Renewing an old raised garden bed

Sometimes you just have to start afresh. Jan R. gave an old tired raised garden bed a new lease of life, and look at the result!  She took photos along the way, and explains what she did.

Pest-Control Quick-Guide

Do you have a pest in your food garden, but you are not sure what it is, or you don't know what to do about it? Look through this pest-control quick-guide, and you may find to-the-point info and photos that give you the answers!

Homemade Pest Control Sprays

Make simple food-garden pest control  sprays at home, so you avoid the nasty chemicals that are present in many commercial products. These 'old as the road' recipes cost very little and have been effectively used by generations of food gardeners, without putting anything that is too poisonous to humans on your produce or in your soil.

Scale on a lemon tree

Compost heap and worm farm

What are the benefits of having a compost heap in your food garden? And how do these benefits compare with having a worm farm? So why do some food gardeners have both?

A Taste of Beekeeping

In a recent FGG workshop participants joined experienced beekeepers Frank and Laura in an inspection of two well-established hives and two newly collected bee swarms. It was a fascinating afternoon that gave us a very good insight into what beekeeping is all about.

 

Backyard Biochar

In the Amazon basin of South America heavy rains leach soils of nutrients very rapidly. Local Indians found that adding charcoal soaked with beneficial liquids prevented this. This soil additive is now known as biochar. Ready-to-use biochar can be expensive to buy. In this blog post Food Garden Group member Dirk S. explains how he makes biochar himself, at no cost.

An inside look at the Botanical Gardens tomato sale

Every year the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens (RTBG) in Hobart produces quality heirloom tomato seedlings on a semi-industrial scale for its annual sale in October. This year I joined nursery-horticulturist Margot White and an amazing team of volunteers, and found out how this is done, and what home gardeners can learn from this process.

Caring for 8000+ tomato seedlings in the lead to the sale

Adding a Raised Bed

Raised beds can be very useful in the vegie garden.  This blog post discusses the various options that are available and how to go about positioning, making and filling a raised bed.