Advise for the Beginner Vegetable Gardener

Here I am going to provide a collection of articles, which will present the essential information for the beginner vegetable gardener or homesteader. A Vegetable garden consists of 4 key systems: Soil, Water, Plants & Animals. These systems are connect and influence each other, which can be illustrated as follows: Integrative Organic Gardening IOG The…

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Utilisation of Kitchen Scraps

  Due to the technological and financial advantages of our modern age a lot of food simply gets wasted. You would think that with the development of all our superior food production and storage capabilities food will not go to waste so easily. The average person today is more wealthy that many medieval kings, yet…

Comfrey: How To Grow – Herb of the Month

Comfrey stats/requirements at a glance Ease of Raising: 3/5 – Bi-weekly check-ups Water: 2/5 – Minimal, twice per week (especially, container) Sun: 4/5 – Full sun, shade tolerant Training: 1/5 – Minimal (harvesting keeps plant in shape) Fertilise/Feeding: 1/5 – Minimal, at least during the growing season Time to Harvest: 1/5 – Immediate (seedling) to…

Wormery: Earthworm compost

Worms @ Work Wormeries provide high quality compost that can be added directly to the garden, by decomposing kitchen left-overs. To start a wormery you require stacked containers (3-4 levels) and some earthworms. Most wormeries commercially available are expensive given the amount of space you get from it.   Wormery Construction We acquired some meat-slab/solid-crate…

Composting: Kitchen waste, NPK & Fertilisers

Home Style Composting Composting is a very important section of any good gardening book – but they all fail to mention how wonderful good ol’ kitchen waste is. Some say it takes too long to break down and that it must be degraded before planting... but that is a bunch of half-truths. Kitchen waste will…

Instant Compost

This is just a quick post for some instant compost ideas.   1. Kitchen waste directly into the soil Kitchen waste is mainly food scraps: peels, stems and leaves of plant matter. You can add whole pieces of kitchen waste to the soil (it will take 2-3 months to break down depending on the season).…

Soil Profiles & Maintenance

Ground Work   Here I will give all the basic information on soil and how to improve your soil for gardening.     Soil Formation and Soil Horizons Soil is formed by the erosion (breakdown by water and wind) of rocks and bedrock. The deposition of organic material increases the disintegration of the rock and…