Tag Archives: compost

Smashing Making muck

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I recently finished an excellent book entitled, Resurrection in a Bucket: the Rich and Fertile Story of Compost, by Margaret Simons. It’s a light-hearted journey through the biological processes and social history of compost. I highly recommend it! Its arrival on my study desk was timely because I’ve been busy building large compost piles in preparation for reclaiming large areas of driveway for growing plants. By winter’s end I should have half a dozen large piles of compost ready for building up my existing soil. Continue reading →

Rosa ‘Jean Geldenhuys’ is a tough rose, with petals that do not fall, which means the blooms stay on the plants until the rich cream bleaches to white with pink tinges around the edges of the petals. The plant is disease-resistant and extremely vigorous There’s a garden in my backyard!

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It is not the first time I am telling the story of my garden to an audience – I did that for five years when I had the most wonderful audience of garden lovers across sunny South Africa, all readers of the popular South African monthly magazine, SA Garden. Now – through GardenDrum – I hope to find a new audience of gardeners who would like to share my garden with me and share their gardens with me! For those of you who have not read any of my garden articles I published the past 10 years, let me introduce myself: I have gardening in my blood. Continue reading →

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Top 10 vegetables to grow in pots

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If you want to grow some of your own veg, and you’re short on space, then growing them in containers is a great option. But it’s not the only reason. If your soil is rubbish, and you hate digging, then it’s easy to create beautiful soil for growing in pots… and I’ll be sharing my recipe for a super soil mix a little later on. If you’ve never grown anything before, then grabbing a few pots, filling them with mix and planting out some established seedlings is the quickest and easiest way to get a start. Continue reading →

Cooling a worm farm in summer Keep your worm farm cool on hot days

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Make your worm farm the coolest one in the neighbourhood! After twenty years of running a worm farm at home I can honestly say it is one of the easiest ways to compost your kitchen scraps. The worms are very good at looking after themselves, even if left to their own devices for several weeks at a time they will happily survive and then thrive once you are back to feed them again. However, I did have one incident early in my vermiculture career many years ago where I lost all my worms in a single day when the mercury tipped over the 40 degrees C (104 F) mark on a blistering summer’s afternoon. Continue reading →

My completed worm tower How to make a worm tower

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I love worms and all that they do… and I’m sure you do too. Earth worms are super, but I especially love composting worms… I mean, what is there not to love about these quiet achievers… every day, going about their business of converting all sorts of organic waste into the most beautifully rich soil conditioner. They don’t ask for much… just a little moistened cardboard or a fresh banana skin from time to time. Continue reading →

browniepoints Recycling

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I am a bit hot under the collar about recycling today. It was the day to put out the recycling bins but the truck was a bit late this morning to empty them. So, as I did my early morning walk, I had plenty of opportunity to notice that many of the bins that lined the neighbourhood streets were stacked to gunwales. And much of it wasn’t recycling. Continue reading →

Chooks Soil nutrient balance & poultry waste

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As growers up and down the land strive for the soil nutrient balance, be it on a small or large scale, it seems a new product that has all the answers arrives every week. As the world seeks food production equality on a planet of shrinking space and greater demand, along with the public mindset to conserve what it is chewing up, the words sustainability and organic are rarely far from our thoughts. With many simply feeling we will continue to pay a huge price in using synthetic fertilisers, the drive for the ultimate organic fertiliser continues. Continue reading →