It’s been a good coffee year this year. We probably, possibly, have a whole year’s supply if the grown up kids don’t claim too much of it. When I look back, our coffee growing and processing has come a long way in the last few years, since Growing Our Own Coffee parts 1 and 2.
Tall climbers planted around the south side of a bed will never shade anything to the north of them, and with roots in newly cleared and fertilised and mulched ground and all that vertical space for sun capture, this is the most highly productive space in my whole garden.
This is a post from this same day, five years ago. And here I am again, with even the mice reliable as ever. We went…
It’s the southern hemisphere equinox at 3.30 pm today, the moment when the earth is exactly half way on its journey round the sun between the short shadow full face to the sun days of midsummer, and the long shadow late mornings and early evenings of midwinter. In gardening terms, it’s time to start planting things that need the threat of winter to persuade them to store food- garlic and…
Cucamelons (or mouse melons – Melothria scabra) were all the rage there for a year or two. For those who missed it, they’re little, melon shaped cucumbers. Very cute. And very, very prolific.
In Autumn 2000 I wrote an article for Organic Gardener magazine about worm towers. For years I thought the idea had sunk without a trace. When our daughter moved to a little flat in Brisbane we helped her build a garden with them. It worked so well that it crossed my mind occasionally, I wonder why that idea never caught on? Maybe I should write about it again in Witches…
We bought a second hand washing machine a little while ago, just by chance from a couple who had retired to Lennox Head leaving a family home with a great big garden to move into a beach house with a tiny garden. They were doing spectacular things in a tiny space and we talked gardens over tea for so long we nearly forgot why we came. As we were leaving…