Gardening Experiences That Worked and Some That Didn't

These are all real life gardening experiences.
It’s not all Beer and Skittles

It’s not all Beer and Skittles

Gardening is a learning curve and the best way to get better at it is to keep doing it and try and keep some records so you can look back and see what works at what time of year. You will get failures along the way, but they are one step in finding out what grows well...

Black Russian Tomatoes

Black Russian Tomatoes

I planted some Black Russian Tomatoes in the wicking bed and showed how to tie them up and prune them. These are some very strong tomato vines. This vine has one set of roots and two laterals that I have tied with string to the overhead wire. As the vine grows, I wind...

Broad Beans

Broad Beans

Like most things, gardening is a learning curve. One of the best things you can learn to do is keep a diary and record what you did and the results. It makes your life much easier next year when you decide when and what to plant. In the picture above you can see broad...

Grow Tomatoes The Easy Way

Grow Tomatoes The Easy Way

There are many ways to grow tomatoes. Staking them or putting a wire cage around them or easier easy ways like letting them grow wild or stringing them up. I like all ways, but I have worked out a little twist on letting them grow wild. If you plant tomatoes and let...

Home Made Laundry Detergent

Home Made Laundry Detergent

Does the price of clothes washing detergent give you the "tom tits"? Do you get annoyed when it is time to buy more laundry detergent and you don't get any change from $20 for a 4 litre liquid detergent? I do and I get sick of the bs advertising where they give the...

Symbiotic Relationship

Symbiotic Relationship

Have you noticed in your garden that there are relationships between different life forms where one form of life is dependent on another life form for its survival. The easiest symbiotic relationship to see is a flower and a bee. The flower produces pollen, which is...

Tying Up Tomatoes

Tying Up Tomatoes

Tomatoes would have to be close to the favourite fruit I like to grow. Nothing beats looking after a tomato bush and looking forward to picking them. The distinctive aroma that is transferred to your hands when you touch them to tie them up can't be beaten, imho. The...

Winter Garden Update

Winter Garden Update

Here's a bit of a run around the winter garden at the moment The broccoli seedlings were planted out around the 25th of June and are going gangbusters. No heads have formed yet and only found two caterpillars so far. There are 40 broad bean plants in the patch this...

Wicking Bed Finished

Wicking Bed Finished

I finallygot the wicking bed finished and the insect mesh attached. The final finish is not as good as I wanted as I couldn't figure out how to keep the insect mesh in place and still get easy access. My stop-gap solution is to hold it in place with boards and a...

Yacon

Yacon

I harvested some Yacon the other day and was quite surprised when it actually tasted like the descriptions I had read. The tubers taste something like a Nashi pear, a little sweeter and more fluid but a crunchy texture. We put some in a salad and I was picking the...

Mr Fothergill’s Seeds

You may recall that I was trying to grow some Stevia from seed. See this post on Stevia. I was using a seed propagating cup from Mr. Fothergill's Seeds that they had marketed for children as the Lolly Plant. I followed all the directions and made sure that I didn't...

Hugulculture Wicking Bed Nearly Finished

Hugulculture Wicking Bed Nearly Finished

Over the weekend I finally got motivated and completed the construction of the hugulculture wicking bed and frame for the pest exclusion material. I have been a bit handicapped lately with lower back pain. I wrote about that here lower back pain. This post will be...

Lower Back Pain

Lower Back Pain

You may have worked out from the timeline on the posts that my work rate has slowed down a bit. Especially with the wicking bed construction. They are building a two story house two doors up and the subbies must be laughing at the old bloke down the road. They started...

Wicking Bed Build

Wicking Bed Build

It is taking longer than I planned to build the wicking bed, but I got a lot closer to completion today. The completion is in sight and seeing that I want to plant by the winter equinox, 22 June, I think that it will be achieved. There were a couple of items that I...

Garden Watering System

Garden Watering System

The easiest way to do your watering is to set up a garden watering system on a timer. I know, sounds like hard work, but this is the easy way to water the garden so that it happens automatically without you doing a thing or having to go out when you come home from...

Growing ginger

Growing ginger

A Sub-tropical climate is perfect for growing ginger. Brisbane in Australia is ideal. From my experience with ginger it is a very easy crop to grow and doesn't take much maintenance. I started by planting some ginger from the supermarket. I made sure that it was...

Making Soy Milk

Making Soy Milk

I like growing Soy Beans. Don't ask me why as I have no real reason to. I think it stems from my days on a sugar cane farm where we grew it as a soil conditioning crop which made the cane grow gang busters when planted after soybeans. I grow them in any new gardening...

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