Africanaussie

 I am harvesting a few cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and lots of greens from the garden, which is good.  we have rain just about every day so I dont have to remember to water! I made up a few flower posies and bags of greens to share with friends, I so love to share what I have in the garden. Most of my gardening endeavors start with amending the soil. Even though I have a small garden I compost as much as possible, in as many ways as possible. My tumbling compost bin is my favourite, since everything is contained and vermin cannot get in, and also tumbling keeps everything nicely mixed. Recently I heard about aerated compost tea. http://www.carryoncomposting.com/441149730 I filled a sand bag with compost and tied the top closed, then placed it into a plastic storage bin. This was the biggest container that I had handy, and it made a fair amount of liquid. I topped the plastic container with water that had been standing for a couple of hours to make sure any chlorine eva...

Well, as you know I have been trying to fit my new compost tumbler into my composting schedule.  You are supposed to stop topping it up at some stage and then let it finish off before transferring to the stand alone compost bin.   The thing is that I am not sure what to do with the kitchen waste that accumulates while the tumbler batch is processing (about 4- 6 weeks.)   I have lots of leaves, and they seem to take forever to break down too!  The kitchen scraps compost down quickly but the leaves take ages....So I keep adding to the tumbler, and it is in fact now getting rather full and a bit heavy, so something had to be done. This is what it looks like.  and inside: A worm farm, everyone suggested....    I have only ever heard of one person with a worm farm in this climate.  Recently though, I saw an honesty stall with bottles of worm wee.  Hubby looked the other way when I went to put my coins in the jar and pick up a bottle....

Compost is something I do for my garden that I feel really really good about.  In the back of my mind I knew that somehow compost sequestered carbon, but the facts here on  Jerry Colby Williams blog  make me want to go out straight away and build another compost bin. My first compost bin was just that - a plastic bin, and it is still going strong - it is about 8 years old now.   and I worked the compost in that continuously, turning over the compost two or three times a week.  I dont have the room for hot composting, but my gosh I got my mixture humming along pretty nicely.  Some of my bins favourite food is Browns: mulched dried leaves from our lychee tree shredded cardboard and newspaper Greens: cut lemongrass leaves seaweed picked up from the beach beer waste from the bottom of the beer brewing barrel  Then I was gifted some gardening money and off I went to pick up a compost tumbler.....  I find this one actually takes a bit...

I am back again after an unexpected trip to South Africa. I went camping with my brother and his wife, and my daughter.  It was good to catch up with family, and enjoy some South African sunsets - it must be the red earth that puts so much colour in the sky.  My non gardening hubby held down the fort at home although he did nothing about the encroaching jungle.  He doesnt mind jungle - I like the garden a  little more trimmed and contained. So the weekend was spent jungle busting - I suppose I should have take a before photo.  The vegetable garden seemed to fare the worst - so many weeds.  I pulled lots of weeds, and I think the next plan will be to lay down newspaper on all the bare patches, and then cover with mulch - seaweed possibly. I need to do that before the weeds start growing again.  That will also help to prepare the soil for spring planting. Hot wet weather here means the tropical plans are thriving.  This buttery yellow orchid f...

Way back in May it was international compost week and it got me thinking about compost. Of course by now the week is long over, but I still thought a post about composting seemed in order right now.  Here is my compost bin.  I have often posted about my compost bin, and have met others who say that a compost bin does not work for them.  These are a couple of my observations: 1.  Forget the hot compost/cold compost debate, as there is not enough surface area to hot compost.  A bin works best by being as full as possible.  As everything composts it reduces vastly in volume, so you need to be continually aerating the mix, but if you have two bins you can leave one to mature while adding to the other. 2.  Air is so important!  I mix up my compost with a garden fork a couple of times a week.  I have seen spiral shaped tools for this purpose that look to be quite effective.  My five year old bin is breaking ...

Over the weekend on the way to the beach with the grand kids, we detoured off the road to find a garage sale, and just as we were leaving I saw these wooden trellises propped up against a dresser.  At one dollar each I thought I could definitely use a few.  I picked up five - maybe I should have got more as now I can imagine all sorts of projects.....  We did our bit to clean up the beach and brought back some yummy seaweed for the compost.... along with some ash from a  fire.  That always gets the compost chugging along nicely.  My bin is starting to split - It is three years old, but I tend to push against that side when stirring it up.  At the end of the wet season I will empty it out and turn it around.  That should give me a few more years. The pumpkin vine was not offering up any more pumpkins so out it went - also into the compost!  On went a layer of mulch - this ...

I prepared the new bed that I will be planting tomatoes in next April after the wet season ends. I had this extra "wheelie bin" and half filled it with some leftover mulch, then kept topping it up with garden clippings, seaweed etc.  I did not mix it like I do the other compost.  It just showed the difference that mixing makes as the top part had not composted much at all.  Also this bin is not open at the bottom. The uncomposted bits went deep into this pit, covered by the richer black gold that I found on the bottom of the bin.  I have a sheet of plywood submersed so that I  have an access path in front of the tomato bed.  I found this worked really well to tip the bin over onto its side and use the lid to support a bucket that I kept filling up and transporting to different parts of the garden.  The other bin next to it has leaf mould, which is busy maturing.  I also used some of the rich black compost to build up around ...