Who else likes gardening?

[ecomama]

Hi everyone

I hope you're staying well today.

Who else likes gardening? I would love to connect with people here who are happy to share their gardening adventures.

For me I know that gardening helped heal my soul during tough times. I hope it will again.
Then with other things going on, it became a jungle.
I'm part way into rediscovering it again and doing A LOT of hard yakka atm, when I am motivated.

I have new dreams and ideas to put into the many bare places, as I remove thickets of lantana etc. This will all be on a tight budget and I'm ok with that.

I want to create a peaceful place where I can be.
I would like to grow food again (tell 'er she's dreamin' atm lol).
I would like to re-establish my worm farms and compost heaps.
Autumn is such a beautiful time of the year in the garden.

I'm 'alone' in my gardening journey and would love to share and hear about other's gardening antics. Hopefully we can troubleshoot any issues in our gardens and talk about any healing we're feeling too. There's a lot of knowledge we can share. I hope this thread can brighten your day!

Love Ecomama

Please

[Lillylane]

Hi EM,

Quite a storm here tonight. Lots of wind and lightning. Has kept me awake. Selfish storm 😉

But gee it sounds like a fair bit of rain too.

L.

[ecomama]

Hey Lillypilly lol

Selfish rain lol!

Make the most of this ME TIME Lills!

I am.

It's raining here and I'm LOVING it and don't want to go to bed lol.
Plus my son and his gf came home for the weekend, so all the kids are still enjoying each other's company... one just left to get take away food lol... I swear they've all forgotten how to cook now they have PT jobs!!

Oh well, I tried lol. These kids can cook freaking ANYTHING but just choose NOT to now.

I'm just revelling in the sounds of my kids together. We miss son soooooooooo much, so this is a beautiful time.

As for the rain..... my soil is becoming so black and enriched with this intermittent and regular rain (and ofcourse the chooks pooing everywhere out there lol)... it's beautiful soil now!

The reprieve from the heat might give my oregano a chance to recover somewhat.
This morning it looked like someone had taken a flame thrower to it - sad face.

Doesn't take much to rebound. Oregano is pretty resilient if there's deep enough and rich enough soil. AND DRAINAGE. Almost forgot about drainage.

We're doing more on the plans for the cabin / bungalow way down in the back of my garden.
12 months to do the plans and get a year FT work behind me, then I'll see what the bank says lol!

Otherwise it's pay and build myself.

Now THAT garden is important for the future tenants too. I want to add some "green" features, we'll see how well those are utilised in the future I guess..

EMxxxx

[Matchy69]

Hi Paul I will try and put the recipes on later in another one of End great threads Easy Peasy recipes.All depends when the power comes back on here after the big storm last night that sounds like a few us had.The peer went out at 9:51pm and it says won't be on to 3pm.I better save my phone battery.Just thought I would have a quick check on here.
Happy gatdening,
Mark.

[ecomama]

Oh goodness Mark!

Power outage there. Hope it comes back on for you all very soon!

Actually years ago I knew a psych who'd bought a fire powered phone charger from an Environmental store online.
It was like a tall, cylindrical canister thingy.... you put the twigs inside it and the flames could go out through the top.

Whilst you could heat water in the canister walls, there was a inlet / outlet IDK what you call it lol... to plug in a phone cord.

omg what a great idea if people have regular power outages!!
We were having lots at the time but things got sorted here.

We had a power outage once for about 10 days here and I actually LOVED it lol!
It was during a low grade cyclone, lost a few trees and a long fence, which wasn't too good at the time... food was defrosting at a fast rate in my freezers etc.

So I set the camp stoves up in the kitchen and fed heaps of people with the defrosting food!

I loved no technology or TV.

But I hope it gets back for you FAST Mark!

Talk soon!
EMxxxx

[Matchy69]

When I was younger I use to have my own lawnmowing and gardening business and one of my clients was a dear old friend of my mother's and she had a mango tree that never fruited and said I can fix that for you so I came over with my pruning saw and pruned it all way the back and think my mum's friend was a bit horrified but trusted me.The next summer she gave me the biggest box of mangoes from that tree as it was loaded with beautiful fruit.Dont be scared to prune your fruit trees.

[ecomama]

Yes!

I think we ALL get afraid to prune our precious fruit trees but THEY LOVE A GOOD PRUNING!

I find that most of my trees do lol. Some I'd prefer NOT to grow so big but what can I do but take them out - which I can't bare to do lol.

My gardener went for it pruning ALL my fruit trees earlier this year and we had BUMPER crops which the birds and animals loved eating... I'm glad they feed some living things!

I think the storm you had moved down the coast to here last night.
We've had light, misty rain for days now and I'm loving it!
But with my tanks full and the torrential rain hitting, I could hear strange watery noises and just went back to sleep lol.

I'll investigate at some point. No good stressing over it.

I realised though that one job I need to do is to clear any drains I can.
The one most problematic is in front of our garage door, when it floods there, then all the kids room downstairs and the gym gets flooded ugh.

I'm SO GLAD I found all the potting mix crammed into my roof gutters earlier this year.
I still can't believe ex demon did that.
But it was there!
My brother came over when I asked him for a long ladder and he asked why?
I told him.
He came STRAIGHT over, mostly because he DIDN'T BELIEVE me lol!
I wouldn't believe myself either!!!

Brother got up on top of my 3 storey high roof at point and scooped all the potting mix out, shaking his head and swearing about demon the whole time.

Then the tank's sieves on top of the tanks were ALSO crammed with potting mix.
I had to dig all that out too. Plus he crammed bricks in there.

I know why he did it but it DIDN'T work!

So as the rain came pouring down, those noises were partly water rushing along CLEAR guttering lol!!
YAY!

And we used all the potting mix in the garden lol.

More rain today!
Wow.

EMxxxx

[Matchy69]

Hi Em that was terrible way your ex did putting potting mix in your gutters.Some people just have to be nasty.It reminds me of when I worked at the dump in recycling and we had a recycling shop on site where people would drop things to good to throw out but some people would drive Pat you down to the tip and you would see them smash everything so you couldn't sell it including antiques.It was very sad.I actually renovated a house from the stuff I got from the dump.

[Matchy69]

Em my son this morning was out in the vegie garden eyeing off my watermelons asking me if any are ready unfortunately it will be a couple weeks yet I think.I have one deformed one on that wouldn't have got pollinated properly.Yhey usually die off but this one is still growing .

[Matchy69]

I forgot to mention that I harvested my potatoes yesterday even though it was still muddy I got 4 kgs of Nadine potatoes .Some were starting to go rotten so I needed to get them out especially with more rain around.I always plant certified seed potatoes as I live in a farming district and want to protect them from any diseases one from a shop could potential have.I know how hard farmers do it

[ecomama]

Nice ones Mark!

Yeah watermelons can go a bit funky if not pollinated properly. I had one once that was all WHITE inside and I thought that was the reason why... IDK.

It was lots of fun growing watermelon and pumpkins lol... the same ex demon blatantly refused to mow the huge lawn. I'd been mowing it until he was extremely rude about my efforts at a family party I put on for him!
So I said I if you can do a better job, then it's your job now. LOLOL... he didn't do it for years.
Neither did I.

Then I thought a "Food Jungle" would be awesome so I just put all the right season's seeds in a huge stainless steel bowl with lots of vermicast, rolled them into small balls and threw them in the garden. (I did an "Anastacia Trick" first).

omg the JUNGLE OF FOOD!
I harvested 45 pumpkins that year, LOL, so many that we all started to literally turn orange from eating them in different ways!
Lots of watermelons. Lot of tomatoes, zucchinis, lots of everything lol.

I had to research ways of being able to store pumpkins for a long time.
I was also a member of LETS so I traded on some of the food.

I understand your good reasons for always buying Certified Potato seed. GOOD ON YOU!

Happy to hear you could harvest your potatoes before they all got mushy in the ground.

Unnecessary waste is shameful, those people were horrible who smashed beautiful things.
Some ppl are on the evil side. demon is.

Thankfully gardens are very forgiving!

EMxxxx