Penny Royal: The Living Mulch

I can get really tired of weeding and become irritated when new ones pop up in the garden, especially in the areas that border my veg plots – AKA ‘The Weed Zones’! So I decided I would like to plant something there that would compete and displace the weeds, preferably something that is useful to…

Advertisement

House Wasp: DIY Beneficial Insect Homes

When we moved the garden outside at the back of the kitchen, I had made a couple of insects’ homes. I tried different types of designs I found on the internet. Most of them went un-inhabited, except for two: Exhibition A: The Log Pile The log pile was meant for carpenter and mason bees, but…

Friends of Free Wildlife

  FreeMe wildlife rehabilitation centre was a volunteer organisation run by a board of directors, a small core staff and volunteers. The volunteers were the main workforce behind FreeMe and their hard work and dedication has facilitated the care and release of orphaned, sick and injured indigenous wildlife. They founded FreeMe back in 1997 in…

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…

Sci-Fi Beehives: Smart Phones & Bee Messages!

  Bees are one of the most important animals when it comes to food production (a close second in my opinion after earthworms who supply healthy soil). Bees have been domesticated since antiquity; the ancient Egyptians depict workers smoking hives and collecting honeycombs in temple paintings dating before 2422 BC. Bee hives have taken on…

Sustainable, Productive and Economical Vegetable Gardening (Part 4): Vegetable Garden Planting Guide & Management

When you consider an ideal vegetable garden I imagine that many of you (as well as myself at one point too) had the following image in mind: Vegetables arranged in neat regimented lines or blocks containing one type of vegetable, perfectly bordered by some type of hedging and clear weed free paths between the planted…

Lessons from Gardening in a Drought: Drought Angels SA, Farmers in Distress, Boere in Nood & Water Shortage SA

In South Africa: South Africa is suffering from a crippling drought brought on by the worst El Nino in decades, starting in 2014. Cape Town (south point of South Africa) and the surrounding areas are basically in a drought disaster area at the moment as many farmers and villages do not have enough water due…