Africanaussie

  Here in tropical North Queensland I am so happy with my raised beds to grow my vegetables this year.  I grow from seed so didnt want to miss the beginning of the growing season.  Of course we never really know when the wet season is going to end, but most people rely on April or May being the time when one can plant out seedlings.   I started early, but wanted to stagger my plantings, so started off a few each weekend The greenhouse where I start the seeds is semi shaded, and I am made sure to water every day.  The greenhouse was a great buy, and I have had the first one for about three years.  I recently purchased a new one and then took the plastic off this one and added shadecloth so that is a place teenage seedlings go, where they have a little more freedom and exposure the wind and the rain, but not the hot sun. I mostly order all my seeds from https://www.theseedcollection.com.au/ - below is the list of seeds I recently received. They ha...

Once again it is time to catch up with other gardeners in our  Garden share collective and the theme is SAVE. Link to the other gardeners here . I really dont make jams or preserves out of the garden - I prefer to just grow enough so that it is eaten right there and then while fresh.  I did plant extra ginger last year, and dug that out a month or so ago.  I like to keep a big bag in the freezer, so easy just to grab a chunk and grate it - I do that with turmeric as well.  My favourite after dinner drink at the moment is grated turmeric and ginger in hot coconut milk, with a little black pepper grated in.  A little golden cup of goodness. Oh another thing I have been doing is picking and drying our coffee beans, and the first batch was roasted last weekend.  I just pick them as they ripen, so it looks as though I will have one pot a week :). I do love to grow from seed - it seems proper somehow.  If someone else has started the seedlings it seem...

I do have a thing for seeds .... Lately I have been picking the rosella, and then drying them.  To dry, I just lay them out on the windshield screen in the back of the car - as I travel around the sun shines in and dries them, it take three to four days. I will be removing these bushes this weekend to make way for more seeds to be planted there, specifically snow pleas.   I told my grandson that the tea I was drinking came from the rosella seeds he saved last year. (I thought he would have been more impressed! - I was!) This makes awesome tea. I have made seed tape before, Here is the tutorial. and wondered if that would be a good option with something like silverbeet and beetroot seeds which do better if soaked overnight in a mild seaweed solution.  I have never had much success with either of those seeds, so thought I would give it a try.  I laid out two strips of toilet paper and then evenly spaced the seeds, and folded the paper over. ...

I just discovered this wonderful online film about how gardening the way the Garden of Eden was made. Sometimes I think we do fuss too much!  Gardening was never meant to be hard! http://backtoedenfilm.com/index.html#movie It is fairly long but oh so true, and just makes me want to get going on planting my vegetables right now... You might remember that just before I went away I dumped a whole lot of the wood chip mulch on my veggie patch. Not normally what one would do, according to all the gardening gurus I see on the TV shows and gardening books.  They all use sugar cane mulch which is nice and fine and breaks down very quickly, and they always tuck it around the new seedlings like a soft downy blanket.  I purchased a bale of sugar cane mulch over the weekend, along with a big bag of chook poo.   Now, when I was sprinkling the chook poo around I was thinking that I should dig it in.  Why I had t...