Bumper Apple crop

Bumper Apple crop

It is apple season again and this year I have had a bumper crop. I have five apple trees espaliered along a fence and I have picked 130 kgs of fruit off them! Quite extraordinary. The five trees take up 20 meters of length, about ½ meter in width and 1.3 meters tall....
A Changing of the Seasons

A Changing of the Seasons

  There is a real autumn feel in the air at the moment and the colouring up of the Manchurian pear and Robinia, makes me realise that autumn is nearly here. The same is happening in the veggie garden, summer crops are finishing and the cooler air temperature are...
Making Comfrey ointment

Making Comfrey ointment

Comfrey ointment/salve It is inevitable if you are a gardener, spending time planting, weeding, thinning, pruning, hedging, mowing and generally working hard, that you will eventually come of second best and sprain or strain something. At the moment it is my wrists...
Having a happy, healthy flock of backyard chooks – Preventative Backyard Chook care.

Maintaining your backyard chicken’s housing.

I am a great believer that prevention is better than trying to remedy something once it has happened. This is very true for maintaining the health of a backyard chicken flock. So to prevent infestations of lice and mite, the build-up of deep litter that can become...
The joys of a containerised living Christmas tree.

The joys of a containerised living Christmas tree.

I love a live Christmas tree; in fact I absolutely refuse to have a plastic one in the house. But I do find the hassle of either picking up a pre-cut, or going and cutting a live tree in those weeks leading up to Christmas a hassle I could do without. Then there is...