This is where we share stories about gardening, goats, climate action and hints and tricks to help everyone live the good life! Search our extensive archive, use the categories below or simply have a relaxing browse with a cuppa…
While some pest and diseases can be tolerated in small amounts, codling moth is not one of those as it will devastate your apple crops and make you cry. This latest video builds on one of our older blogs and shows you exactly what you can do to keep codling moth out of your apples […]
Globe artichokes (Cynara scolymus) are part of the thistle family – so in the right climate, they grow like weeds. Beautiful, delicious (non-invasive) weeds. We’ve planted a lot of them amongst our edible forest garden as a stunning (and tasty) perennial. When it comes to eating them, it can initially be a tad confusing about […]
This past season we grew enough purple bush beans to eat fresh and save a bunch for drying and eating in winter. As we’ve got limited space, it’s not enough to supply all our needs, but we like trying new things each year and thought we’d experiment with how much we could do. We grew […]
Tagasaste or tree lucerne (Cytisus proliferus), is a small evergreen tree that grows 3-6m high (depending on soil and rain) and is a popular plant for people looking to regenerate poor soils and feed livestock. It’s indigenous to the dry volcanic slopes of the Canary Islands and was introduced to Australia some time around 1879 when […]
Recently, we built a much anticipated, beautiful bit of infrastructure for our garden – a cold frame. This is a welcome addition to any cool temperate garden, where we’re all constantly working on creating warm microclimates to extend our season to get tomatoes earlier and longer, reliable eggplants and abundant basil. Cold frames can be […]
CalPhos nutrient solution for your garden. This is a new thing for me, so new I haven’t even tried it yet. A very talented and lovely grower, Nadia Danti who manages Fat Pig Farm’s market garden shared this receipe and photos with me recently after I visited her and I think every keen grower needs […]
It’s been a busy December. Life is always full, but with the end of the year it’s been particularly brain-squishing, use all the hours in the day and borrow some from the night type of busy. Hence, not quite making it to this blog – sorry about that. But here we are. Slowly breathing out […]
In mid 2016 we bought the neighbouring patch of weedy/bush land we’d been drooling over for 4 years; and at the beginning of 2017, we started shaping it to include a driveway and more garden/animal space. We’d been drooling over this steep landscape as up until early 2017 the only way into our property was […]
No-till soil prep is a way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage – meaning you improve soil health over time rather than consistently degrading it. It’s a method quite common in the market gardening community and something we’re starting to use at our own place now that we have […]
