Home-made Potting Mix

I found yet another thing that I can make myself to save buying it in, which saves me money and a whole lot of plastic bags.
Potting Mix

Home made potting mix

We have a rotted down pile of woodchip and I had a collection of pumice which we had a lot of on our local beach recently, so when I ran out of potting mix yesterday I thought - "I can make this". I put the pumice in a strong bag and pounded it to mush with a mallet and added some organic slow release fertilizer into the mix. The proof will be in how well my plants grow.

Still in the garden - in one of my earlier posts I showed our aubergine plant which was amazing last season - producing about 40 good sized fruit off the one plant. It died back a little over winter and I was going to take it out - but Derek talked me into pruning it back and giving it another chance for a second season.

aubergine - going for a second season.

It is looking good and is flowering again. It does get well fed and watered so it will be interesting to see if it can have another bountiful season.

Buying Local
New Zealand is a great place to live - food is abundant. Derek often comes home from work with produce that we get from his workmates. Some we buy regularly like free range eggs, strawberries and honey, but others are excesses that his workmates bring in - and we do the same, sending excess in. What is great about this is that we are supporting small enterprise, there is no mileage involved (they were going to work anyway), and the packaging is recycled. The strawberries came in a paper bag! 

local strawberries, honey, eggs and loquats

 Recently we have been given fish, and we get worm tea from his work's worm farm - which is more operational than ours is yet. 
In town the other day I picked a bag of loquats from my daughter's backyard. We are still deciding whether to let some of these grow here as they can become a nuisance plant, but the woodpigeons love them - and so do we. 
I also picked up a bag of 10 lemons for 50c at our local charity shop. Well, we grow our own but we don't have enough yet, so that is a great help.

Have a look at this site - it shows what families have as their weekly food shopping in different parts of the world - it's interesting.