In case you missed it, late last year I released an introductory video about the Prong garden tool on my YouTube Channel and this blog post is a follow-up of that… What wasn’t mentioned in the video was the fact that the inventor of this simple yet clever and tough tool design is a man
Here’s a quick bit of personal trivia – when I was a boy I lived across the road from the “Collard’s” they were a lovely family and my mother still sees them from time to time even though they now have both moved. My mother only recently sold her home about 6 months ago (as
About 8 years ago, when I first started creating regular content on backyard vegetable growing in raised beds (particularly the high sided ones) there wasn't much interest. However, these days there are plenty more people who have joined the raised bed "revolution" and realise this method of food gardening is the best. Initially, I found (to
Most of us can benefit from a little more vegetables in our lives, and growing them at home is the best way to ensure those dinner plates are stacked with a heap of greens every time. But what if you don't have much space outside to grow your favourite vegetables or you live in a
Last October (2018) we were lucky enough to take a short family holiday to the USA and it was a pickled cucumber experience I had whilst in America that inspired me to write this post. Now, this article isn't going to be a history lesson on pickled cucumbers in America nor is it a "how-to"
It’s time to peel back the layers to expose my secret to growing onions. But just a quick safety warning before we get started remember when eating onions on a roll or a folded bread ALWAYS place the onions under the sausage… The reason I say this (tongue in cheek) is due to a recent
Container gardening is not rocket science! All that you need are four simple things: containers, soil/growing medium, plants, and water (ok and maybe some plant food occasionally) so let's make it "five". That’s it! Basically, it is not too different from typical gardening, which you can do in a normal garden bed. Most veggies that
The following article is a modified transcript from a video I created on how to grow galangal so if you'd rather watch the video instead of reading scroll down to the bottom of the page. This is my five top tips on how to grow a ton of galangal for some reason I think of
There’s arguably nothing better for your backyard garden than your own homemade rich compost made from kitchen scraps, grass clippings, and other organic garden waste. Compost adds nutrients to the soil creating food for plants, worms, fungi, and microbes it also helps give the soil structure and water holding qualities reducing the need to water
Make a winner out of your kitchen dinner by adding some easy to grow Asian herbs and spices and turn bland into YUM. In this article, I'm going to give you seven of my favourite easy to grow herbs and spices we grow at home and you can as well to use in your own
Lead, fluoride, disinfecting byproducts, arsenic, prescriptive drugs. The list of contaminants that are lurking in our drinking water is long. In this article, I want to focus on contaminants that originate from agriculture. I'm going to explain how they enter public water systems and a range of natural freshwater sources used for bottled water, and
As the winter season makes way for spring, your lawn will probably have brown patches of grass. This is a common occurrence, but there is a variety of solutions since the causes are just as numerous. Even if you cannot pinpoint the primary cause of the grass discolouration, the following steps should ease the problem.
The following article is a guest post by Ann Sanders founder of the Blog/Website A Green Hand based in the USA (more details/link to her Site at the end). With the arrival of the spring season, many homeowners aspire to grow their own vegetables. However, it’s not as simple as sowing seeds in the soil
I often get asked the question, is it safe to eat vegetables/fruit grown in garden beds made from treated wood/treated pine. Or, how do I know if my vegetable garden soil is contaminated or not and if so will my crops take-up these contaminants/chemicals thereby making them dangerous for my family and me to ingest.
Thinking about buying a lifestyle property to grow your own organic produce but aren't sure what to look for? Well, you're not the only one and I receive questions about lifestyle acreage living (similar to the one from Fred below) all the time asking for advice on where to start and what to buy and it's totally
This transcription of our popular How to Grow a Ton of Lemons video has been requested several times so here it is! The video is at the end… G'day! I'm Mark from Self Sufficient Me and in this video, I'm going to give you my 5 top tips on how to grow a ton
Lately, I have been sent several requests by viewers of my YouTube Channel to "transcribe" some of my more popular videos so they can be read (for various reasons, including those who have difficulty understanding spoken English). This article/transcription is on Five Tips on How to Grow a Ton of Limes – Organically and the
The other day, I received an email from Nytasha asking me if I could help her find out what was wrong with her lemon tree… Basically, Nytasha was puzzled by how bad the fruit (produced by her "seemingly healthy" lemon tree) tasted and if I had any experience or thoughts as to what was causing the
When I built our first raised vegetable garden beds 10 years ago there was no such thing as "kid friendly" or "vegetable friendly" treated pine wood, so I decided to line the inside of the sleepers with builders plastic just in case there was a risk of chemicals used in treating the sleepers (such as
Yesterday, I received an email asking what tool I recommend for high raised bed gardens and it just so happens there is a special tool I do use all the time for my raised beds gardens and it's called an entrenching tool (or ET). I tend to always misspeak and call it an ET tool,
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.
