SuburbAble

Ngarrindjeri Elder, Aunty Ellen Trevorrow and the indefatigable Jelina Haines are great friends and co-researchers in the field of Indigenous Knowledge.

Jelina is the author of the research paper ‘Video ethnographic documentation of stories and cultural practices with Indigenous Elders’ and Aunty Ellen is co-author.

They have been accepted by the organisers of the ASIST&T conference in Canada to…

Look for this grove of trees as a landmark

We’ll meet here at the end of the bridge and sit on the lions

We’ll its time for the Woodstock of Gawler amateur herbalism, Food Underfoot!

On Sept 23rd at 11ish, I’ll be taking a foraging walk through Henry Chenoweth Reserve in Gawler where we will take a look at the seasonal, local, food and medicinal herbs available.

Last year, if I remember…

Could Keeley be Australia’s Next Top Gardener?

Yates are running a search for Australia’s Next Top Gardener and our friend, Keeley Mann is having a shot.

Keeley is the daughter of Megan Mann who runs Red Ochre Farm, an organic farming project at Krondorf, in the Barossa Valley.

Hopefully, I’ll be chatting with Megan soon for one of our interview spots.

I haven’t spoken with Keeley yet, but her…

Cut Leaf Mint (Prosanthera incisa) is one of our favourite Native plants.

This plant is commonly called Cut Leaf Mint, Native Thyme (not to be confused with Ocimum tenuiflorum or the closely related P. rotundifolia which also have that same common name) or Native Mint (I know, there’s a couple of those too…).

We love to grow it because of its strong odour, even just passing a hand through a bush…

Had a couple of nice surprises today.

I went with our friend Annie to recreate at Mt. Pleasant. recreate is an amazing place where artists reuse, recycle and repurpose all kinds of stuff into useful, inspirational or just quirky art

They also have a very interesting range of plants for sale, with local herbalists Margaret Connington and Bev Lane being contributors to the collection.

Another…

After a couple of months sitting forgotten and neglected in the weather, our Bokashi bin lid got several cracks in it.

That’s a bit of a disaster for the microbes that do the work for us, they’re anaerobic and don’t like fresh air and sunlight (they’re the teenagers of the microbes world).

The result is usually a green mild, such as the one you can see in the picture below. Seeing this means one…

Jelina enjoying some time away from research

The ground’s starting to warm up a little (or did it ever get cold this year?) and its wet as far down as I can shove my hand. That means it’s time to start planting.

We’ve been itching for this because this year, the garden will be in full swing. Nearly everything is where we want it and growing well (mostly) so it’s time to put the last of the…

A little harvest…

Hakurei…Japanese Turnips

A whole mass of Parsley

Today we cut back our mess of Parsley so that we can dry it, powder it and use it in soups and stocks throughout the year.

A but bonus was the Hakurei. They’re a small Turnip from Japan. They don’t need cooking to eat, just peel then and munch away.

The Hakurei leaves, or greens, can be included in whatever dish the roots are used in.

Hakurei are a…

Dolores, our new chook, laid her first egg today. In fact, she was so enthusiastic that she laid two (though probably not at once…).

They are coloured blue because she’s got Araucana somewhere in her heritage. They’re not quite the tone in the pic, that’s a bit intense because of when and where I took it.

With this happening within a day of switching to his chook food mix, our supplier, Ray, is…

Some days you’re just lucky

Some days, your timing is just right.

Today I dropped in to the Gawler Community House, where I volunteer tending their kitchen garden.

I saw a fellow struggling a bit with a trolley full of magazines. I wandered on over to offer a hand and, joy of joys, saw the trolley was full of gardening magazines.

Closer inspection showed that the trolley was full of old Grass Roots, Earth Garden, Warm…

Last Friday, the reporter from the Bunyip, our local newspaper came out to interview us about the house and garden from the point of energy efficiency.

Jelina and Marlon were out, so it was just Athena and I and we ended up with most of page 39!

It’s great that people want to hear about such things and thay it’s so easy to get the information out there. The social media response has been awesome…

Our friend, Annie, who breeds composting worms gave me a great tip a while back. It’s one I’ve been following and it works a treat.

The tip is to freeze the vegetable scraps that are going to be fed to your worms. Then thaw them before feeding them.

Freezing causes the water in the cells of the scraps to expand, making them burst. This means, that they break down much faster in the worm farm and…

We’ve annual grasses coming up everywhere! They’re in the beds, on the footpath, by the fence – they’re all around!

But not to worry…there’s no problem. Some may call them weeds and curse the extra workload that they bring but, in fact, I planted all of them.

I had a packet of Canary seed given to us a while back and, rather than give it to the chickens, I decided to maximise its bounty.

You…

Alchemy Cafe are hosting a vintage market today.

We have a little stall selling vintage jewellery that is excess to my online shop, SellTheOld.

If you’re buzzing around Gawler with extra cash and nothing to do, drop by…

I’ve added the fungal spawn I got at Jess’s Intermediate Mushroom Growing workshop to coffee grounds from my favourite cafe. There are Elm and Yellow Oyster mushroom spawn and I found a bag of inoculated grain for White Button Mushrooms that was several years old.

The jars and grounds in the microwave for a good 15 minutes to ensure no opposition from other, unseen, competitors. 15 minutes was…

Worm towers are an excellent way to keep up the nutrient levels in our wicking beds. They require little maintenance beyond a regular top up.

One of the many towers in the garden

I was wondering if they needed a periodic clean out, so pulled up one and had a look.

The bottom 10 cms seemed very sandy and compacted

  Quite solid

I was interested in what was happening at the bottom of the tower,…