Mulching Away

Mulch, mulch, mulch
It's getting summery here, with not a lot of rain. Our soil is clay, so plants are suffering. I get really keen to mow the lawn - purely so that I can use all the clippings to mulch my poor plants. I water the plants, then often add seaweed or horse poo, then soaked newspaper or cardboard, and finally lawn clippings or wood chip or anything else I can lay my hands on. The mulched plants thrive.

Mulch, mulch, mulch

I use grass clippings over soaked newspaper in the vege garden too. It makes a huge difference.

Bean plants thriving with mulch and sheep poo.

After reading Zero Waste Home - see books I love - I have stared using more things in my compost that I was throwing away. One of these is the contents of my vacuum cleaner bag, and a bathroom compost bin. I just don't fancy the idea of putting these in my food garden, so they have gone as mulch around one of our shelter trees, underneath the paper and woodchip.
Really Frugal or just Greenie?
I wasn't sure about posting this bit but I will say it is inspired by concern for the environment. So, when I had snipped the bottom off the vacuum cleaner bag and emptied it - I decided waste not want not and sewed up the opened end with my sewing machine to reuse it. How frugal/ green is that!

Neighbours "Rustic" Shed
Our neighbouring farmer needed to put in a shed right next to our place to house a control unit for his electric fence. Fortunately I was home when he chose to do it as I then had a say about not positioning it right by our outdoor patio. He said it would be a recycled old shed, so I though oh good - I love rustic old sheds. I wasn't expecting this though - a recycled outside longdrop toilet - with no door! Thanks Hugh. I have hurriedly put in some screening plants.

Neigbours longdrop shed! And tamarillo tree.

Garden Compost Bin Follow up
In an earlier blog I showed this great idea of putting a compost stack right in the garden - so look at the difference between the tomatoes that were planted at the same time. And that is only a couple of weeks growth. I put the plastic pot next to them to show comparison of size.

tomato plant next to the compost stack

tomato plant struggling along by itself

Fly Bustin' Follow up
A couple of blogs back was one on fly bustin'. Well the outcome so far of the essential oil deterrent is that we still get a few flies in but they are not so bad - mostly they were at the windows trying to get out. When I was cooking meat I got the jar with the oil impregnated cloth and left it open in the kitchen - no flies came in. I might even make another jar or two to open and leave in rooms on days that they are at their worst.