Acres of Abundance

I wondered if it was more a rural affair, but my town gardening friends tell me they are having problems with those pesky grasshoppers too. They are eating my seedlings and greens down to the ground and I’m not impressed! I thought my chooks would be doing a better job of keeping the population under control, to be honest, but they seem to be too busy scratching through the neighbours’ cow manure to deal with my grasshopper glut. Though they love them if they come across them, they haven’t reached the point of hunting through my paddocks for them. So I hit up my friend Google and found some information and advice. The information here in Australia is that the eggs will overwinter in the ground so you need to spray to kill the grasshoppers to break the cycle. I don’t like that idea, so I looked for a few others to reduce the population. Grasshopper traps on the internet ranged from fluffy blankets (their legs get stuck) to yellow things (which apparently attract them)

My last few posts have been about gardening, but I had a bit of a revelation the other day. I’m writing about gardening not because it is my main passion (though it is definitely high on the list!) but because it feels safer than the other things I would like to blog about. Gulp. God told me at the beginning of this year that one of my words for this year was COURAGE. My awesome husband asked me a challenging question from a blog post he read. “What would you do if you were ten times bolder?” The follow-on from that was If you could answer with anything, then you are letting fear restrict your life, your destiny. My instinctive response was that I would write a blog. I love writing but have felt that insidious whisper of fear “You think you have something to offer?” “You think there isn’t already someone out there who has said it better?” “You think you know more than the people who would read it??” Oh man. Fear sucks! Seriously, doesn’t it??

As I mentioned in my previous article, many people I talk to are intimidated by starting out in the garden. So here are my basics. Work with these and you'll be fine! Feed the soil. Too often people are so busy worrying about what an individual plant needs, what nutrients it needs, what water it needs, etc. But if you keep your soil well-fed and mulched, it will not get waterlogged or parched. It will not often suffer from mineral deficiencies. The best food for soil is a variety of green or dried organic waste; compost, non-invasive weeds, pond mud, silt, hay, straw, seaweed, twigs, wood chips, sawdust, and in small amounts, nitrogen-rich organic waste such as coffee grounds and animal manure.  Start small. Don’t go crazy when you’re just starting out, you will exhaust yourself and won’t be able to maintain it. You’ll then be less motivated to carry on. Visit often. Spend time in your garden on a daily or at LEAST weekly basis. Enjoy potteri

I think many people get the impression that gardening is harder than it really is. I agree it CAN be hard work, but it doesn’t have to be! I’m all for an easier way, this way happens to also be a cheaper way. Yay! Rather than buying one of those over-priced, raised garden frames or breaking your back digging up grass and weeds, then trying to keep them from growing back all through your vegies, let’s look at a no-dig bed. This method has also been referred to as lasagne gardening  or layer gardening . (As you can see, my University degree was NOT in art...) The basic idea is to lay out your materials in layers, each of which performs a certain function. Layer 1 - your lawn. Don’t bother digging up the grass. As it dies off, it will add to the organic matter in the soil for your plants. Layer 2 - Weeds and other green waste. Add whatever you have. Lawn clippings (though not too thick or they won’t rot down well,) non-invasive weeds, soft, green trimmings fro

One aspect I love in permaculture is the idea that in every problem there is a solution or a benefit. For example, grasshoppers or snails eating your vegetables can be free food for your chooks; chickens’ scratching habits, which are destructive when misplaced, can be used to clear a grass or weed patch for a vegie bed. These past few weeks, I have been puzzling over how much enrichment my vegetable beds need and wondering how I would get the soil fed without spending a lot of money or making endless trips to roadside stalls for horse manure (great option but on a large scale, can be expensive and time consuming!) I had also been shaking my head at the state of our pond and our dam. They are completely overgrown and clogged with water plants and the water is smelly and dirty. Then I had a lightbulb moment. My two problems are each others’ solutions! The pond and dam waters are dirty because the water is too rich, from duck manure, mud and silt accumulating and not enou

Natural air conditioning unit Not long after we moved into our new house, we noticed something which makes us unendingly grateful during summer- a natural air conditioning system. Never heard of one? Well, that’s why I’m writing.  This fabulous aspect of our new house is both simple and ingenious. It uses no power, there are no carbon emissions; in actual fact, it draws down carbon from the atmosphere, making it beneficial to the environment, not just neutral. The set-up is this; a close planting (the branches are inter-lapping but not cramped) of deciduous trees, on the North-Eastern side of the house, right beside a window. The breeze comes from that direction, flows through the evaporative channel of the trees’ leaves, thus cooling the air even more, before it enters the house. We have noticed that even on the hottest of days, even in the heat of the day, there is only around an hour a day when the air coming in that window is not cooler than the air inside our

Eating an elephant I believe we gardeners have lofty, imagined goals for ourselves, our lives, our gardens. It is an act of optimism to plant a garden! But they say you eat an elephant one bite at a time. I know for myself, sometimes my very goals, the hopefulness of my dreams, can be what cripple  me. I hold up my little patch of sandy soil with yet another failed crop, next to my visions of abundant, edible paradise and I feel thrown. I don’t know how I am ever going to get there. But lately I have been working at changing the way I think about these lacklustre results. I sowed a whole two square metres of mixed greens a month ago, purple dragon rocket, speckled trout lettuce, english spinach. I envisioned a thick carpet of lush green salad, ready for repeated picking, for us, for our friends, to sell! Plus it would shade the beautiful rich earth under it. What I actually got was about 40% coverage of tiny seedlings. “Ok, that I can cope with,” I thought. Then my chic