than it's worth.

Laying out the beds at the Vetiver plantation sure enamoured me to cardboard as a mulch understory and now it looks like I'm addicted.

Cardboard, after all, is mashed up wood chips...and it's available any and everywhere. More so, in fact, than newspaper.

So I started using cardboard keenly and experimentally in the…

I thought I had at least 2 cups of bean flour.  So, I bravely started the next experiment.  For some reason, I went onto Turkish bread.  I love the stuff and I was too lazy to do mashed potato first.  After getting the yeast ready, I discovered I in fact was down to 1 last cup of bean flour.  So, 1 bean flour to 4 wheat/bakers' flour.  The good news is that it worked - I thought very well.  …