Eight Acres

Organic gardening is easy.  In fact, once you get your organic garden established, it should be easier and cheaper than "conventional" chemical gardening.  The most important thing is to forget everything the chemical companies have told you about gardening.  Forget NPK fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides.  You need to learn to work WITH nature and gradually nature will start doing most of the work for you.  Don't just replace chemicals with organic inputs either.  Here's three essential principles to get you thinking differently. 1. Forget fertiliser - feed the soil I wrote about soil a few weeks ago  and my main conclusion was that if you increase organic matter everything else starts to balance.  My favourite way to increase organic matter in the soil is compost.  And my favourite way to compost is using worms.  Worm compost is fool-proof!  You just need to set up a worm farm , add worms and kitchen scraps and harves...

Even if you are not confident with compost you will find worm farming to be amazingly easy. I was scared at first that I would kill my worms, as there seemed to be so many rules about how to look after them, but after two years I’ve realised that as long as you keep your worms in the shade and feed them occasionally, they will be just fine. They will continue to produce compost and worm wee for your garden (and worms for your chickens), even if you forget them for a few weeks. I started with a tiny handful of worms, and they have gradually multiplied to the point where I think I have enough to start another worm farm. All you need to start a worm farm is a container to keep them in (either a commercial worm farm or one of the many DYI options on the web), some worms and some scraps to get them started. If you buy a commercial worm farm it usually comes with some coconut coir that you soak in water, this is somewhere cool and moist for your worms to hide until they’ve buil...

As you know, through winter we heat our home and cook using a woodstove , so we produce lots of wood ash as a result.  Our current woodstove has a very clever design where the ash tray can be pulled out and emptied easily, this makes cleaning much more pleasant than when you have to scoop out all the ash.  We have to clean out the ash tray every couple of days if we have the woodstove burning every day.  A bucket of wood ash We don't see the ash as a waste product though.  Wood ash is all the mineral matter remaining from the wood that was burnt, so its great for adding minerals to garden soil.  It usually also contains some unburnt carbon (biochar).  I spread the ash through the garden and tip it into the compost as well.  Wood ash is good for chickens to dust bath with , so I put it in their nesting boxes with a layer of wood shavings. Spreading wood ash on the garden - I just hose it into the soil I thought it would be simple to find out ...

I have had the worm farm for over a year now , and I have to say it’s the easiest and most convenient way I have found to make compost and to dispose of vege scraps and other organic waste. I have not had much success with putting everything in a compost bin, I find that the food scraps go all sloppy and don’t really compost properly. I have found that my current system works much better, all food scraps go to the worms and the compost bin is for weeds and manure. The worms are able to eat all our food scraps and convert it to compost and worm tea, and there is still plenty for the compost bin, but now its not full of sloppy food scraps. People often ask if its necessary or possible to have both a worm farm and a compost bin, and I think it actually works better for us. The worm farm really requires very little maintenance.  All I have to do is tip in more food scraps every few days, drain the tea once a week or so, check that the top tray is damp (if not, tip in half a...

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... I've been "worm farming" since a friend gave me a small handful of worms from his farm and I set up a worm farm purchased from Aldi.  The worm farm has two trays and a vessel underneath with a tap to catch all the worm juice.  I started with the bottom tray empty and the worms were in the top tray with vege scraps, covered with their blanket and the lid.  At first I didn't need to feed them much, just the occasional lettuce leaf, but they multiplied very quickly, and were soon ready to eat all our vege scraps.  Finally I filled the top tray and swapped the trays, so I had the empty tray at the top again.  When the top tray was full again, I needed to empty the compost from the bottom tray.   worms! The compost was beautiful, but full of worms.  There are lot...

When we first talked about getting an aquaponics kit one of my main concerns was how we would feed the fish.  I didn't want to be constantly buying fish food.  One of the options is to feed worms to the fish, so I've been planning to get a worm farm established.  We had planned to make one from an old wheelie bin, but that project has ended up low on the list since we got the new property.  Recently a friend at work told me that worm farms were on sale at Aldi, only $50, and I thought that might be a good way to get started.  Farmer Pete's dad has 3 worm farms, so I'm sure you can never have too many!  We will make the wheelie bin worm farm later, for now we have a small one to get us started.   I only started with a handfull of worms Before we decided to try aquaponics, I thought I didn't need a worm farm because with the compost and the chickens I didn't think I'd have anything to feed them, but my compost is full, so there should be pl...

As I've mentioned previously , I used to think that making compost was impossible, but I tried again anyway, and so far I've had no trouble.  Recently I've been using lots of compost, so I want to encourage you to use your greenwaste productively too, and not just throw it away.  Here's a great overview  to get you started.  I want to tell you what I do, as I don't follow all the instructions exactly, I just make it up and it still works, so don't be daunted by all the complicated instructions, just have a go! my compost bin + tomato plant They recommend using a bin, which is what I use too, I haven't tried the open pile method, but I can imagine what the dogs would do (eat/roll in it) so I think the bin is a better option!  The chickens also take a great interest in the compost whenever I open the hatches at the bottom, so I think they would destroy a pile very quickly!  The video suggests to put the bin in contact with the soil, near to the hou...

In my short gardening experience I have discovered that organic matter is the most important aspect of soil for successful vege gardening.  Organic matter provides nutrients and improves soil structure.  In my garden, the main source of organic matter is the mulch (also used to retain moisture and keep the roots cool) and fresh manure for our steers (thanks boys!).  I also keep a compost bin for all vege and garden scraps. Our compost bin and weed/manure tea drum, the tomato is an added bonus! I have kept a compost bin in the past when living in the city, and it was never very successful, so I was little nervous about starting one for the garden, but it is working well so far.  I think the mistake I made in the past was not having the right ratio of wet/dry matter.  I just chucked in all scraps and grass clippings and the compost just went a bit slimy and didn’t ferment properly.  Now that I have access to some compost activators (micro-organisms ...