Those who have recently experienced the major flood event in southeast QLD and northern New South Wales will be reeling at best and completely devastated at worst. If you have lost it all, I offer my deepest sympathies. Our food garden is like a family member, and when something happens to it, we suffer grief
Frozen peas are good, but fresh peas are even better! The same goes for sugarsnaps. And they are so good for you too.It is one of our quickest-growing crops here in the Netherlands, and they are so yummy when eaten fresh. So when we can harvest, we do so immediately to make this pea and
Citrus are great host trees for all sort of critters- some of them beauties, some of them beasties. From the birds who swoop in on the fruit to microscopic leaf-munchers to the predators in between, citrus attracts them all. Winter tends to be something of a dormancy period for citrus. Growth slows down, water is
Farming worms at home for the benefit of the garden is so fun and easy you can even get the kids involved. Worm castings are used as a fertiliser & provide an enormous nutrition boost to soils. While there are plenty of worm farms available to buy, you can make your own on the cheap
This carrot cake with warming spices and dried apricots is so very more-ish! There’s no need to feel guilty either; it’s vegan, gluten free and contains no refined sugars. We eat this carrot cake for breakfast, lunch and dessert! If you can make this carrot cake last for longer than one day, you have amazing
Walk into any garden store or nursery, and you’ll find literally hundreds of products to spend money on. From fertilisers to weedkiller, pest deterrents to lawn stimulants, they’ve got it all. But did you know that you can make some of those products at home at a far lower cost? Not only that, but they’re
Welcome to winter in the humid subtropics- all three weeks of it. Okay that’s a local joke where I live (Brisbane, Australia), but it’s not far from the truth. The subtropics give us a specialised climate- one unlike any other. Most gardening information found online and in books is written for cool or temperate climates,
This splitpea soup is a typical Dutch dish, which we only make in winter. It is a hearty, thick and very filling soup, full of veggies. We love it! Whenever I think of splitpea soup, I think of the winters when I was a child. Back then winters were still cold and long, so much
I love to grow onions at home. Even though they’re cheap to buy, there is just something special about a freshly harvested, crisp onion. They are so versatile in the kitchen, being useful in everything from sauces, curries, soups to pickles and ferments. I grow them without any chemicals at all so they’re organic, which
There’s nothing better than biting into a fresh, home-grown organic carrot. They’re sweet, juicy, crunchy, and incredibly healthy! A basic vegetable the world over, carrots are versatile in the kitchen. They can be a base for soups, stews and juices, and make a tasty addition to salads and stir-fries. Despite being well-known and well-loved, carrots
This wonderfully purple recipe is a traditional Dutch dish. Red cabbage with apples is sweet and a little sour, easy to make & an extremely good way to get kids (and adult kids!) to eat red cabbages. Originally it is eaten with baked potatoes or potato croquettes and a beef stew that is literally translated
Growing a backyard full of food is exciting, satisfying, healthy, and environmentally friendly, but keeping pest damage to a minimum is sometimes a battle. Things can get away from us quickly, especially in the peak growing season: as fast as the crops grow, the damaging insects come in faster. Here are my 10 top organic
Summer in Australia is supposedly the prime growing season. Plants grow the quickest in summer. In theory, they produce better, are healthier, and are easier to look after. Watering is required less often because there is good rain. All we have to do is arrive in the garden with a harvest basket & cutting implement
This year I had the honor of getting the whopping amount of one pumpkin on my pumpkin plant! Luckily I had another plant, but same story, just the one pumpkin. I don’t know what happend, but apparently my pumpkins just didn’t want to produce more than one per plant. Nevertheless, I was glad to have
Pumpkins are great! I love pumpkins because they taste great and they are so versatile. You can use them for sweet and savoury dishes, roast, cook, bake and puree them. The choices are endless.This time I made a pumpkin semifreddo with it and it came out great (if I do say so myself). I had
Most people want a tidy lawn and garden, free of weeds. But when you pull weeds out, are you removing them successfully and permanently? Or do the same species pop up every season? We’re indoctrinated with the idea that certain weeds are locally endemic and nothing will prevent their regular reappearance. Yet it doesn’t need
Sweet potatoes are one of the easiest and most handy vegetables to have in your garden. They’re mostly grown for the delicious & nutritious tubers, but the leaves can be eaten too. Sweet potato leaves are high in fibre, rich in numerous vitamins, and are used as a spinach in many parts of the world.
Did you know that ashes from a fire can be spread around the garden to produce more, bigger, better and healthier fruit & vegetables? Well it’s true! Even better, it’s completely free, easy to make, and easy to use! In this article I’m going to explain how that works, how to do it, and why
There are so many interesting varieties of vegetables to tempt us- many more than we have garden space for. It can be really hard to narrow it down, especially when you’re a beginner gardener. This is my top ten list of vegetables you should always grow. I have chosen these 10 veggies based on a
Burying your vegetable scraps from the kitchen straight into the garden is one of the easiest ways to recycle organic waste. It’s an old method that is tried and true; many of us had grandparents who buried their vegetable scraps. Popular around 40 years ago, it is now coming back into fashion as we continue
Self Sufficient Me is a blog about self-sustainment by growing our own produce (plant/animal), and self-fulfilment by looking after our health (physical/mental) through exercise and slowing life down a little.
