Turmeric

Some time last year a friend of mine from my permaculture group gave me a couple of tubers of turmeric. She had grown this in her garden and had a bountiful year and plenty to share. Prior to this, I had no experience with this plant and as such said I would give it a go but in a confined space so that it couldn't get out of control and establish in my garden without my explicit permission.

My next question to my friend was, what do I do with it? Then, how does it grow and what special things do I need to do to keep it alive? The answers were, it's simple, put it in the ground and watch it grow, you harvest it once the plant dies back next winter.

Well, that doesn't sound very hard!

So my trial is now complete, I placed my two tubers in the ground. I had a 'orange' and 'normal' turmeric tuber and placed each in a separate styro-foam box with potting mix, then covered the soil with hay. A few weeks on and I was cooking with gas, well actually I finally had a sprout poking its little snout out of the soil. Then a few weeks later some leaves and eventually a leafy green plant that didn't have to be watered more than fell out of the sky! How simple.

Here are a couple of in progress photos.

  

About a month ago the plants started to die back. Remembering the conversation about harvesting once this started to happen, I wondered how difficult this harvest and processing would be. Turns out, the harvesting process is just as simple as growing these things. I snapped off the plant or remnants of and dug around in the soil with my hands for the tubers and voila a whole bucket load of turmeric for my greatest cooking delight (I think). 

I think I got about 1.5kgs of tubers from the two small nodes that I planted last year.

 

I reckon the hardest part to this whole plant is knowing what to do with once you harvest it. From my internet reading I understand that you can use it just as you would do ginger in Asian cooking. 

Considering the amount of turmeric I have, I have already planted a nodule of each of the two types of turmeric back into a styro-foam box for next year's harvest. I also have plans to share some of my produce with the permaculture group next month.

If you have any recipes that use turmeric that you'd care to share I'll happily try them out, so that I can use up some of this turmeric. 

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How to let your neighbours know you're a greenie?

Over the last 12 months there has been a lot of talk about no-dig gardens. What trips me up is the need to source all the materials to make a no-dig garden. No-dig gardens just seem to have so many ingredients, when you can just call up a compost or landscaping place and they will dump a whole bunch of 'soil' at your front door. Convenience strikes again!

I haven't given up completely on the idea of creating my 'perfect' veggie patch through a no dig process and due to a number of recent random events in my life I am starting to think it might even be possible. However, the no-dig garden still needs all of those ingredients and perhaps the biggest sticking point is the current lack of compost in my life! Now compost doesn't just appear over night, you have to work at it, love it, feed it......and maybe, just maybe you might be rewarded with some 'black gold'.

When we moved in to our new place, I did rush out and buy the biggest and nastiest black compost bin I could find at our local green & red hardware store. I put it in a place I thought would be accessible and convenient, with the idea that I would be making buckets loads of compost by the time I was thinking about building the veggie patches. Well, 12 months on and I have decided that the bin is in the completely wrong spot and its location doesn't allow me to turn the ingredients to aerate them. Also, I think perhaps the type of bin I bought (a flat pack square one) is probably not strong enough to take a good turning.

Anyway, I will continue with my bin choice, but I have moved it and its current ingredients to a new location. The move brought ingredient aeration and some realisation that I don't have enough green materials (nitrogen) going into my compost bin (because the worm farm is hogging them). So this is where my neighbours find out that they have a hippie in their midst!

With the amount of green waste being utilised in my worm farm and the lack of established veggie patch to "feed" the compost bin, where am I to get this green material from? Work colleagues seem to be a little "special" when it comes to separating suitable lunch scraps and don't actually seem to have that many (or least not placed appropriately into the designated bucket in the lunch room).

So, where am I to get this stuff from? My greenie and recycling streak re-surfaced and I came up with a grand plan. Through a little initiative of mine, I am hoping my neighbours will be the source of all my required 'green materials'. How is this going to happen? Well, I have put together a flyer, that I have so far dropped into 50% of my street's letterboxes, requesting my neighbours be so kind as to drop their kitchen green scraps into a "bin" that I have conveniently placed at my front gate.

 (Source: World Changing Seattle)

I wonder if this plan will be successful? Once the rain eases I will do the rest of my neighbourhood letterbox drop and see whether this strategy reaps any rewards! Pin It

The chaos I came home to!

Hi ho hi ho its off to work I go and by the time I got home this afternoon the house seemed to have regressed into some sort of chaotic parallel universe!

I returned home after nine hours at work and find that my driveway is almost completely blocked with a massive pile of palm tree mulch. Sure I should be happy about this a gigantic pile of mulch (as tall as me and probably three standard car lengths long) but the access into our carport is nearly blocked. Not such a big deal one might say but the other half spent did spend about forty-five minutes this afternoon clearing out a flat enough section in the mulch pile so that he could four-wheel drive over it to get his car out from behind this pile. All this drama just because the dumper of the mulch was too slack to listen to instructions, which required them to open a gate and then dump the excessive amount of palm mulch next to an existing pile of mulch in a location that wouldn't create such inconvenience.

So this is my first 'shock'! The next was the realisation that this large pile of mulch was smothering my just fruiting snow peas! Now this nearly floored me and certainly I had to restrain myself from screaming down the pathway to my other half to explain or justify why I shouldn't be strangling someone. This fabulous pile of much was soon to be killing off my fine, organic, locally obtained snow peas grown from seed, in a newly cleaned out garden bed, with the newly grown fruit easily accessible to my food-fussy toddler (who will eat these off the bush) and I am not very impressed!

I managed to restrain myself from screaming like a banshee about this, but the next thing that struck me was my withered and chewed brightly blooming grafted Eucalypt ($50). As I struggled through the front gate whilst trying not to step on my bottom lip, the tree appeared to have either been attacked by a lawn mower or a more likely explanation a dog's mouth. From the damage, I certainly suspect it was one of my dogs! Basically they have chewed off the top of the tree in frustration probably whilst feeling frustrated at my other half ignoring their barking whilst he over at the neighbours' negotiating a bargain on the large pile of palm mulch that now is residing in my driveway!

This palm mulch had better be the best damn weed-suppressing mulch ever - that's all I've got to say!

(Source: Backyard Poultry)

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Chickens have arrived

Last weekend I went to a local produce barn to buy some dog food and like a kid in a candy store was so excited to see the chickens they had. They sell a lot of 'point of lay' chickens, which are chickens that you basically buy and once they have settled into their new 'digs' they will start to lay. However, this produce barn also sells 'day old' chickens that are 80% guaranteed to be females and therefore egg producers and not wake the neighbours in the morning. And last weekend they seemed to be teeming with baby chicks and true to form being so adorable (sucked me in)!

I was with my toddler and my other half was at a conference. So being like a possessed person I rapidly sent off a text message stating that the produce store was about to close and if he approved could I buy some of these day old chicks now, otherwise he would have to wait until Monday to get some. I mean, it wasn't like we had spoken over breakfast and mentioned that I would be getting chickens that day, nor discussed it during the week to make sure we had all the right facilities to have these new chicks. No. Their cuteness took over and I needed them.

The approval came back and I purchased three Australorp chickens. Why Australorps you might say, as Rhode Island Reds are quite a common purchase for backyard egg producers? Cuteness once again. I love the Australorps, I think they are a very attractive bird even as an adult - they are all black with bright red contrasting combs. Beautiful.....so once again, decision was only skin (or should I say feather) deep.

Anyway, got the three chicks home with some additional paraphernalia, such sawdust, chook food and some water dispensers and set them up in an old cage that I had from my wildlife caring days. I then madly sent off another text message to the other half again and insisted he get a heat lamp on the way home and voila three baby chicks growing rapidly at our house. 

We have had them a week now and they have been named by my toddler, with some assistance. We have 'Cheeky', 'Peckish' and 'Socks'. They certainly have grown over the week and I have noted a significant change in food consumption, even within the first twenty four hours.

I am also amazed at the innate behaviour that they demonstrate. We have taken them outside a couple of times to enrich their environment and let them experience dirt and weeds (which I will be getting them to work on when they are a little older) and they just instantaneously starting scratching in the bark and pecking at weeds, etc. They also happily consumed three worms between them the first time they were outside. It was hilarious to watch them with these worms, it was just like a Three Stooges skit.

One week on, no regrets and our three little chicks are starting to show signs of their egg-producing adult selves, with little tail feather shafts being now visible and wing feathers being quite prominent. They haven't lost their cuteness yet and we are hoping that we aren't smothering them with love.

What an adventure this is for a city girl and I'm loving it. Pin It

More weeds in the yard!

Since we have been in our place nearly a year it was time to tackle some of the larger tasks we have been putting off. Chainsaw in hand, a number of umbrella trees and African Tulip trees were in our sights. These two species are weeds here in south-east Queensland. They are quickly spread throughout the environment by our lovely native birds, which eat their seeds and fly elsewhere poop out the seed and voila a new tree sprouts! Basically, these species have the ability to out-compete our native tree species, through quick establishment, prolific seeders and lots of helpful native birds assisting their movement. 

We removed three semi-mature African tulip trees and about five umbrella trees from the bottom of one of our paddocks. All we did was chop them off at the base and pile the top half of these trees in a big pile (will chip later). We will then monitor these stumps for re-growth and if required undertake some additional treatment (maybe salt).

Here are some piccies of these two offending weeds. 

African Tulip Tree

Umbrella Tree

In addition, to chain-sawing the trees out, I choose to remove a small patch (about 5m x 1.5m) of broad-leaf paspalum. This is a shade-tolerant, non-native, hardy grass species, which out-competes many of our native grasses. I employed the assistance of a fork and just loosened the soil around the base of each individual outcrop and removed them to the domestic waste bin once out of the ground. I did this action about three weeks ago and so far no new outcrops of this grass have sprung up in the area of 'treatment'. 

 

 Broad-leaf Paspalum

 
Hope these treatment options hold and with my revegetation money I will look to establish a bit of a native cover crop/midstorey to replace these weed species and provide some additional protection for my overstorey eucalypts.



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Compost - what I need to be doing!

Organic matter in your vegetable, fruit or flowering garden is an essential ingredient to keep your plants growing over the long term. Initial plantings directly into your garden quite often do well, but overtime your garden's minerals and nutrients become exhausted and the overall soil health diminishes. The addition of organic matter, particularly in the form of compost, is a welcome and worthwhile addition to any garden to allow the same successes over and over again.

With the addition of compost to your garden, you will increase the amount of nutrients available, increase the potential water availability, decrease the amount of nutrients made unavailable in traditional landfill, reduce greenhouse gases being generated unnecessarily in landfill, provides soil structure in your garden and increases soil microbial activity leading to healthier and more productive soils over time. 

(Source: Abi Homeschools)

In recent years, I have always had a compost bin and presently my bin is not being loved as much as it should.  I really haven't had a significant amount of time to dedicate to the established garden beds at my place and thus, I haven't been maintaining my compost with love and vigour. I do regularly add food scraps, occasionally brown "goods" (such as leaves and branches) and when I just happen to have some green waste (fresh leaves and grass clippings) in my hand as I walk passed these go in too. Another ingredient that I have added to my compost bin is a few bags of fresh horse manure. I just did this because my understanding is that it isn't great to add manure straight to the garden and horse manure also quite often contains a large of weed seeds and the composting process will kill some of these off.

Things I should be doing to my standard compost bin to allow it to be composting more effectively and in a shorter period of time, include:

• aeration - I should be forking it over at least once a week (at present), to re-establish a bit of air flow and allow the breakdown process to become re-activated and mix the "ingredients" through each other;
• checking the moisture levels - if it is too wet or dry, decomposition of materials will be significantly slowed;
• getting a better balance between the ingredients - adding a significant larger proportion of brown goods over the green ones.

Once I have established a better routine for my compost, then it is likely that my compost bin will be more productive and the end product will be an ingredient that my garden will love in the long term.

So, what is stopping me from doing all this you may ask? Well, firstly time is a little against me at the moment, but I think the more important thing is that my compost bin is actually in quite an awkward location to access. As such, putting things into it is certainly a chore and attempting to do anything more than drop an occasional bucket of food scraps into it can in fact be quite dangerous (it is located on quite a steep hill on top of a small retaining wall). I think the re-location of my compost bin to a more appropriate location would re-engage me with my beneficial garden waste and overall inspire me to a new level of commitment to this nutrient recycling process in my garden.

Given that it is currently compost awareness week, maybe you can make a difference to your garden by re-engaging with your composting activities or establishing a new bin. Happy composting!

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Long weekend! Woo hoo

What are you planning for the next four days? (For those that are under a rock or live outside Australia, all States in Australia have two public holidays either side of this weekend for Easter). For those that aren't particularly religious or completely un-interested in religious activities here is a list of things that might tickle your fancy to keep you busy for these four days:

• relax;
• vegetable patch planning or maintenance;
• bit of weeding;
• riding your bike along your favourite waterway;
• hang out in a tree (for all those kids);
• setting up a worm farm or a compost bin;
• de-clutter to make space for positive vibes;
• order a rainwater tank;
• plant a deciduous vine on the western wall of your house;
• hang out with family and friends;
• eat fair-trade and/or organic chocolate;
• recycle or freecycle some 'junk' around your house;
• sit on the beach and take in the breath-taking view & when you're finished take some rubbish from the beach;
• go bird-watching;
• visit your local national park;
• see what activities your local Museum or library is holding;
• plan your garage sale to take part of the Garage Sale Trail in May;
• see what you can make out of bamboo;
• have a swim at your local pool, watering-hole, river, creek or beach; 
• go camping; or
• set up a herb garden. 

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Have you outsourced your environmental impact?

I was daydreaming the other day about my future vegetable patch. Carrying on from this lovely moment, I continued to ponder but this time specifically about the irrigation system that is going to have to support this dream. Then my thoughts strayed to considering how significant a burden a vegetable garden can be on your domestic water bill, your rain water or your dams, depending on your situation. No matter which one of these water sources you have you become keenly aware of how much water it takes to get your vegetables going and producing adequately.

In line with this, when you create a vegetable patch, no matter what style or type, there are a significant number of imposts on your household budget, particularly during the establishment phase, but these do carry on through to the maintenance phase. Anyway, long story, not so short, it made me think! At least I am keenly aware of this 'economic and environmental' impact to produce the lovely vegetables and fruit that I receive. All resulting from hardwork, effort, investment and natural resources.

But how many products and systems does the average householder have that removes them from the direct production process or means that they do not understand how much and many resources (water, soil, nutrient, electricity, timber, minerals, waste, etc, etc) it takes to produce the items in their household? The answer, I'm afraid, is soooooo many! Basically, our households, systems and businesses have allowed us to outsource our environmental impacts and become removed from this production process. This in turn, creates a false sense of one's personal environmental impact. No wonder we have a society which does not value the environment or think the planet is in dire straits.

 (Source: http://pervasiveshopping.wordpress.com/)

Many people in our society do not believe that the environment has an intrinsic value and should just be preserved/conserved. Moreover, many of these people are completely devoid of understanding and experiencing natural resources. How can we therefore expect them to care for the planet?

Obviously education is a key component of rectifying this situation! With my thoughts being an important focus on arousing a re-connection to nature and particularly natural resources. Maybe with such information people might start to care about the world and potentially change their lifestyles to recognise the finite nature of many of earth's provisions.


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Extending the life of your basil

In my last garden, I found that my basil grew fairly quickly, flowered and then became quite bitter. The plants generally still grew and stayed healthy, but obviously the point of having a basil plant is to use in your kitchen and meals and not just take up room in your garden....well that's my reason for having it.

At our new place I have planted about five basil plants thinking this would give me enough leaves across the five little plants to make pesto and then as they grow up and become bitter I won't mind because I would have had enough leaves over all of these plants to make several batches of pesto. And then I would just replace them over time with new plants.

But I have found a sneaky trick that seems to have elongated my crop! The trick you ask...  Well, it is really quite simple! All I do is remove the flower heads every time I notice these on the plants. I just pick these flower heads off and amazingly this seems to have allowed my basil plants to continue to grow, without turning really bitter and allowing them to continue to look amazing.

Wow, so simple and now I have much more basil than I ever need in the kitchen.  I can also let some of them go to flower and seed, which allows new crops for another year and brings in pollinating insects that are needed more broadly in the garden. 

See if this works just as well for you.





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Garden activities for this afternoon

With all the rain that we have received over the last few weeks, you really have to grab any time you can in the garden. This afternoon was one such break in the weather and I jumped to it!

Watered the worms, as the little brown ants are back and after heading to a Worm Farming seminar the other weekend, I have learnt they are attracted to your farm if it is a little dry. So, to the tap I headed and poured about 3 litres of water through the system. Let's hope that makes a difference.

Another task was to reduce the fruit on the lemon tree. This task for me has been delayed since I learnt that this was something that I needed to do.  The reason for my delay is that I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to my gardening capabilities and I am forever thinking that more is better because at least it is growing right! Wrong! Thinning fruit on your lemon tree will help the development of the fruit. Also thinning seedlings of some vegetables means that you will get a more productive and appropriately sized reward at the end of the growing season. But I do find it difficult to take this advice.

So, as I said I got to the lemon tree and its fruit reducing task this afternoon. What made me tackle this task, was not the learned gardener advice about this matter, but the fact that I noted some sooty leaves on the tree and thought it best that I remove these "diseased" leaves completely. Once into this task and examining my lemons on the tree I noted those lemons that were touching another lemon where attracting scale insects at the connection point. So, this rapidly bought me to removing the less promising fruit from each of these situations. My tree looks a little less burdened by its fruit load, but hopefully at least I won't lose all my fruit to some disease or insect! Now that would be a trauma! Especially since I want to make my first home made lemon cordial from all the fruit on the tree.

After the initial gardening episode this afternoon, dinner needed to be prepared. Sweet potato was on the menu for dinner tonight and due to my lack of sweet potato using recipes of late, the one that I cooked tonight had started to sprout little roots. Rather than putting these sections of the sweet potato straight into the compost bin or worm farm I thought it might be worth trying to grow these. So, a later afternoon activity saw me burying these sections with their roots attached into a recently cleared out garden bed with a bit of my home-produced worm castings. Let's see how they goes. If they do take, it will be a good crop to loosen the soil and de-compact the bed for future crops. 

Hope you've found some time amongst all this rain to get out into your garden.....maybe just pulling those weeds.


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Grasshoppers on my mint!

I planted a moderately grown mint plant, from a punnet sold from my local nursery, in one of my back gardens the other week. I bought it because the mint plant that I have in a different garden bed at the front of the house, has been in for about six months now and is at least growing, but is becoming a little straggly and seems to have a lot more stem and diminished leaf growth. So I thought a second plant would just help to keep our supply up!

But alas, the back garden plant, the new one, has succumbed significantly to a blight of tiny green grasshoppers. They are everywhere. The plant leaves looks skeletal! I mean all it has left is literally the veins in the leaf and the main stems. I hardly recognised it as the mint plant I put in only a few weeks back! Terrible news.

People talk of controlling grasshoppers by just going around squishing the things and I have generally done this. But goodness, I wouldn't know where to begin and the grasshoppers that are on this plant in the hundreds (probably) are tiny. They are nymphs (babies) and each one would be less than half a centimetre in length.

I think sadly due to the extent of damage this plant has received, it is a lost cause. But certainly interesting to observe where plants do and don't do so well in your garden and apparently this garden bed isn't great for mint. I suspect the soil nutrients in the garden bed I planted the mint in weren't up to the task, due to my lack of preparation to the soil and my "I'll just chuck it in and see how it goes" mentality at the moment.

Anyway, good learning curve and see how the rest of the plants in that bed deal with the next door neighbour's "pest" problem and whether any of them succumb or whether the mint will take one for the team and the grasshoppers will move somewhere else once they finish on my mint plant. Pin It

Hakea

Photo of a hakea on the farm I use to live on. A flower farm is a lovely place to live!

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Singapore Daisy...what a pest!

Weed control is an ongoing battle at our place and one of the battles that I fear we will face for many years to come is one against the invasive weed, Singapore Daisy.











Singapore Daisy, is an introduced pest in Queensland, with it originally coming from tropical America. It is a hardy and vigorous groundcover and I understand it is quite difficult to eradicate. It has a sea of yellow flowers during spring and summer and is known to spread from cuttings and prunings and just through rampant growth.

Currently Singapore Daisy is a Class 3 declared pest in Queensland, which does not require landholders to treat this species on their property, but does prevent people from releasing such species without a permit.

For me, this is terrible as all I have to prevent an ocean of Singapore Daisy from entering my property is a flimsy fence (see photo to right). This ocean is a significant infestation along my northern boundary. My southern boundary neighbours don't seem to have as much of a problem with this plant, but it is certainly present as individual plants. From investigations so far, it seems that most of my property is free of it, except for the occasional plant in the vicinity of the boundary fence and in the moister areas at the bottom of the hill.

My current plan of attack is pulling out the runners as they creep through the fences in the hope that I can control the tip spread. I also make sure that the bits I rip out of my ground go straight into the garbage bin to ensure the tips don't take hold somewhere else on our property (no compost action for this plant).

My best strategy I believe will be to either convince my neighbours to undertake a herbicide treatment in the areas of infestation, particularly on the northern boundary, and then replant with a suitable replacement species to ensure no soil loss once the Singapore Daisy groundcover "retreats". Alternatively, ask them if I can treat their land.

The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) recommends the use of metsulfuron-methyl (herbicide) at 10g per 100L of water plus a wetting agent. I will try to discover some non-chemical treatment methods to control this species, but I suspect given it has taken hold so well I will have to resort to traditional treatment methods.

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Garden tips...wet weather projects

We have just had a couple of days of heavy down pours where I live and this has provided me with inspiration to get into the garden. Not only is it not too hot, but it means that some of the typically hard labour jobs have become a little easier.

I spent the afternoon pulling out clumps of grass that have escaped into my garden beds. With the rain, the soil has softened significantly and it is easy to grab these clumps and remove a lot of the roots along with the tops. Such a task would typically involve some sort of shovel or other garden implement and the removal of a large amount of soil to even grab the root ball. It would also certainly otherwise leave a lot of the roots in the soil, in turn just bringing new sprouts with them.

Another task I have previously tackled after similar weather is the complete removal of established plants, mostly shrubs. Much of the established gardens in our new place have typical garden plants and my preference is to re-establish these gardens with mostly native plants. So, in an attempt to salvage these plants and allow other people to utilise these plants in their gardens, removing them in wetter, water-logged soils means less damage is done to the root stock and in turn the plant is more likely to survive after being transplanted.

So my suggestion is to get out there and experience the difference in your garden and maybe get on top of some of your weeds or medium-sized projects. Pin It

What beetle is that?

If you have started coming across the odd beetle round the house and you're wondering what it might be, the ABC has produced a small online beetle guide, which I thought was useful and provided a little bit more information than just the name and photo. The beetle guide can be viewed at: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/12/04/2045274.htm.

I have seen one rhinoceros beetle at our place and unfortunately very few Christmas beetles this year, maybe not wet enough yet.

Happy Bug Watching! Pin It

Salvaged fence...part 2

In the middle of last year, I wrote an entry about saving a white picket fence from my local town. When I saw the fence I imagined that it would come in handy at the new house we had bought so I went about "rescuing the fence". Once saved, we took it home in the back of a ute and stockpiled until it came time to move into our new place.

It was time to move into our new house in August 2011 and until the Christmas break the fence was just moved and stockpiled under the new house (to be exact, under the washing line). For the last few months, I have carefully moved around it with care as I hung out the many loads of washing and on several occasions imagined myself tripping over parts of this fence leading to some serious injury as it sent me tumbling over the retaining wall. Thankfully this never happened and we have now installed most of the components of the fence in the area that has been designated as part of the future chicken enclosure.  Yipppeee!

Here's how it looks at the moment.

The purpose of this section of the chook yard will be a "free range" area that the chickens can choose to be in, if the dogs are pestering them in the bigger backyard. Not sure if the dogs will be chicken chasers but better to be safe than sorry!

Will post pictures when the yard and coop are finished!

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Gardening Gloves

I have tried out a number of types of gardening gloves since I have become passionate about gardening.  My latest acquisition has been a pair of gardening gloves with a rubberised palm and a knitted back of the hand and fingers section (like the ones in the picture).

(Source: Glory's Garden)

I have been using these for about four months now and have found them fantastic for general weeding and digging around the garden. I particularly love them when I am weeding either early in the morning when there is a bit of dew around or after a sprinkling of rain. These gloves allow you to get out into the garden at these opportune times without getting your hands wet and muddy (as often happens to me with many of the gloves I have previously owned).

Also these gloves are pretty good at resisting prickles, but I wouldn't try and pick up a thorny rose branch without still having a little caution about the thorns. And the stretchy fabric on the back means your hands don't get too hot and sweaty even when working in the heat of the day (although I try to avoid this time of day at the moment).

Bring on the fine weather for more special gardening moments and achievements!

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Seed saving....chillies

I acquired a large number of what I know as birds-eye chillies from a friend the other day. As the family aren't huge "hot" food fans, I decided I would see whether I could salvage (or save) the seed from the fresh chillies with the objective of putting them into the ground and growing my own chilli plant.

My initial thoughts were to just chuck the chilli 'pods' (fruits) on to the ground at the location I want these plants to grow. I then decided perhaps I could give them a little more help than the complete lazy gardener. So after a little google investigation, I ended up cutting open the most ripe chillies and scraped out their seed on to some paper towel. I will now leave these seeds to dry for a week or two and then collect and store them in an envelope until I am ready to "plant" them out.

A gardener blog I just came across explains how they went about saving their chilli seed and it has some pretty pics as well. Have a look at the Suburban Tomato's blog post about their process.

What I will do with the chillies if I am successful in growing any chilli plants is another matter, but maybe the family taste buds will have evolved! Fingers crossed. Pin It

Free Mulch

I have just come across Mulch Net.com. This is advertised as connecting tree loppers and vegetation management people with people that want mulch.

I have registered in the hope that I will get some mulch for a revegetation project that I am hoping to commence on my property in the cooler months, but it seems that there aren't any loppers currently registered in my area.

Nevertheless, I think this is a fabulous resource and a great way to connect people and ensure that resources aren't going to go to waste (hee hee hee).

Maybe it might work for you in your area.


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Worm farm maintenance

As the warmer weather is upon us, my worm farm seems to need some tender loving care. I currently have two "stacked" active worm digesting layers, with the worm juice collecting tray below these.

The "first" worm containing layer (the bottom of the two) has mostly worm castings, but I still seem to have quite a few worms wiggling about and I am hesitant to start harvesting the castings for fear of losing some of my precious worm population into the garden, where they currently won't be much use to me. And I am certainly not desperate for this enriched soil in my garden at present (despite my previous post about poor soils).

The "second" worm containing layer is still to build up in significant worm numbers, but nonetheless is churning along. However, it appears I have an extra (unwelcome) visitor in this layer, which appears to me to look something like maggots. After some research, it turns out that these white pupae looking things are in fact entrachyadids. They aren't harmful to my worms or my worm farming, but they do indicate that my worm farm's conditions may be a little acidic at present.

Another thing I have noticed recently is a trail of small brown ants entering over the lip of the "first" worm containing layer. I figure these little creatures certainly have the potential to prey on my worms and so they have to go.

So, what am I planning in the way of maintenance. Firstly, I am going to add a handful of lime to my worm farm once a week in order to neutralise the acidic conditions. Secondly, I am going to add some small "trays" (bought some small terracotta pot trays) under the legs of my worm farm and place a small amount of water in them to discourage the ants. Thirdly, I will move the worm farm a little to try and trick the ants (whoops I lost a worm farm). And lastly, I have read that placing a piece of wet white bread in the middle of the layer will act as an attractant to the entrachyadids, which then allows you to easily remove them. So this will be done in due course.

Will keep you posted to see whether any of my tricks work.

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