October 2011 Blog Posts (15)

Today was a glorious sunny Spring Day, after a few cool grey ones.

We had an extra special occurrence in our garden.

In the early afternoon I looked out of our upstairs window and was amazed to see a cloud of flying insects above the trees.

I called out to Mr Box to come and see. Then I realised I was…

Our spring garden project... 3 days of hard slog, moving the old large garden up hill slightly (for better drainage) and making three small plots, that will equal slightly more area than we had. We rotary hoed the base with gysum to help break up clay. Boxed up the borders to help level them out on the slope. Then spread a layer of broad bean plants from the old patch once the broad beans had been harvested. We also moved what good topsoil we could, added compost from our own bins, and bags…

I am part of a Collective which is hoping to open a free cafe/diner in central Wellington. If you are interested in supporting the Greedzero Project please make contact at greedzero@hotmail.co.nz

Growing rabbits for meat is a very productive enterprise. When our children were small we lived in a small town, on a small property and…

Day two of Beryl and Ruby’s residence.

I got up before 6.00am this morning, but Beryl and Ruby were already out and about.

They were very settled and roamed about the yard as comfortably as if they’d lived here for weeks.

It was very quiet this morning. I think everyone in the neighbourhood has sold…

Beryl & Ruby, the Red Shaver hens, arrived on Thursday evening.

I bought them on Trademe earlier in the week but couldn’t pick them up immediately as Mr Box was sick with flu.

The two hens had to sleep in the cardboard box they were transported in as I didn’t have time to arrange anything…

We have 2 new hens and one less rooster.

We used to have 5 hens and a rooster but 3 of our hens died earlier in the year.

With the advent of Spring it became obvious that 2 wives was nowhere near enough for Vincent the Splash Orpington Rooster.

Violet got badly scratched as a result of…

Hi There, I have had to cut two or three branches off my meyer lemon tree,BECAUSE IT HAS SO MUCH FRUIT...LEMONS ....THAT THE BRANCHES BROKE... SO ANYBODY OUT THERE WANT TO SWAP OR SOMETHING FOR 200  OR MORE MYER LEMONS FULL OF JUICE..LET ME KNOW

THANKS

I am finally back on Ooooby.

I have spent the last 2 years renovating our house and can finally get back into the garden and get it back in control and after a month of good rain and warms days in Sydney my garden is taking off for Spring. (aka totally out of control!)

The Raspberries and boysenberries have started to flower, we have already had our first taste of new season Strawberries, the garlic is starting the get good sized bulbs and I am looking forward to spending more…

Ingredients :

7 capsicums

3 medium onions

1 cup sugar

1 cup vinegar

2 tsp salt

Method :

De-seed and chop capsicums

Chop onions

Reserve vegetable juices

Combine capsicum, onion, reserved juices, sugar, vinegar and salt

Bring to the boil

Reduce heat and simmer 30…

Typical. I just plant some warm season crops and we have days of overcast cold weather. Hopefully everything will not rot. But the positive thing is that we have had rain, which has helped the green crops, celery, lettuce, spinach. Everything is just growing, growing. This is what I love about gardening, there's always an upside to balance the downside, and always a downside to balance the up (so that we don't get too cocky about our successes.

The good news is that the basil and…

We started off with two langstroth hives. That is what the beekeepers say to do. You can monitor the hives and compare them and you soon know if one is doing better than the other. We were late gettting going into the season last year and bought the hives and nucs middle of October. At the end of the season we…

I like the idea of ever finer granularity of weather conditions so we can tap into our microclimates better.

More people are putting up their own mini stations and feeding the results to various places on the net.

I'd like to add one of my own but I'd appreciate some advice on what is the best and how much I should be paying for it.

We have been working hard to get our soils back in tip top shape and I thought i would share with you a  rather easy and cheap way of getting calcium into your soil.

Calcium is an important element in any soil food web and without it plants cannot function to the best of their abilities. Therefore it is crucial that we focus on getting our calcium levels up.

A process avaliable to most home gardeners is as follows....

We save up all our bones from soups, broths and so on…