garden

12 Herbs & Spices You Should Always Grow

No matter where you live, as a gardener you always have some sort of constraints. Whether it’s climate, space, time, energy or just plain personal preference, we can’t do everything. There are literally hundreds of different herbs you can try growing, but realistically we all have to make choices about what to grow and what

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How to Plant a Choko

Chokos (aka chayote) are amongst the most prolific, versatile and healthful vegetables you can grow. Rarely available commercially, chokos are a traditional staple in many warm temperate and subtropical home gardens. The fruits’ crisp texture and mild flavour lends itself to roasting whole or adding to soups and stews, where it will take on the

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How to Grow Finger Limes

Finger limes are an unusual citrus fruit which are native to subtropical Australia. They taste just like regular limes yet are unique in their texture and presentation; the insides look just like fruity caviar. Even in Australia, this is a gourmet fruit which can be hard to find & fetches high prices in retail markets.

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6 Top Crops to Grow in a HOT Summer

It’s no news to any of us that subtropical and tropical climates have extremely hot summers. Add to that some punishing humidity & daily downpours, and you’ve got the potential for some vegetable gardening disasters. Anyone who has tried to grow traditional European crops through a QLD summer has learnt the hard way that hot

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Why You Should Grow Perennial Basil

There’s nothing like growing your own basil. Inhaling the lush scent when you brush past it in the garden. Watching its flowers attract essential pollinators. Picking leaves for salads, pesto and pasta sauce. Using it as a companion plant that improves the flavour of tomatoes. Sadly these are usually only seasonal pleasures, because annual basil

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How to Grow a Ton of Passionfruit

Do you know how expensive passionfruit can be? It’s outrageous to pay for something that you can grow so easily at home! We love passionfruit, and it was the first major food crop we grew here at the Self Sufficient Me home garden. Using my top tips on how to grow a ton of passionfruit,

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How to Grow Water Celery

Water celery is a little-known perennial edible that grows in most climates & makes a fantastic addition to any food garden. All parts of this plant can be eaten, and the mild taste sits somewhere between parsley and celery. It’s easy to grow, and will survive both very hot summers and hard frosts. Despite this,

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What To Do with Too Much Beetroot?

Beets, beetroot, whatever you want to call them, when you have too many…. well, you have too many. Yet with the price of food these days, none of us wants to be wasting anything home-grown, especially a seasonal crop like beetroot. Our self-sufficiency journey isn’t just about growing the food; we need to know how

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Purslane – The Weed you Need

Purslane is one of those unusual little herbs that lots of us have yet don’t ever notice. Considered a weed in many western countries like Australia, but an edible in the Mediterranean and Middle East, you might say it walks the line between vegetable and weed. What Exactly is Purslane? Purslane is a succulent edible

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Should I Prune my Tomato Plants?

To prune, or not to prune….that is the question! I’m talking about tomato plants, of course, and in this article I’m going to explain why sometimes you should prune tomatoes, and sometimes you shouldn’t. Types of Tomato Plant There are several things I look for whenever I’m thinking of pruning tomato plants, and the first

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How to Fill a Garden Bed

Ok so you’re new to gardening. Or maybe new to raised beds. We all know that veggies need soil to grow in, but where do you get the soil from? Which soil do you use? How deep does the soil need to be? What else do they need? Do I need to add fertiliser? If

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SeQLD Summer Veggie Planting Guide 2022-23

The well-known catchphrase ‘beautiful one day, perfect the next’ was devised by advertisers to describe Queensland summer…but I don’t think they had gardening in mind when they coined it. Summer in subtropical south-east Queensland has 3 keywords: hot, humid, and rainy. This is a time where the gentle breezes and pleasant sunshine of spring have

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Nasturtium Flower Pesto

You might already know that nasturtiums are edible (and if not, welcome to the club!), but did you know they make an excellent pesto? It’s true! When it comes to edible flowers and plants, nasturtiums are a bit of a superstar. The entire plant can be eaten- flowers, leaves, stems and seed pods. All parts

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Why You Should Grow Elephant Garlic

Do you love eating garlic, but have trouble growing it in your warm climate? Then you might find elephant garlic (allium ampeloprasum) a fantastic substitute. This hardy allium does well in the tropics & subtropics where the winters are rarely cold enough to grow a good garlic crop. Elephant garlic has huge cloves with a

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Celtuce is the Next Vegetable you Need to Grow

Meet celtuce- one of the most versatile, tasty, useful, yet least-known vegetables. Celtuce (lactuca sativa var. asparagina) is a form of lettuce which is effectively dual-purpose; the leaves can be eaten as lettuce, and the thick stem as a type of celery. This unusual edible will grow in a variety of climates, suffers minimal pest

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6 Top Crops to Grow at Home to Save you from Starving

Are you worried about the rising cost of food? Or even worse, a food crisis? We’ve seen unprecedented pressure on our food supply these past couple of years- things like extreme weather events, a shortage of fertiliser, logistical delays, rising energy prices and even a lack of fruit & veggie pickers are affecting us like

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These 5 Common Plants are Actually Weeds

A surprising amount of common plants are in fact environmental weeds. Many of them are still sold as desirable plants at nurseries and hardware stores nationwide, so it’s no wonder that we don’t realise the damage they can do to our environment. Environmental weeds comes in all forms- they can be trees, shrubs, grasses, vines,

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Kratky Growing System: Simple Space-Saving Hydroponics

The Kratky growing system is essentially a small, portable hydroponic system for growing veggies that is quick & easy to set up at home. A type of passive or static deep water culture that works without pumps or any electricity, it was named after Bernard Kratky, a researcher from the University of Hawaii, who first

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Grow These 5 Perennial Greens to Beat $Price Rises

Grocery prices have risen sharply in 2022 due to inflation, and this upwards price trend doesn’t look to be stopping any time soon. Compounded by shortages due to the pandemic and localised extreme weather events, fresh produce prices in particular are higher than ever. We’ve all seen the $12 lettuces headline, but luckily as gardeners

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How to Grow a Ton of Asparagus

Asparagus is a tasty and versatile vegetable in the kitchen- you can eat it sauteed, fried, grilled, barbecued and of course fresh. There’s no wonder that asparagus is one of the worlds most famous veggies; it contains a wide range of vitamins, making it one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can possibly grow. Naturally

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