Instead of expensive sprays to protect your brassicas try potting up mint and placing the pots in and around your young plants. The cabbage white butterflies do not seem to like mint at all and stay away. Just don’t plant the mint in your garden direct or it will take over.
Forget about buying expensive netting to protect your strawberry plants from greedy birds! Go to your nearest 2$ shop and buy a couple of lengths of Christmas tinsel and drape them around your plants. I did just that and have just eaten the most perfect, juicy berries ever!
Place crushed eggs at the base of plants, on top of leafy greens to avoid being munched/sabotaged by slugs/white butterflies/caterpillars. They don’t like the feeling of sharp bits under their bodies so you may be able to go a whole season without a half munched garden.
To keep the birds from scratching your seeds out and eating your vege plants, get any old DVD, CD or PC disc and thread fishing nylon through the centre hole and tie to a garden stake. Place stake in the ground where needed on an angle so the disc can spin in the breeze. Works […]
A friend gave me some Basil mint with the caution not to let it spread out of its container. To stop it spreading I trim it weekly and make a batch of Basil mint pesto. Basil is a real oily rag plant – so good to have it providing us with such delicious pesto.
Once you have cut the head off your broccoli plant instead of pulling out and starting again, leave it in. smaller heads grow out just above where the leaves join the stem. You can keep eat broccoli for months. I did this a few years ago and we eat broccoli at least 2 or 3 […]
It’s easy to grow produce in NZ, but especially if you are in the North Island. If you don’t grow your own produce, plan for next spring now. My Auckland garden has very poor soil, and a previous owner skimmed off the top soil when the house was built so we have been left with […]
I’m a huge fan of insulation. A well-insulated home traps free winter Sun so you don’t need much heating on sunny days, and reduces the cost of heating on those days when the Sun doesn’t do it for you. Insulation also lets you enjoy life more as you’re no longer living within a 2m radius […]
The disadvantage with bubble wrap is that you won’t be able to open the window. I had three windows I wanted to insulate but also open. They are aluminium windows, so at first I thought I’d just stick my plastic (not bubble wrap, but I’ll get to that later) to the frame of the window, […]
A cold water wash in the washing machine costs about 10% of the cost of a hot water wash. When buying a washing machine consider a suds saver. They wash many loads and reuse water and soap powder. Use washing water to kill aphids and garden bugs on roses and other outdoor plants.