Welcome to Millie's Musings at The Serendipity Cafe
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Welcome, Welcome,
Millie here, Fresh from the garden - Welcome to my first blog.
My other alias is Mrs Bug and I’m happily married to Mr Bug, have 4 lovely children, daughter Tilly 14, son Nogry 13, daughter Skatie 12 and son Addie 10.5.
We live in a seaside tourist town south of Adelaide, South Australia near the Murray Mouth.
I really love gardening, cooking, aromatherapy, being positive, reading and trying to be as self sufficient as possible.
We are about to embark on the biggest project of having our ‘dream home’ built. It’s all so exciting but also scary. I will write about it as we go along and take photo’s so you can join me on the journey.
I also love animals. I have a lovely fat white cat called Lily and a gorgeous white samoyed called Sparky. My other love is my 16 ‘gerls’ (chooks). At present we live on 2.5 acres but once the dream home is complete we will live on 1.25 acres and sell the other block.
I have a lovely vegie patch I’m working on and its growing larger, very slowly. My vegie patch isn’t anything fancy and is built out of all recycled materials but it does the job. I love scrounging from people for bits to build my garden beds.
At the moment I have garlic, chilli, capsicum, silverbeet, zuchinni, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and pumpkin growing.
The ground here is very hard, lots of clay and not much will grow in it. We’ve found the best way to bring the soil ready to planting stage is to use the lasagna planting strategy.
To do this we work out the size of the vegie garden (I usually do them 3m x 3m but it would depend on the size of your area). I mark it out then give Mr Bug the spade…LOL and he digs the top layer of grass out for me to about 10cm depth.
I then put pea straw bales around the edge of it and put layers of shredded newspaper, horse poop (cow poop or whatever you can get hold of free) and pea straw. For us we add some gypsum to break down the soil and wet it down for a few days and the worms come from everywhere. After the first week I turn it all over each day with a fork.
We do this for about 8 weeks and during this time my ‘gerls’ have free reign on getting in there and digging and pooping and we throw the vegie scraps in there too. We find that by this time and with the ‘gerls’ help – hey presto soil is ready to go.
Because my lovely ‘gerls’ free range on the back end of the block where the chook house and vegie patch is I put up 4 permapine posts at each corner. I then edge the bed, usually some timber or old sleepers I’ve scrounged from someone and chook wire to keep the ‘gerls’ on the outside looking in.
The first time I planted cauli and beetroot the ‘gerls’ got in and created havoc – I went out next morning to absolute devastation – I had one beetroot and cauli plant left – argh – I know they thought they were helping me BUT……
See you again soon, out the back amongst the weeds…….
Cheers Millie xx
Millie here, Fresh from the garden - Welcome to my first blog.
My other alias is Mrs Bug and I’m happily married to Mr Bug, have 4 lovely children, daughter Tilly 14, son Nogry 13, daughter Skatie 12 and son Addie 10.5.
We live in a seaside tourist town south of Adelaide, South Australia near the Murray Mouth.
I really love gardening, cooking, aromatherapy, being positive, reading and trying to be as self sufficient as possible.
We are about to embark on the biggest project of having our ‘dream home’ built. It’s all so exciting but also scary. I will write about it as we go along and take photo’s so you can join me on the journey.
I also love animals. I have a lovely fat white cat called Lily and a gorgeous white samoyed called Sparky. My other love is my 16 ‘gerls’ (chooks). At present we live on 2.5 acres but once the dream home is complete we will live on 1.25 acres and sell the other block.
I have a lovely vegie patch I’m working on and its growing larger, very slowly. My vegie patch isn’t anything fancy and is built out of all recycled materials but it does the job. I love scrounging from people for bits to build my garden beds.
At the moment I have garlic, chilli, capsicum, silverbeet, zuchinni, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and pumpkin growing.
The ground here is very hard, lots of clay and not much will grow in it. We’ve found the best way to bring the soil ready to planting stage is to use the lasagna planting strategy.
To do this we work out the size of the vegie garden (I usually do them 3m x 3m but it would depend on the size of your area). I mark it out then give Mr Bug the spade…LOL and he digs the top layer of grass out for me to about 10cm depth.
I then put pea straw bales around the edge of it and put layers of shredded newspaper, horse poop (cow poop or whatever you can get hold of free) and pea straw. For us we add some gypsum to break down the soil and wet it down for a few days and the worms come from everywhere. After the first week I turn it all over each day with a fork.
We do this for about 8 weeks and during this time my ‘gerls’ have free reign on getting in there and digging and pooping and we throw the vegie scraps in there too. We find that by this time and with the ‘gerls’ help – hey presto soil is ready to go.
Because my lovely ‘gerls’ free range on the back end of the block where the chook house and vegie patch is I put up 4 permapine posts at each corner. I then edge the bed, usually some timber or old sleepers I’ve scrounged from someone and chook wire to keep the ‘gerls’ on the outside looking in.
The first time I planted cauli and beetroot the ‘gerls’ got in and created havoc – I went out next morning to absolute devastation – I had one beetroot and cauli plant left – argh – I know they thought they were helping me BUT……
See you again soon, out the back amongst the weeds…….
Cheers Millie xx
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