January 30 (week 15)

It is now 4 weeks since we began harvesting food from this new garden… most things have not come on line yet but we added up the weights and approx values and this is what we have harvested so far....

Green Beans -  5.1 kgs   
Courgettes  - 7.5 kgs   
Orach - 1 kg       
Lettuce - 27          
Beetroot - 2.4 kgs  
Cucumber - 3          
Tomato - 1.1 kgs 
Collards - 9 kgs  
Delicata Squash - 3           
Red Kuri  Pumpkin - 1.5 kgs
Zambesi squash  3kgs 

We reckon this would be valued at more than $300, based on the price of food in the local organic shop.

I did everything I could to grow high brix food, in terms of getting the beds well aerated, moist and with the right minerals in the right relationships. I  added to my beds 400 gms of Nature’s garden, 200 gms Active Calcium 400 gms of Biochar, 400 gms of Para magnetic rock dust  per square metre and I then added 100 gms per sq m of Nature’s garden after planting three times together with foliar applications on a weekly basis. All of those things meant soil that had been growing grass with a brix of around 4 was now growing vege with a brix of up to 17 in 14 weeks. Not everything is 17 but everything is getting there. I believe all of that has probably cost me $10 per sq m. in 4 weeks I have paid off  33 meters of my garden. I wonder how long it will take to pay the whole garden off. Perhaps I’ll add up all the hose and tool costs too next time and just look at very very real costs and returns. I imagine the returns will go up dramatically now as the tomatoes and peppers and melons and pumpkins and onions etc come on line.

* I had the experience this week of seeing that our Biopesticide kills the white cabbage butterfly caterpillars, useful info as we are about to begin planting our brassicas for the winter.

*  Because we established our garden around the contour and the paths are on the swale lines I have been able to water my pumpkins by soaking the swale above them. pumpkins don’t like being watered from above so that is a big advantage.. same thing with potatoes.

Pumpkin patch on the contour

* I’ve grown Mother In Law bean and Dalmatian Peans as my drying beans this season, the Peans are absolutely outstanding in terms of plant vigour and productivity. They are drying beans at the bottom and still growing vigorously at the top and setting loads of beans. They are one of those rare outstanding vegetables that can be green beans, then shellout beans then the best dried beans! The Mother In Law beans pods are turning a stunning purple colour which alone makes them worth growing.

Netting over the proso millet.

* On a less excited note I am battling the birds to harvest the proso millet. I think I have the netting pegged down well enough, we’ll set tonight when I go back to the garden!

January 20
Week 14

• Things are ramping up in the garden, we are harvesting Market Wonder beans, Crookneck courgettes, many kinds of lettuces, Cylindrical and Golden beetroot, pickling and eating Dalmatian cabbage, our first Delicata squash, and our first Zimbabwe squash.
• The grains look outstanding, and this week I made a bamboo frame to hold a cover over the Proso Millet, and another over the Sumire Mochi hulless barley.
• We fertilsed and mulched the bed we are going to plant as a serious perennial vegetable and herb bed. I’m going really hard to keep this garden small and super productive. I’m only going to choose perennials that need composting and mulching once a year, and that I know I will actually eat as an importamt part of our diet! We used our fertilser mix that we have found to be best in most soils, and where there is no high quality compost available. A short term solution but a good one. 400 gms EF:Nature’s Garden per sq m, 200 gms EF:Active Calcium sq m, 500 gms EF:Activated Carbon and 500 gms  EF:Paramagnetic Rock Dust, and water plants in with liquid EF:FishPlus.
• Our first compost heaps were made of sods from the garden paths( with the grass and grass roots all in them) and thistles, as that was all we had. We are now making proper Biointensive heaps, using scythed hay,  thistles, weeds, kitchen scraps and ashes and charcoal from the bath, burnt bones and animal waste, including fish waste from our river (mullet)
• When I took my refractometer tests last week I noticed that the plants with the highest brix’s were the legumes. That makes me wonder if nitrogen is the limiting factor and so I have applied a foliar spray of EF:FishPlus to see if all the other brix’s come up.

  January 12th 2012

My 12 week old Home garden

We’ve had 2 weeks of rain over xmas and New Year, always a stressful time when we are taking care of tomatoes and potatoes… blight is always in my mind after 30 years of seriously growing large areas of these crops! This summer after having taken so much care of getting the right minerals in the right relationships, and doing my regular foliar sprays ( EF Growth foliar then after 4 sprays switching to EF:FruitSeed foliar) I have no blight after all this rain!!! ( I have also been using our Bio Pesticide spray which also acts as a bio fungicide as well). The potatoes in my garden and the tomatoes look outstanding.

This past week we began harvesting food from our 12 week old garden...800 gms of Market Wonder beans, 12 Crookneck Squash from 2 plants, orach for three omelettes, and 12 lettuces. Bob has now double dug the bed right around the outside of the garden which is going to be our perennial vegetable section… more about that later… The section of my home garden that has the heavy feeders, the tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, courgettes, cucumbers, lettuces, melons and onions .. is looking particularly fantastic. I’m totally going for high brix and maximum production on every square metre and I have erected bamboo and ti tree tri pods over all the cucumber and Delicata squash as well as the Zimbabwe squash and the Zambesi Gem, all well suited to this method of growing. Green Chestnut is a bush and won’t climb, and Chucks Winter and the other long keepers are too vigorous however Red Kuri can also be trained up a trellis.

I’ve been applying EF:FruitSeed Foliar and I’m sure my pumpkins are responding by setting way more fruit. I have Delicata that were planted on October 10th and into the garden November 10th, and now on January 4th they have already set 30 fruit on each plant and they have only just begun climbing the tipee!!!. I’m excited!!




Heavy Feeders Looking Great



Port Albert Cucumbers climbing up.. 



December 2011
Welcome to my new garden in a paddock at Kotare Village. I thought you might enjoy seeing the transformation of ¼ acre of paddock, in a pretty special place, to pretty special garden!! 


This is the very first beginning of my home garden, which is double dug, (200 sq m), and designed following my new Garden Planner to be released in a couple of months. The garden is designed to grow all of the food for 2 people with plenty to give away, whilst growing soil.

A quarter of the garden is in root crops and legumes, a quarter in heavy feeders; ie pumpkins, cucumbers lettuces, greens, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and a quarter in heavy feeders that are also carbon, corn and flour corn, crops ( so we grow soil as well as food) and another quarter in carbon/ calorie crops (so we grow calories as well as carbon for the soil). The garden is divided into ¼’s so that the rotation plan works easily.