Seed Covering

6 years ago by Rod Bailey

Seed covering For years, when I was planting seeds into punnets or trays, I would press the seeds into the seedraising mix and cover them, or leave the seeds on the surface and sprinkle more seedraising mix over them to cover them. I used to get maybe 60-70% germination. Pretty ordinary. A few years ago I made one very simple change to this process, and my germination rate immediately went up to well over 90%. It cost me peanuts, takes less tim...

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Seed Raising Mix

6 years ago by Rod Bailey

Seedraising Mix Healthy and vibrant seedlings are a key ingredient to successful gardening. They can make all the difference to your experience. When we learned how to have success in growing seedlings, our garden took a huge step forward. The foundation of good seedlings is the seed raising mix - plant health depends on the quality of the planting mix. There are many recipes for this mix, ranging from just good quality soil, a mixture of compost and sand, through to commercially pro...

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Spring is Coming!

6 years ago by Rod Bailey

Spring is Coming! Have you noticed how the shops start filling with Christmas stuff in about October these days? Drives me mad. I guess "they" are just trying to maximise profits by taking advantage of people's eagerness to get into the new season to take their minds off their day to day struggles. I dunno... But when it comes to spring, it does pay to get in early. If we wait til things are nice and warm and springy, we have just about missed the spring boat. It's time ...

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We're Back!

6 years ago by Rod Bailey

We're Back! Boy 3 weeks has passed quickly! We had a wonderful time on our trip to QLD, NT and SA, saw many wonderful places. The best part is that we got to do it with all our six children and our niece Shaya (who took the picture above for us). We had many trip highlights including the Outer Barcoo, the dusty Diamantina, climing Uluru, the Garden of Eden in Kings Canyon, The Olga's, Ormiston Gorge, evenings by the campfire, long drives through the never-...

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What a Strange Season

7 years ago by Rod Bailey

What a strange season So much about farming is determined by the weather and other factors out of the farmer's control. I think that's a good thing, maybe not for one's bottom line, but at least for the growth of one's character! And often things seem to go against us for a while, like what our dairyfarming neighbour Andrew has been recently experiencing - his winter forage crops had germinated nicely, but very low soil moisture had stopped them growing. He needed rai...

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On the Subject of Carrots

7 years ago by Desley Bailey

For the past few weeks, it's been all about carrots, and today, it's about carrots again! Thanks to our inspiring carrot customers (Emma, Amanda and many others), I have learnt to use carrot tops. How great is that! No more throwing the tops to the chooks (sorry girls) - now we get all the vitamin C, vitamin K, magnesium, potassium, and chlorophyl in those tops instead of you! And, because many of you buy carrots from me, I want to share the Carrot Top Pesto...

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Sweeter Carrots

7 years ago by Rod Bailey

Some have asked why we didn't grow carrots over the summer. There are two main reasons. The first is that carrots don't do too well sharing their beds with weeds, and during summer we don't have the time to keepup with the laborious hand weeding that is required to keep carrot beds clean - remember, herbicides are not an option for us... But the main reason is that summer carrots don't tast too good - they have a strong flavour. and are not very sweet. But winte...

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Daucus carota ssp. sativus

7 years ago by Rod Bailey

Not sure about you, but I'm really glad carrots are back on the menu at our place! And I'm really looking forward to when Desley or one of the kids makes my favourite carrot dish - these fantastic carrot patties. Enjoy! Carrot Patties Ingredients: 2 cups cooked & mashed carrot (approx. 4-5 carrots) 2 medium tomatoes, chopped small 1 onion, chopped small 1 clove of garlic, crushed ½ cup peanut paste or tah...

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Growing Up

7 years ago by Rod Bailey

Jack has grown up a lot in the last little while. "I'm 12 now you know!" and starting to leave off some of those little boy habits. Like running around the house in his tradie undies, and wearing white cotton singlets that expose his "bulging biceps". But now he's asking us to admire his "eight pack" - always wanting to be one or two in front of his big brothers. School in the garden isn't his favourite thing, but he does pretty well for a y...

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Oops...

7 years ago by Rod Bailey

I'm not sure whether you've ever had an oops moment like Hannah's yesterday?  Driving into the early morning sun, and with a foggy windscreen, she ran the Tarago into a ditch on her way to make up the Thursday veggie orders... She was a bit sheepish (and a tad concerned about any damage) when she walked back up to the garden to ask my help, but as you can see above, she has a pretty healthy attitude towards mistakes. And I reackon that's a pretty important skill f...

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