Fruit & Vegetables

5 Easy Steps to Onion Success

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

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How to Grow Perfect Carrots

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

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Red Cabbage with Apples

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

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10 Organic Ways to Control Pests in the Garden

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

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Growing Issues in the Subtropical Summer Garden

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

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Roasted Pumpkin and Beetroot

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

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Pumpkin Semifreddo

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

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5 Things You Need to Know About Weeds

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

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How to Grow a Ton of Sweet Potato

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.

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Why You Need to Use Ash in the Garden

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

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10 Vegetables You Should Always Grow

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

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Can You Bury Vegetable Scraps in the Garden?

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

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Composting Bin Test

There are a few rules, do’s and don’ts to making compost in this way, so I thought I would start with one bin (of the 2 I have) to test how it would go and if it would go well, I will start to use the other one too. I have been using it for

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Relax, It’s Just Compost! Hot Vs Cold (Passive) Composting

In the past few years, the Art of Gardening has gained tremendous popularity, to the point where it is now mainstream. Students, teachers, grandmums and neighbours are all doing it. It’s the “in thing”! Gardening is cool! Let’s keep it that way! With the rise of gardening, resources and articles are globally produced, providing us

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How to Start a Vegetable Garden

Vegetable gardening is so much fun and has such great rewards for the body and soul. There’s nothing better than connecting with nature, getting some exercise, then reaping the benefit of fresh organic veggies on your plate every day. We’re living in increasingly difficult times and uncertainty is all around. Thousands of us are spending

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8 Edible Flowers that are Easy to Grow

Flowers the world over have romanced us for centuries. Who can forget the scent of jasmine in summer, a bunch of fresh roses, or their mothers favourite perfume? It’s easy to think of flowers as purely decorative, but they’re so much more than a pretty face. Used in the vegetable garden to attract pollinators, the

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How to Grow Potatoes in the Subtropics

When it comes to gardening, subtropical zones have a very specific set of climatic conditions to work with. We have the luxury of growing right through a mild winter with minimal pest issues, yet winter is seldom cold enough for favourites like garlic and brassicas to crop well. The intense heat of the sun in

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Blueberry cupcakes with Courgette

These cupcakes are a big hit in my household, eventhough they have courgette in them. I promiss you don’t taste it! So it is a great way to sneak in some extra veggies (especially effective for non-vegetable-eating kids).I have fooled many people with these cupcakes. Never ever has anyone guessed they have courgette in them.

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