Rachel Potter is a mother of two boys. She and her husband Greg adore growing and using fresh herbs and vegetables from their suburban backyard. Rachel likes to give her family a diet rich in home grown organic produce and for her children to understand where the food...
People these days are worried about buying fruit and vegetables and the chemicals that are on them. The only way to be sure about what you’re eating is to grow it yourself. Growing your own fruit and vegetables is tremendously rewarding. However, knowing when the...
Ginger is the most important health giving plant that probably people could ever eat. Ginger (Zingiber officinale) grows in the temperate and warmer zones of the world. It has thin, strap–like leaves and can be grown from store-bought ginger roots. However,...
Every so often a fabulous new food plant comes along but not often like this one. It’s not the most beautiful tree in the world, it’s got fiendishly sharp thorns and odd looking fruit. It’s an Australian Native Finger Lime, they’re called Finger Lime because of the...
What are the best tomatoes to grow? The cocktail fruiting ones! Don was lucky enough to have a Cherry Tomato grow as a weed in a bare area of ground. The fruit is a little bigger than a marble but so sweet. These tomatoes won’t take snow but they will take a slightly...
Peas are definitely worth growing at home. There are two broad groups, one is the flowering sweet pea which have a good range of flower colours, the other is the edible pea, Sugar Snap are best. They’re very easy to grow, with all peas you just poke the seeds into...
One of the most prevalent myths Don encounters is ‘Why is my plant sick when I water it well?’ The potting mix could be the problem, as it could be water repellent. Don conducted an experiment using a mignonette lettuce, putting it in standard potting mix and watering...
How does a pot work? How does the potting mix behave inside a pot? Believe it or not, pots suspend water up in the air! They make water float in the air! In a pot, the water drains to the bottom of the potting mix, and some of it stays there. That is, a layer of two...
There’s a wide range of chicken coops on the market, even if you’ve got a small backyard, you can still keep a couple of chooks. You can buy a small chicken coop (1m x 2m) for about $250 from pet stores, larger hardware chains and farm produce stores. It’s always good...
Some herbs and vegies definitely grow best from seeds planted where you want them to grow. They hate being transplanted. There’s an easy way to get around this problem and that’s to plant seeds in biodegradable pots. There are plenty on the market or you could simply...