November Update and Easy Compost Ideas

I am so excited by my garden at the moment. Our berries are doing tag teams supplying us with juicy nutritious snacks; first it was the strawberries in the aquaponics, now it’s the mulberries from our smallish yet abundant tree and next it will rasberries, which are just showing the first blushes of colour.

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We’ve also just harvested our years supply of garlic.  The girls helped me again this year.  They are becoming experts at garlic harvesting.  We always keep the biggest and best cloves for planting again the following year. Ensuring our ongoing supply.  I also give some away therefore keeping it alive in the community.

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My seedlings are all starting to show some proper growth and little zucchinis and tomatoes  appearing.  The fruit trees are starting to fruit.  My peach tree that I planted this year was full of fruit but I dutifully and reluctantly pulled them all off to allow the plant to focus on establishing itself rather than putting all its energy into making fruit.  Boo hoo.  The apples on my three year old tree are are coming along and the other trees are growing nicely, settling in.

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My compost teas are brewing, I’ve been watering the garden each week with different teas I’ve been making; the first was a stinging nettle tea made with a bag of stinging nettles a visitor brought and was going to dispose of; then I made a comfrey, tansy and chook poo tea and now I’m brewing what will be a real stinker; chook poo, comfrey, tansy, azolla (more about azolla next month) and fish head tea. Now these technically aren’t compost teas as they should be aerated but I find these work for me and they make my plants happy.  I also have compost piles going but they are slower and I often find I am needing compost but have none available, which is due to my bad planning but I just find teas much easier.

My current favourite easy solid compost technique is just using a standard compost bin, put the kitchen scraps in, add a bit of carbon with each deposit and mix it all up using the compost mate, which is  a great corkscrew-like turning fork, that you screw down into the compost, then pull up, aerating and turning the compost as it goes.  My composts remain hot using this and they break down much faster.  I just do it on the veggie patch and lift the bin and spread it out when its done. We also do the big hot compost piles but with mixed results. I find the compost bin, compost mate combination is an easy low fuss technique that you can fit in any size backyard.

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The magazine is cracking along, looking awesome so far.  I’ve just been up to the Southeast Harvest Festival to catch up with all the great peeps up there.  We had a stand there and connected with lots of great people.  Costa included.  We’ll be at a few markets around the place over December and January mostly in south east NSW and Canberra.

I also caught up with Fraser Bailey and Kirsti Wilkinson from Old Mill Road Bio Farm and the lovely Martin from Soul Patch put us up at his place.  Moruya is so blessed to have producers like them in their community, growing such great food and offering such variety to be bought fresh each week from the farmers market.

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Ok I’d better stop yapping and get back to getting issue three ready for your reading pleasure.

Until next time.

Robyn

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