I just had to share this picture. A button squash is meant to be small right? Well not in Bellingen, NSW. Vegetables grow freakishly huge up there.

On a recent trip to a friend’s house in Thora – near Bellingen, we picked the hugest yellow button squash I have ever seen. It was bigger than my hand. In fact all the vegetables growing in my friend’s garden were freakishly huge. (more…)

This year I left my garlic a little late to pull up. By the time I got to it all the stems had died down and mostly disappeared. So when I started to dig up the heads, I couldn’t find them.

Well I did eventually but I had to dig around a lot and I accidentally broke up a few of the heads, which is not ideal. I also probably missed a few, so no doubt some are still underneath the soil somewhere. (more…)

I have to admit I have become a bit of a lazy gardener. It is not intentional - more of a mix of  having a really bad back and lack of time due to my job and two little kids.

Never-the-less I love getting out into my vege patch and still manage to keep it full and productive. Rather than work too hard though, I love to make things in my garden work for themselves. That is why I really love companion planting, minimal fuss fruit and vege plus wild and self seeding plants. Also every-now-and-then I stumble upon a plant or process in my garden that is pure accidental genius. One such example, which I have been using for a few seasons now, is my lemongrass plant. (more…)

A friend of mine has a fantastic worm farm that lives in the corner of his garden. When I say “in”, I mean literally in the vegetable patch.

The worm farm is basically a bottomless bucket that has been sunk into his vegetable patch. The top of the bucket is level with the top of the vegetable patch’s top soil. (more…)

For Earth Day (today) I’ve created a feral fruit tree map. Unfortunately, my area is a little light on feral fruit but I will add to it when I find more during my walks around the neighbourhood. So far I’ve spotted a mulberry tree, errant passionfruit vines, quite a lot of lilly pilly trees and some warrigal greens (native spinach) – although not a fruit, these greens are very edible.

In case you’re not sure, feral fruit is basically any fruit you can glean from a public space like a park, by the road side or overhanging a fence. It’s not only free, but grown locally and chances are its organic. (more…)

I’m always on the lookout for edible plants when walking around my neighbourhood. Today the streets were blooming with lilly pillies.

Lilly pillies are originally rainforest plants and native to Australia and south-east Asia.

People love using them as hedges. The ones near my house spend most of the year as leafy, green, glossy bushes. Occasionally, they break out in fluffy white blossoms and then today I noticed little dark pink cherry-like, apple shaped berries. A quick Google back home and a lilly pilly confirmation.

Since my travels into the world of native spinach, I’ve been looking into what other native edibles grow in my neighbourhood. I now know lilly pillies are everywhere. (more…)

Yay! My book is here. Well not exactly my book exclusively – a book I’ve contributed to. Yep, this is a blatant plug but it’s the first book I’ve written for, and it does relate to Greenfoot because the copy is about composting and building a worm farm.

The book is called Growing Stuff: An Alternative Guide to Gardening and it’s published by UK company Black Dog Publishing. It probably won’t hit shelves here in Australia until next month.

The book follows on from the two books - Making Stuff and Making Stuff for Kids - and it covers all sorts of gardening stuff from getting started, planting edibles and flowers to attracting wildlife plus a few other quirky things. It contains loads of practical advice, greats pictures and how-to guides.

For more info about the book, download the press release. Or check out what I’ve written about composting and building a worm farm.

It’s raining here in Sydney, which makes a wonderful break from the intense heat we’ve had recently.

There’s nothing I love more than gardening in a light summer rain. The garden comes alive with dripping lushness and the soil smells sweet and earthy.

Today, I planted some of the native spinach I found last week into one of my vege patches. It’s in a spot I don’t really use much so I am hoping it will spread out quite a lot. This is an experimental patch to see how the spinach grows.

My son helped plant it, so we’ve called it Liam’s spinach patch. It was lovely watching him fuss over it, and then spend the rest of his time trying to catch rain drops on his tongue.

Today, when I was taking my son to his swimming lesson, I spotted some native spinach (Warrigal Greens) growing next to the pool’s car park.

A month back I wrote about finding native spinach at Smiths Lakes and I was annoyed with myself for not taking a clipping to plant back in my garden. Ever since, I have been on the lookout for native spinach in Sydney.

It was by sheer accident while I was getting the pram out of the boot that I saw the little green plants growing by my feet. They looked a lot healthier than the specimens at Smiths Lake, no doubt due to better soil and some shade.

I pulled up a few plants and transplanted them into pots back home. I have great plans for these little beauties. I want to use them to create an edible ground cover over some of the less productive sections of my garden.

I must admit spotting native edibles is quite exciting and something I could get addicted to. Anyone know of any other good edible natives that people can find growing wild in their local areas?

It’s amazing how much household waste can be reduced through composting organic scraps. I’ve been doing this for years so I don’t really notice any reduction in my rubbish anymore.

However, over the New Year break my family and I shared a holiday house on Smiths Lake with two other families. Since the house was a holiday rental there was no composting or worm farming facilities so all our organic scraps went straight in the bin. I was amazed at how quickly our bins filled up and how much was thrown out that could have been composted. It was enough to make me cry – well almost. (more…)