"0tterbot" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message

Do you have any books by Jackie French?

i've been getting through the ones available at the library (my, she
is
prolific!!) her weed book was a _revelation_ to me.

If you liked that then try her soil food book. That is my usual bed
time reading - doesn't matter how many times I read it, I always find
something new to try or marvel over.

i'd been too anal about
the whole thing, & looking at it totally the wrong way.

Yep - I think a lot of us have come to gardening by way of the
conventional route and it takes time to unlearn all those taboos we
learned on the way.

i really like her
books, she's great :-) another good thing is she's a "local author",
so i
can directly apply things she says, pretty much.

Yes, her land at Araluan looks like its a very hard and hungry block
and that valley is prone to real heat and drought as well as some
poopful land. We were down there not long ago and things are just
dire - poor sods.

I have some BIG weeds in my garden - giant phalaris and cocksfoot
and
all sorts of other giant clumpers which got away when I had to
have
cancer treatment and couldn't do any gardneing. These I just dig
up
and leave lying on the paths (fully develiped seed heads and all)
and
once teh roots ahve dried out I then just throw them in a pikle
somewhere and they often formt eh basis for growing spots. ATM,
I've
got volunteer spuds growing in weeds - basically the weeds are
being
used like the hay beds for spuds, but you could also use them for
cucurbits. any weeds tha do sprout again get pulled out or
buried in
more weeds or old hay on top.

If I was running a nice neat garden, I'd have composted all these
but
I currently dont' ahve the space in any of my compost bins so they
are
bein used in another fashion.

excellent. the idea of weeds as mulch was wonderful for me - weeds
as
growing locations even better! or weeds as foliar feed (another
jackie
idea).

Yep - I brew my blackjack mix in an old olive barrel and I brew my poo
stew in a big plastic garbage bin - I've yet to be able to convince my
husband that it's his job to relieve himself now and then into it :-))

well anyway, clearly we are both fans ;-) i might do a weed-spot
experiment, now!

It's worth a try, but probably a bit late now for the best weed patch
growers - the cucurbits..

i'd LOVE a tumbling composter - i'd make special collections for
it
if i had
one of those. sigh....

I lusted after a tumble composter for years but was put off by the
cost. I saw the following at a firend's and she recommended them
highly.:
http://www.tumbleweed.com.au/pages/d...?page_id=20061

I now have 2 and find them fantastic and they are much cheaper
than
the ones I was lusting after. Everything my friend said about them
is
true - great beasties. I think thye were about $150 each.

wonderful!! i shall take your recommendation on board.

Wel just to encourage you: about 6 weeks ago, I pruned my box blobs -
the prunings were up to about 6 inches long. I threw them into one of
the tumblers with some poop (old cow poop which I'd stupidly let dry
out). I watered the lot from both ends (the lids come off on each
end) and tumbled it a few times each day - about a week ago, we used
it to mulch the corn and them put more mulch on top - the corn has
powered on since then sending out axial roots all over the place. The
pruings weren't completely broken down, but enough to use it on
somethign that was about thigh high like corn - its now about waist
high - perhaps we put it on a week and a half ago.

kylie (who is really pining for one now ;-)

:-)) I raided the hosekeeping allowance and we went thorugh a
vegetarian phase till it'd recovered :-))