Pruning currants makes the wickedest difference to the amount and quality of fruit because the fruits come on young wood. Left unpruned, the harvests become increasingly pathetic – too much old unproductive wood! An annual winter prune and a spring feed will inspire the new wood to come through, netting yourself a haul of about […]
Managing Foodscraps: Easy Bokashi
This story begins on a sad note – Nellie, our beautiful kunekune pig, she in charge of foodscrap management, died. See you on the other side, my friend. As well as companionship (pigs are the best), she played an important part in the health of the garden – converting foodscraps into manure. A job she […]
How To Prune A Grape
Grapes fruit on new season wood. Prune your grapes every year and avoid a heavy, tangle of shoots. Grapevines have a tonne of vigour and left to their own devices take over the garden, next stop the world. The good news is grapes can handle a hard prune! So if yours has left its trellis […]
Use Your Chooks!
Chickens were born to weed + bug hunt. The very jobs I dislike. So in a beautiful win – win, we help each other out. I grow lots of greens for them and they clean it all up for me and prep for following crops. The secret to a happy life is to get everyone […]
Back to Basics: Fruit Tree Pruning Videos
Here are a couple of videos that I hope will give beginners a bit of pruning confidence. Thanks to my buddy Ray at Soulhaven Productions for making them and thanks to Barry for letting us film his trees! These fruit tree pruning videos won’t answer all your questions, not by a long shot. But they […]
Cheat’s Compost
I don’t always keep up with compost making. There’s many a moment when I have crops ready to plant but no compost to hand. In which case, I whip around the garden and creatively rustle up some soil food, or cheats compost as I affectionately call it. It’s moment like these your handy stashes of […]