To honour the frankly quite epic downpour, we’d like to give this month’s Song of the Month to none other than 80’s survivor Belinda Carlisle with her hit Summer Rain.
Hero of the Month: Nasturtium
Nasturtiums are our little rock-stars of the flower world, bringing masses of colour when spring hits, and loads of tasty flowers, leaves and seeds as they get closer to summer.
And they even scare off the aphids – how good is that?!? If you’ve got a veggie patch happening, get yourself some of this goodness around the edges – your plants will thank for it!
In order to get the best out of your garden, it is important to learn as much as you can about your soil.
It is after all the medium you will be growing all of your plants in, so knowing what you have to work with can save you a lot of disappointment in the long term.
Spare Harvest battles food waste by swapping, selling and sharing excess produce
When the ABC shared photos of tonnes of tomatoes left to rot in a field because they weren’t perfect enough to sell to supermarkets, there was an outcry from thousands of people, horrified by the waste.
A Queensland woman has urged those people to do something practical about it, with the help of her website.
Helen Andrew created Spare Harvest to connect farmers, gardeners and cooks in communities around the world — helping them swap, sell or share, what they have spare.
Her search for solutions began when she reluctantly buried much of a bumper crop of juicy sweet mandarins in her backyard, soon after moving to the Sunshine Coast.
“My immediate network also had an abundance of citrus and it just didn’t sit right with me that I had this beautiful produce but I didn’t know who to give it to or who would actually use it,” Ms Andrew said
“It was about connecting to strangers I didn’t know and I didn’t have a mechanism to allow me to do that, so after spending some time researching I created my own mechanism, and that’s when Spare Harvest was born.
The website contains a global map, that can be zoomed in to locations pinpointing buy, swap and sell postings from more than a thousand members including farmers, gardeners and householders.
Ms Andrew said the more people who join, the more potential there is to stop food and other items going to waste.
Our top science-nerd loved this book with the author’s broad perspective on land management and experimental mindset – if you’re interested in Agroforestry you should definitely check this out!
Now that summer is *finally* here, the days will continue to get longer as we head for the summer solstice – and of course it’s going to get hotter! Make sure you’ve got all your plants well mulched to protect the soils from the sun and the coming dry winds.
And as strange as it may seem, early summer is the time to sow some winter brassicas such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and swedes so they can be harvested in winter.
Remember: some seeds do better starting off in punnets, some in pots and some in the ground. To get the best from your seedlings be sure to check the best methods first!
permablitz melbourne eating the suburbs, one backyard at a time
