Plastic Free July

Post by Plastic Free July.

Two posts From One.

I was doodling around the blogersphere last night when I came across a blog called Canaan Farm.

Nothing unusual about that except for me, being a big Facebook-er, I was instantly taken by 'the look' of their blog. Upon further reading I discovered that they Post onto their facebook page and somehow it magically appears on their blogin tact as a facebook post. Wow, I thought, I want that too.

So now I'm totally intrigued and need to know how this magic happens. I got in touch through their Canaan Farm facebook page, where all their post now originate from and received the magic instructions as follows, 'I open both fb and blogger at the same time...after I have made a post on fb I click the picture and down the bottom I click options then embed post ..then I copy and paste the code into the blogger post and publish..its really quick and easy.' And it was, easy that is, what you see below is my first attempt using a post from the My Veggie Garden facebook page a few days ago.

While your here why not slip across to the Canaan Farm facebook page and give them a like.

 

Post by My Veggie Garden.

Cheers




Stewart

Grevilla Cuttings.

Taking Cuttings

 

While I was walking to the shops the other day I noticed a particularly pretty Grevillea shrub and thought I'd like one in my garden.
I like to support my local nursery, Sungrown seedings Nursery, but I also like the challange of getting cuttings to strike roots and growing my own plants.

Here's how I went about it.




I took these cuttings on the 17th of June and its now turned frosty cold here so I'm going to make a little hothouse for them using a broccoli box and a pane of glass to help them along.

Cheers and thanks for watching

Stewart

Putting My Asparagus to Bed.

Short video on preparing my Asparagus for Winter and making sure they are ready and raring to go come Spring time.





Thanks for watching

Cheers

Stewart

Cheers

Doesn't get any fresher than picking a lettuce you've grown in your backyard.

My Veggie Garden Iceberg lettuce

 Cheers and have a veggie good weekend

Stewart.

Free Business Cards.

A few weeks ago I was working on one of my you-tube videos and this ad for free business cards kept popping up and so curiosity got the better of me and I clicked the ad to see what the catch was. And I like business cards. Maybe they knew that, are they that good? I don't think I've ever mentioned that to anyone.

Anyhow there wasn't catch that I could find and I designed my card with their easy to use online template and this is what arrived today.

I'd like to say that is the end of the story but as they were throwing super special offers at me I began to feel a little bad at getting a whole bunch of cards for free and so when a coffee cup came up on special I bought one of them.

I thought the free design was cute enough for the side of a mug and having it here in the flesh I admire it even more.

What do you think? Cute or not?

Though the cards were free postage was not but I expected that and the mug was close to seven dollars.

I suppose I should mention who the ad was for after all this. You've probably seen them before,they're all over the web and Facebook.

So for now it's not too good to be true,

Cheers

Stewart.

Planting my Lisbon Lemon

 The planets aligned and I finally got the chance to plant my Lisbon Lemon tree.

I'm also going to get a Eureka Lemon tree which produces fruit mainly during Summer, about the only time the Lisbon doesn't produce fruit. Between the two of them I should have year round lemons. That's the plan I'll have to wait and see if it works well or not.

So now that it's planted all I have do do is care for it and pick the fruit.






Cheers

Stewart

It's Freezing

 It's Freezing

 It's around one degree here at the moment and very frosty which has me thinking this might be the end of my 'growing tomatoes in winter,' experiment and after reading a facebook post by Jerry Coleby-Williams saying "Tomatoes stop growing when the ambient temperature drops to 5C or below,"  I think the jig is up.

 Optimistism

Being the optimistic little bunny that I can be from time to time I'll persevere and see what happens.

Cheers 

Stewart

When I'm Feeling Blue

I'm feeling a little blue today. After weeks of fabulous late Autumn weather things have turned cold for us here.
And after a miserable overcast day yesterday that only managed to deliver us a grand total of four mils of rain I've decided to cheer myself up with a heap of photos that I took of the garden last Tuesday.
These were taken at around 11:00 am and the weak, late Autumn sunlight, was simply marvelous for taking photos.

 Spinach is just getting going. Made a nice spinach spaghetti with them the other day.

Two tubs of lettuce is keeping me going.

A Lisbon Lemon tree I planted on Tuesday. I've got a video to edit on planting it and then you'll be hearing a lot more about this

Might be my last strawberry now until the weather warms up again. They are still flowering but I suspect the cold will take care or that for a while. 

Same for my chilli

And tomatoes. This is a late planting of tomatoes in the warmest part of my garden in an effort to see if I can get tomatoes to fruit here during winter in Toowoomba.

More lettuce. Never too much lettuce. What I don't eat the chooks (chickens) will take care of.

Silverbeet going gangbusters 

 as is the garlic.

Peas are powering and I've sown some old purple podded pea seed I found while tidying up and they are sprouting up out of the ground too.

I came out of hospital in early July last year and was greeted with mandies from my tree so I'm looking forward to a big mandy feast very soon.

Broad beans are growing strongly.

 Biggest and best parsley I've ever grown.

This might finally be the end of my Basil too.

Rhubarb's getting ready for winter.

And sage.

I feel better now or at least not so blue.

Cheers

Stewart.

More on coffee grounds

More on coffee grounds

 

Three links for you to look at with more info on Used Coffee Grounds (UCG). They're all the same web site but different articles.

First one is called ground to ground.

On their 'About Us' link they state, Welcome to the Ground to Ground website, delivering expert news, views, research, and general information on the reuse of coffee grounds for compost and gardening. This site is the most comprehensive, authoritative place to find information about used coffee grounds, and will also be keeping track of the progress of the Ground to Ground initiative.
Of the tonnes of used coffee grounds that are discarded each day, only a small amount is collected for reuse – an opportunity lost, considering the benefits of this natural resource.
Recycling coffee grounds would have to be one of the easiest ways to make a difference, and for anyone interested in gardening, composting, vermiculture, or just environmental awareness, this site can show you how to get involved for all our benefit.

pH of Soil from Coffee Grounds

 I'd read about how acidic UCG were but it appears the neutralise fairly quickly click link here

Coffee Grounds are Worm Crack!

And finally a post on how much worms like UCG. click link here

As for me I'm still collecting, spreading and adding. So far so good.

Cheers

Stewart

Rangeview Seeds

Rangeview Seeds

They arrived all safely and soundly and on time.

Nicely packaged, the seed packets came wrapped in the larger red envelope. Felt a little like Christmas.

FWIW I also liked the yellow packets the seeds came in. The seeds themselves were in those resealable plastic bags. Good information on the packet including planting instructions.

Plastic bag with tomato seeds.





Cheers, can't wait for Spring now.

Stewart

My Veggie Garden's 'Witch's Brew.'

 

My Veggie Garden's 'Witch's Brew.'

A combination of five main ingredients that I blend together to make what I call my witch's brew. I use this everywhere in the garden. Including one part home made compost, one part aged horse manure, one part composted cow and one part chicken manure that I purchase from 'Masters' and one part coffee grounds.
For side dressing and for working into the soil to improve it's condition and basic fertility.

Application Rate

I used five, ten liter ice cream containers in the video, making fifty liters of witch's brew.
So if I'm side dressing plants I'd use two or three handfuls per plant. For soil preparation fifty liters would cover five to six square meters and I'd dig it in well.

Home made chicken (chook) feeder.

What can I say. I'm trying to enter the land of making videos.

It feels strange talking to a camera is the first thing I noticed. It's only one rung above talking to yourself but with practice I'm sure I'll get better at it.
 I can also see I'm going to need some kind of a script to follow as well. I tend to forget half of the things I want to say when I'm, 'winging' it.
A better background  wouldn't go a stray either, though in my defense I only had an hour to put this together and that wasn't enough time to tidy up as well.

As for the chook feeder it's working a treat.




If anyone has any tips or suggestions on how I can improve the professionalism of my videos then I love to hear from you.

Cheers

Stewart.

Quote for today

Quote for today

Reading the current 'Earth Garden' magazine this morning and this stood out to me.

"The exercise, fresh air, sun and soil makes me happier," she says. "Apparently certain soil bacteria release serotonin in our brains, so gardening really is the ultimate in stress relief!" Kay Lavers, Earth Garden, #168

What do you think? Is she onto something?

Cheers

Stewart

The Checkout.

ORGANIC We pay a hefty premium for “organic” foods – Kirsten Drysdale asks if extra costs are justified.

Did anyone watch The Checkout Ep 11 on the ABC last night? Here is a direct link.

There was a seven and a half minute segment arguing the pros and cons of growing and eating Organic Food. I'm curious what your thought are? Leave me a line in the comments.

I found it interesting but I won't be giving up my Veggie Garden anytime in the near future because of it.



Cheers

Stewart.

TOMATO-BUSH-AUSTRALIAN RED

Gees, It's only the first week of winter and I'm already thinking Spring/Summer.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes are all bush varieties and hopefully have good disease resistance. I want the bush varieties this time around so I can just bang a tomato in the garden here and there and not have to go to all the trouble of staking. That's the theory, I'll see how it goes over the summer.

And the disease resistance varieties because the varieties I planted were just ravaged this Summer gone.

Rangeview Seeds

I'm trying a new seed company this time. Rangeview Seeds, not for any particular reason. I saw an ad in a magazine and saw a few varieties I'd like to try.

AUSTRALIAN RED

 Spring/Summer order

Order Number: JYUHHQWRJ
Order Date: 2014-06-04
Payment Method: PayPal $28.74
Product / Reference Unit Price (Tax Excl.)
Discount Qty Total (Tax Excl.)
CAMOMILE - GERMAN - BODEGOLD - ORGANIC $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
MELON-WATERMELON-GOLDEN MIDGET $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
TOMATO-BUSH-AUSTRALIAN RED $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
TOMATO-BUSH-JAUNE NEGIB $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
COSMOS-BRIGHT LIGHTS $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
BORAGE - ORGANIC $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
TOMATO-BUSH-KEEPSAKE $3.50 -- 1 $3.50
Product Total (Tax Excl.) $24.50
Product Total (Tax Incl.) $24.50
Shipping Cost $3.85
Total Tax $0.39
Total $28.70

Used Coffee Grounds (UCGs)

 Used Coffee Grounds

My daughter works at The Coffee Club here at the new Northpoint Shopping Center they built just for us and, being just around the corner, I asked her what they did with their Used Coffee Grounds (UCGs) and she said they just threw them away. Naturally the next question was, may I have them? And the answer was, yes.

Now I'm getting about five to six, 10 litre buckets of used grounds a week. All good.

But at first I wasn't sure if this was a good idea or not so I jumped on to Google (UCGs in the garden) and was quickly reassured that this was a good thing. A real good thing.

Coffee everywhere

There is several ways to use UCGs including adding it to your compost or once you have compost you can add UCGs at a ratio of one to three before applying to your garden beds. Snails and slugs aren't supposed to like it. I've added it directly to my plants with good results and used it as a week liquid fertiliser. So far so good. You can also scatter it over your lawn as a slow release fertiliser.

Experimenting

I'll keep experimenting with it and see what results I get but in the meantime if anyone else has any experience with UCGs I love to hear from you.


Two weeks ago I added two to three hand fulls around each of my silverbeet and I'll swear theyhave  doubled in size.

The only part I'm unsure about is using UCGs on plants that like a non acid soil. Plants like beans, peas and cucurbits. From what I can tell UCGs are acidic and notagood idea to add diredctly to the soil around these plants.

In The Garden

In the flowering garden then acid loving plants like azaleas, camellias and hydrangeas would love some UCGs as well as plants like blueberries and strawberries would benefit as well.

It's stopped raining now, just a short shower really, so I'm heading back out to the veggie patch to spread more coffee.

Cheers

Stewart.

P.S. My Plants do look very alert and attentive, :)

:(

It's raining on my gardening day off from work. :(

Help Wanted

I like a few broad beans with my weeds.

Slow Day

 It was a very slow day in taxi-land today and gnawing away in the back of my mind was my patch of broad beans that were getting over grown with weeds. Chickweed mainly. I was thinking all this sitting around doing next to nothing and I could be home tidying up the broad beans.

Eventually I won the argument with myself, which I'm told is a good thing, packed up the cab and went home.

To cut or not to cut.

 Help Wanted

This is where you come in. While I was weeding the first row it became obvious that the main stem has grown very long and lanky and at the same time two new shoots have grown from near the base.
What I'd like to know is, would you cut the main  stem back to these new shoots, as I did on the first row and leaving the rest, or leave them as is?

 Before

 After

 

 

 

 

 

Weeds be gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Half weeded

And done.

I'm so glad I finished work early now. I feel like I have achieved something for the day.









Cheers for now.

Stewart.