Chooks and vegetable gardens are such an elegant arrangement. I’ve tried lots of ways of combining them, from domes to compost making down a slope, but I’m really liking the current solution.
It’s such a good disguise. It looks just like a ladybeetle. If I didn’t catch it actually in flagrante eating the leaves on my squash, I would think it was a good guy.
The first compost pile of the season, and it’s a good one. It’s a lasagna pile with nice thin layers, with mulch from the Mulch Mountain every second layer.
Azolla is a really valuable plant. It’s a rampant native waterweed, that is symbiotic with a nitrogen fixing bacteria, so, like legumes, it is capable of harvesting nitrogen out of the air and putting it into a form that plants can use as a fertilizer.
I like mowing. It’s just hard enough work for me to feel entirely justified ignoring the gym. A few kilometres of power walking, a bit of aerobic exercise pushing it uphill, a bit of weight training emptying the bag, a bit of stretching and flexing. The perfect workout.
I thought I might share this little trick with you, because it took me a ridiculously long time to think of it. It’s such a simple little trick, but it saves so many failures.
Isn’t sex an amazing thing? That chromosomes split and crossover to create a totally new and unique being? Not once, but every single time, so that every single life is totally unique. Which means that, when I find a good variety, that works well in my microclimate and is resilient in the context of the little ecosystem that is my garden, I try very hard to remember to save seed.
One morning in 2000, I came out and every single seedling I’d planted the day before had been dug up. It was the beginning of the end for a style of gardening that had served me very well for over a decade.
This post is the basics of growing, storing and cooking beans. Beans are one of my real staples – super easy to grow, prolific, a good source of protein, soluble fiber, folate and a whole range of minerals, and the basis for a big range of recipes
I usually make several compost piles through the summer, when ingredients are most available and they mature fastest.