Category: Edibles

Growing your own food is a really satisfying experience, whether it’s walking out into your own garden to pick ripe fruit, forage for some bush tucker, or harvest your own cut-and-come-again salad greens from a pot by the back door. Whether you’re in the heat of the tropics or a crisp, cool climate, here you’ll find stories about good varieties to choose; when to plant and how to harvest; and pests and diseases to watch out for and what to do about them. You’ll even find yummy garden-to-table recipes!

bio-compost What is ‘safe’ compost?

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A few weeks back I did a short presentation in Pine City, Minn., on how to build good, healthy soil, and a woman in the audience asked: “How do I know if the compost I’m using is safe?” I’ve been wondering that same thing, I told her, explaining that I’ve been researching the topic so I have some answers, but many more questions, too. This prompted more people to weigh in on the subject, asking: Was it important to use organic compost, especially when growing edibles? How do you know that even organic compost is safe? Continue reading →

Reed Pugh suburban garage with beautiful new vegetable roof garden Suburban vegetables reach new heights

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A friend recently introduced me to someone who has true passion for vegetable gardening in limited space. This new friend of mine has built a vegetable garden on the roof of her new garage! They recently rebuilt the garage with the intention of putting a deck on its roof to grow vegetables and keep bees. It is a tasteful and beautiful use of the space on display for the whole neighborhood. Continue reading →

You can buy pots of garlic Growing garlic

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Garlic – yum! Our household goes through a knob a week or more, triple that when I’m harvesting tomatoes and making passata to freeze! Although I grew garlic many years ago, plantings in the last decade have been less successful because nowhere has quite enough sun in the old garden… but once again, hooray! Plenty of sun in the new area! Garlic is easy to grow as long as you meet its straightforward requirements. Continue reading →

A section of honeycomb from a topbar hive Keeping bees

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Mike Crosby was busy planting his suburban Tauranga garden with as many fruit trees as he could fit in when he noticed something was missing – bees. A bit of internet research later and Mike had plans for a topbar hive, a DIY hive that lets bees build their comb beneath a wooden bar, thought to mimic nature more closely than a box-style hive. He now has two topbar hives and a three-box Langstroth hive – the latter contains 20,000 to 30,000 bees, while the topbar hives hold fewer. (More information about topbar hives available here) Continue reading →

flower salad Photo Yelkrokoyade Edible flowers

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Why are some of Australia’s top restaurants, demanding flowers of violas, fennel, coriander, peas, rocket and borage? Is there something that you eat that’s a tad boring that needs an extra bit of zing and colour? The history of edible flowers can be traced back thousands of years. Romans used edible flowers such as mallows, roses and violets in a lot of their dishes. Continue reading →

My own boots Thank you mum for my green fingers

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With mothers being celebrated this month, I wonder how many gardeners can credit their mothers for igniting that magnificent obsession called gardening. The answer, I would bet, is many. Mine gave me a small corner of the garden to tend as well as providing a rambling, endless (to my child’s eyes) farm garden in which to dream and scheme. Continue reading →

I grow all of my veggies and ornamentals without using peat moss. Peat-free potting soil options

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Most every commercial potting mix contains sphagnum peat moss because it’s a good, lightweight, organic amendment that improves drainage, as well as water retention and air circulation. The downside to peat moss is that it isn’t a sustainable resource. Peat moss is the decomposing remains of living sphagnum moss, and it is harvested at unsustainable rates from bogs in a manner than involves scraping off the top layer of the living moss to get to the saleable product below. Continue reading →

cups of tea Hello gardeners!

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Hello gardeners! My name is Georgia and I am here to learn a) how to grow green things and b) how not to kill them. Up until now, these seemingly simple goals have proved extremely difficult and my 25 year past is littered with dead herb gardens, murdered bonsais and most recently, massacred flower bulbs (apparently you can’t leave them in a laundry for three years and then try to plant them). Continue reading →