Eight Acres

 While mindlessly scrolling Facebook I saw a post which was an article from 2017 that had been reshared. The title of the article was " No, poor New Zealand families can’t just ‘grow their own vegetables '". I read the article, and it got me thinking. I know that people grow vegetables for lots of reasons, saving money may be a minor reason for some people. Growing your own vegetables can give you a greater variety of vegetables that you can't get in the supermarket, you know they are chemical-free, they taste better, and you get the enjoyment of some physical activity outside in nature. But that doesn't mean that its not possible use your vegetable garden to reduce your food bill. I read through a few of the comments on the Facebook post and the majority agreed that starting a vegetable garden was too expensive and time-consuming for those already struggling with the high cost of living. However, a few comments gave me hope - suggesting that enough useful veget...

 We have been in our "new" house in Kumbia for nearly two years and thing I've missed the most is not having a proper garden ( read about our secondhand house here ).  The vege garden I had at Nanango (Eight Acres) had just hit a productive high point, with lots of perennial plants and herbs and veges that self-seeded each season.  I was watering it using greywater from our bath and washing machine, and there seemed to always be something to harvest, even it was just some herbs and leafy greens. It was sad to leave that productive garden behind, knowing that I would have to start again at our new house.  But it was also an opportunity try something different and put into practice some of the ideas I had read about and seen on other blogs.  I wrote in detail here about my inspiration .  Essentially I wanted combine raised beds, wicking beds and hugelkultur.  In the meantime, I've been growing what I can in several large pots and trays on my potting ta...

I'm still here!  I just got distracted by making a new soap website and I couldn't decide where to post this.  But I'm not ready to move just yet.  I wanted to show you my pot garden as I've been pleasantly surprised by what I can grow (in winter anyway).  We are going to build a proper garden and set up the aquaponics, but other things need to be done first and meanwhile my pot collection keeps growing every time I go to our monthly share meeting and come home with another herb! Celery, peas, winter savory and parsley I have my collection of pots stacked on my potting table, which is the size of a sheet of mesh - I think its 2m by 3m or so.  And I have more pots underneath.  The worm farms are up top as well.  It seems to be good for the shade-loving plants, like mints, yarrow and strawberries to be down below in the partial shade.  I really like the location, it is between the house and the shed, so every time we go to the shed or to the ...

Here's a post originally from 2012.  It is interesting to read this again now, as I've lately been finding that I can grow a productive and varied vege garden for most of the year, so a lot of the veges that I had preserved were not getting used up anyway.  I prefer to use things up while they are fresh, but there are advantages to fermenting food and few things that I do want to use year-round, such as herbs, chilli and garlic, are easily dried.   The first year in our new garden we had so many zucchinis and beans, we were giving them away to everyone.  But we hadn't got to know when we would have gluts and famines, so we didn't keep any for ourselves.  Of course through winter, we had to buy veges again as I hadn't kept any.  A few years on, now I'm starting to learn how to preserve some of our veges so that we will have a supply through winter.  I have been drying herbs and greens, freezing zucchinis and beans, fermenting pickling cucumbers and re...

One of the really fun things about our sub-tropical climate is the weird veges that we can grow.  I've written about a few them before ( rosella, warrigal greens and sweet potato ), and other posts about chokos and trombonchino .  Here's one more that I like to grow: the snake bean. Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis  also known as yardlong bean,long-podded cowpea, asparagus bean, pea bean, or Chinese long bean.  You might have guessed from that, it is a LONG bean, up to 30cm in my experience.  Apparently sequipedalis means "one and a half feet", so it must get even longer in some conditions. It is a different genus to the common bean and more closely related to cow peas and mung beans. Snake beans grow on vines and seem to prefer hot and wet weather, but will tolerate dry better than common beans, and will certainly produce better in the heat.  Like common beans, they do not survive frost and start to die back when overnight temperat...

Its taken me a little while to learn this, but I think I've now figured out which veges to sow directly in the soil as seeds and which to raise as seedlings and then plant in my garden, so I thought I'd share with you what has worked for me so far. radish seedlings peeping through the mulch At first I tried to plant everything as seeds directly in the garden, but I wasn’t happy with the results, too much work to thin the seedlings and some didn’t sprout at all.  So then I tried raising seedlings, it took me a while to realise that I needed to use a good seed-raising mix, and I prefer to use toilet rolls than the seedling trays that bought seedlings come in.  I wrote more about raising seedlings here . starting veges in pots and toilet rolls (photo from last spring) Then I decided that I wanted to grow root crops, and they don’t transplant well, so I had to think about how to do this.  I observed that tiny brassicas were popping up through the mulch, and...

A friend asked me what was the best way to attract pollinators to her garden.  She was thinking about getting a honey bee hive or maybe just attracting native bees. Firstly I have to say I was surprised how much difference it made to my garden after we moved a couple of beehives right next to it.  Suddenly I had capsicums and pumpkins growing where I never had success before.  Thinking back, I hardly ever saw honey bees in my garden, which means we don't have any wild hives or beekeepers close to us.  I did used to see all sorts of other pollinators, but they must not be as efficient or as suited to vegetable pollination.   These are your options for improving pollination in your garden: 1) find a beekeeper who needs somewhere to put hives, honestly you should not have to pay for this, someone will appreciate having somewhere to put them (we are always looking for good places to put our bees, particularly if you have lots of trees or other sourc...

I wrote this post when I had only been gardening for about 3 years, but these are still my favourite vegetables to grow.  They are easy to grow and produce a good crop.  This is a list of my top 5 favourites for beginners in a sub-tropical climate : 1. Silverbeet This is a surprising one, as I never ate it before I had a garden, but it was the thing I missed the most when we first moved house and I had no garden for a few months.  Once established, silverbeet keeps going for months (in this climate anyway).  We usually have about six mature plants in the garden at a time, which provides a couple of leaves for our dinner each night and extra as a treat for the chickens.  Even when veges in the supermarket are between seasons and expensive, we can always top up a meal with a few leaves of silverbeet. This cherry tomato is growing out of my compost bin 2. Cherry Tomatoes While the large tomatoes have proven to be delicate, disease-...

Northern Hemisphere gardeners are currently preparing for spring planting, so you'd think I'd be packing up the garden for winter, but in the sub-tropics there's plenty that we can grow, even with a few frosty days. This is my garden in autumn, it is a jungle and I can't even begin to explain what is going on here, it had a mind of its own! Summer here can be hit and miss, depending if we get rain.  Some years are too dry and hardly anything will grow, and some years are too wet, and the pests and diseases thrive as well as the plants.  This year we were lucky to have just enough rain and I had some good harvests of eggplant, button squash, tomatoes, capsicums, asian greens and beans.  In autumn, we see plenty of chokos and rosellas, the pumpkins are nearly ready, but as the nights cool and eventually frost, the warm-climate plants start to suffer. Each year we seem to do really well in one thing or another.  Some years it has been beans or tomatoes.  T...

I've had some questions about the weird vegetables in my sub-tropical food garden , so here are some details for you.  I tend to try to find vegetables that grow well in the sub-tropics.   Perennial plants are ideal , but there are also a few unusual annuals that I grow.  I have received most of these as cuttings or seeds from friends and neighbours.  I find the best way to find out what will grow here is to talk to the locals, particularly our permaculture group, and take all opportunities to try unusual varieties because you might find something useful. Rosella Rosella (Roselle ( Hibiscus sabdariffa )) Rosella (as it is known in Australia) is a hibiscus.  It grows as a bush, about 1-2 m tall and 1 m wide.  The flowers are very pretty, and when they are finished the calyx grows and can be harvested before it starts to dry out.  I peel the calyx and dry it to make  rosella tea , or rosella ale .  Some people make jam or jelly as well...

What do you think, does growing vegetables save you money? It can, but not necessarily. Of course its possible to overspend and try to grow inappropriate plants that fail. I read a very negative article a while ago (and lucky for you I can’t find it again, so you don’t have to suffer through it too), it was written by a person who had spent a ridiculous amount of money buying pots and potting mix and trying to grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony. They worked out how much it cost and how few tomatoes they harvested and concluded that there was no point growing anything. I found it very frustrating because they had really just set themselves up to fail and it wasn’t fair to conclude that gardening is not worthwhile. Start small and don’t spend a lot to get started If you are completely new to gardening, don’t jump in and buy six raised beds, soil, seedlings and an irrigation system. Just get a pot, possibly from your local dump shop, and some potting mix, and some her...

Heirloom vegetables are the old varieties that have been passed down through generations.  Some vegetables have a history spanning thousands of years.  Heirloom vegetables are open pollinated, which means we can continue to save seeds and develop new species adapted to our individual climate.  Unlike the modern hybrid vegetables, that have been bred to comply with the requirements of an industrial agriculture system, heirloom vegetables are bred to taste good!  And best of all, they are open-source, not owned by anyone and can't be patented, we need to keep them alive to ensure food freedom for all. Penguin sent me Simon Rickad's latest book Heirloom Vegetables: A guide to their history and varieties  to review ( see detail here ).  Simon write that the main purpose of the book is to tell the stories of heirloom vegetables family by family.  The book itself if a lovely hardcover, nearly 350 glossy pages, with plenty of photos.  I would never...

If you want to grow your own veges on the cheap, one of the easiest ways to save money is to save seeds.  I've written a few posts about seed saving and growing from seeds, see them here . my seed collection Seeds that I have to swap Dill Poor man's beans Green beans (climbing) - "Blue Lake" Yellow beans (bush) - "Cherokee Wax" Cabbage Spring Onions (see explanation here) Leek Bok Choi Green peas - "Lacey Lady" Parsley - flat leaf Spaghetti squash Calendula Marigold Winter Tarragon Chilli Arrowroot Mizuna Snake bean Red mustard Rosella Mini capsicum Tat soi Broccoli Lettuce (not sure what its called, like a cos type) Silver beet (chard) - "heritage" Coriander Kale Thai basil Mystery pumpkin Borage Nasturtium  pea seeds ready to harvest Seeds that I 'need' Rocket Carrots Turnips, swedes, radishes (advanced seed saving!) Any herbs Flowers Broad beans All other beans and peas ...