After all the drought years of the last decade, We have just recently spent a small fortune lining our dams so we have water security.…
I have chickweed (Stellaria media) going beserk in my garden right now. It is edible – lots of vitamins and minerals and not too bad an addition to a salad. But that uses at most a cupful, and I have a wheelbarrowful. But for those of you with chickens, look out for this herb. It’s a low growing tangle of stems with bright green soft-crisp leaves and tiny white flowers,…
We’ve just harvested the first of the coffee beans for the season, and now begins the slightly laborious process of processing them.
If I can get the micronutrient level nice and high and balanced early enough, I will give the garden plants enough immunity and the predators enough of a head start to avoid most of the spring and summer bugs.
The box is full of a home-made seed germinating mix, mostly creek sand with a bit of compost for water retention. I like using mowed cow pats better – I collect old, dried cow pats and run over them with the mower to yield a catcher full of shredded cow manure. It has few nutrients to speak of but holds water beautifully.
The dam is full of azolla – a little water weed that I encourage because it is symbiotic with a nitrogen fixing bacteria. Like legumes, it can grab nitrogen out of the air and stabilize it in a form that feeds soil and plants that are not so handily endowed with an in-built fertilizer factory.
I haven’t written a post about gardening for a while, so I thought I should write one about not gardening. At the moment, I feel…
I have had a lovely leafy planting weekend getting grubby in the garden, restoring some sanity after the madcap week and setting me up for…
A wallaby got into the garden last night, and demolished my newly planted sweet potato patch. I spent my whole mowing session this morning devising recipes for wallaby – Turkish wallaby stew, marinated baked wallaby, wallaby kebabs….
I always feel great after a mowing session. I call it “mowing meditation”, and it is such good exercise – aerobic, strength and flexibility all at once – and I so hate exercise for its own sake.