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Tag: Spring

In year three …

It is year three of this retrosuburbia challenge, and most days now we are eating substantially what can be produced from this little, 500m2 suburban block. No food miles, no packaging, no energy loss through processing or storage. With important gaps – cooking oil, dairy products, flour – but also with some surplus shared with neighbours, and at least in spring of a la Niña year and not taking our…

Spring Fruit Bowl

I’ve posted about my fruit bowl many times before. Brett Hamlyn gave me this handmade fruit bowl, as a Yule gift, back in 2016. One of my treasures. I’ve posted pictures of it full of winter, spring and summer harvests of fruit, and here it is, mid Spring, full again. (It actually had a nice little bowl of strawberries in it too, from the north wall garden, and a bowl of…

Happy Equinox!

Happy equinox everyone. For us in the southern hemisphere, it is Ostara, the spring equinox, celebration of babies of every species (and rabbits and eggs). Celebration that life renews over and over, generation begatting generation into not just the 7th generation but forever – a good moment to reflect on how wonderous and astonishing it is that this little blue green planet on the outskirts of an obscure galaxy has life.

Roots and Perennials Planting Days in Late Spring – Hazpac-ing the Carrots

There’s a permaculture principle of designing for disaster. The same principle applies to big disasters (whoever had the bright idea of building the Fukushima nuclear plant wasn’t taking account of it), or small disasters like a hailstorm or a day of sizzling hot weather when carrots are germinating or establishing. Like many permaculture principles it’s hardly rocket science: just research, consider and design for the extremes not just the ideal,…

Fruiting Annuals Planting Days in Late Spring

I’ve planted a few each of Hungarian Wax capsicums (in the picture), which are a yellow banana type, and my Supermarket Flats, which are a thicker walled, sweet pepper that is red when fully ripe.  They are at the perfect age for planting out – raised to advanced seedlings (about 15 cm tall) in individual pots filled with a compost/worm castings/creek sand mix.  This means I can plant them out…