It’s spring. The white cabbage moths have arrived, en masse. But they don’t seem to be doing much damage. So here are some of my speculations about why.
Here we are in the odd position of celebrating Halloween, a festival that, in European tradition, marks the start of winter, when thoughts turn to mortality and all around are reminders that every living thing dies. But tonight I will light the fairy lights in the carport and dress up, I think perhaps as a dragonfly, or maybe a mud wasp? Some predatory insect anyway, and make a batch of…
My potato crop last year was very sad. The plants wilted before they flowered, and the potatoes hadn’t finished developing. The largest were only golf ball size. We don’t eat a lot of potatoes – I tend to regard them as a seasonal vegetable rather than a storage staple – but new potatoes are such a treat I was determined to get a yield this year.
My broad beans have aphids. Judging by my social media, everyone else’s broadbeans have aphids too. The trigger with little insects stealing my food is they must die! But must they? Most of the ways of waging war on aphids involve either pollutants or a lot of effort. Is there something easier?
Mike Hoag (of Permaculture in Action: Transformative Adventures – one of my favourite groups), used the term “keystone human”, and that’s my ambition in life…
My nasturtiums are seeding already. Not all of them – the ones in full sun flower most profusely and set seed first. But there’s enough…
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…