Old toilet roll spools. Save them up, cut them in half, pack in a kitty litter tray and fill with seed raising mix. Add your parsnip seeds, one to each roll. When they sprout you can plant out by lifting the toilet roll and transferring to garden bed. Roll breaks down in soil.
Often our favourite chives die down in the winter and we miss that yummy flavour in our meals. So why not use onion weed instead? It’s a similar but different flavour, yummy yet mild – and prolific in winter. Most people have it in the back yard and treat it as a nuisance weed. Enjoy […]
I order a truck load of manure at once. At $60 a truck load it’s really economical, as opposed to $12 a bag.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, “the heaviest pumpkin weighs 1,054 kg (2,323 lb), was grown by Beni Meier (Switzerland) and authenticated by the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) in Ludwigsburg, Germany, on 12 October 2014.” The New Zealand record (at the time of writing) is a 754.5kg whopper. We have no doubt it won’t […]
When my grandchild was a preschooler and I looked after her during the day, we spent many long hours in the organic veggie garden One thing Emma wanted to do was to grow something herself, by her self We chose the silver beet that we purchased, then Emma planted, them watered them & cared for […]
Kids garden. The good thing about a kids garden is that it does not need to be big… something about a metre square should be enough. We recommend a raised garden, using a timber frame with a minimum height of 150mm (and if they get tired of gardening it can always be turned into a […]
Tomatoes require plenty of water when fruiting. The hose is useless on a hot summer’s day. Take a two litre plastic bottle, drink the contents, put a pin hole in the side down at the bottom of the bottle, then fill with water and place it in the garden by the tomato plant. Remove the […]
Use a small squirt of shampoo to a cup or two of water to clean house plant leaves. It doesn’t need to froth. Wipe mixture on leaves. No need to rinse. Result is nice glossy leaves without using a leaf shine.
Broken ceramic and earthenware pots? Knock them into small pieces and use as drainage material at the bottom of tubs or in soil. Larger shards of colourful glazed pots can look very effective when used to accentuate borders in flower and vegetable plots.
A use for old guttering: board up the ends and fill half with spagnum moss and then soil on top. Plant out with parsley which will grow nicely even over winter. Probably can do little lettuces too.