Category: Miscellaneous

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Barbie's garden Design Do it yourself Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Do-it-yourself Worm Farm

If you really want to have a flourishing, organic garden that comes from your recyled waste – then you really have to make yourself a Worm Farm. I will show you how easy and inexpensive it is to make yourself.

[one_half]All you need to get started[/one_half][one_half_last]Three black utility boxes[/one_half_last]

You will be able to get all your components from your local hardware store. I used 3 x smallish black plastic utility boxes with loose-fitting lids. You want to be able to open and close it easily. Then you will need 12 x electrical threaded pipe connectors (20mm in size). These will be the opening base locking legs so the worms will be able to move between boxes. I’ll show you what I mean… then you will need 4 x air vents and 2 x spade drill bits (a 22mm and a 18mm) and an electric drill!

The Worm Farm will be stacked (like in the picture) and can be placed anywhere because it takes up no room and it does not smell. The bottom box will contain the worm tea. The top two boxes will hold your worms and your table scraps and cut up newspaper. This will eventually be composted and you will be left with nutritious worm compost – black gold!

At the base of the middle box you will drill six holes with the 18mm spade drill bit. Here is where you will insert the connectors.

Here you see exactly where to drill the holes. The longest part of the connector will be on the outside of box. This will act as a support when you stack the boxes together.

The positioning of the holes needs to be accurate so that the base of the box fits exactly onto the lid of the box underneath.

[one_half]See-the base sits on the lid of box underneath[/one_half][one_half_last]Now add the air vents on the sides[/one_half_last]

Now remember – only 2 boxes will have holes at the bottom and 2 lids will have matching holes.  The bottom box will contain the worm tea so no holes here!

Now each box will fit perfectly so they stack well. It is neat and unobtrusive and really stays quite clean. I have had mine now for 2 years and it has never smelled. When the middle box is completely full, then you start adding kitchen scraps to the top box. The worms will migrate from the middle box to the top box. Then you will be able to harvest the worm compost from the middle box without damaging any worms in the process. Remember this process takes a long time, however you can harvest the worm tea from the bottom box as soon as a few weeks. This “liquid gold” you dilute with water (preferably from your rain water tank as chlorine from your tap water destroys the good bacteria in the tea) 1 part tea to 5 parts water. You can water all your plants and vegetables and you can also water the leaves as a foliage feeder. Really – this is all you need to keep your garden well fed. It costs you nothing and you have a natural compost maker.

PLEASE NOTE: You can add all vegetable straps but avoid too much fruit scraps. This brings too many fruit flies and ants and causes an unpleasant environment for the worms. Rather only add banana peels and apple peels. No soft fruits and no pineapple. NO LEMON OR ORANGE PEELS. This is too acidic for worms. NO FAT – NO MEAT PRODUCTS. Layer the kitchen scraps with cut up news paper. The worms love it!!! I think they need dry airy spaces to breathe. They also devour the paper! Keep away from direct sunlight.

In my next post, I will show you how healthy and productive my Worm Farm is. It took me a while to post this, because I wanted to see how it would work. I have had other home-made worm farms and they got messy and slimey and looked ugly and the commercially available Worm Farms are very expensive. Mine literally cost me R360.00!!!! So now you have all the info to make your own!

Happy worm farming xxxxx

I would LOVE to hear from you if you have a successful worm farm!!!

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Barbie's garden Bugs & Pests Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Bugs Galore

Springtime spender brings more than the beautiful flowers and great edibles!! It brings the hungry critters that devour those same Spring essentials! They must have all arrived on the same bus, because my garden is full of them!!

A fruit beetle in the Tea Tree

This fly is interesting – what is this?? He seems to be devouring a house fly!! It looks like he is a predator. Perhaps a good thing?

My beautiful Borage flowers always bring the bees!! I make sure they are all over the garden. This one is under my peach tree!

My roses are under attack!! The aphids are having a glorious time !! I am waiting for the lady bugs to come and clean up !! So no pesticide spraying in my garden!

What kind of fly is this in a bee costume!!?? Or a bee in a fly costume!??

More and more aphids! These are black and only under the leaves of my Artemesia Powis Castle! Very interesting. I use them in a tea as a bug repellent!

Here is that weird fly again – can anyone put a name to this?

Now this is the strangest – tons of blue flies all over my Tea Tree flowers! Drunk on the nectar!

I have come to respect all those critters and flying visitors to my garden. If there were no aphids, I would never see a lady bug. So all I need to do is patiently wait for the good bugs to arrive! Garden spiders, frogs and lizards are also gathering to feast on the bugaboos. My birds are always happy to help clean up as well. The sugar bird also helps when the button spider population is over growing!  Every little creature is necessary in the big scheme of things – so as nature intended it to be!! Who are we to interfere!

Happy bugging (and gardening) xxxx

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Barbie's garden Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous Products Reviews

Starke Ayres Garden Centre Visit

My favourite outing – going to buy plants at my best-loved nursery – Starke Ayres Garden Centre. If anyone has it, they do! A great selection of seeds and seedlings (where I always go to first!) Every plant I have bought here has been well nurtured and tenderly cared for, from the supplier to the helping hands at Starke Ayres Garden Centre.

My first impression was that they support organic gardening, first and foremost. The variety of all things natural – from feeds to pesticides – is heart warming and gives me a secure feeling that I can confidently shop and find what I am looking for. The huge barrel of organic worm tea on tap was a great addition and if I didn’t have my own worm farm, I would be tapping this tea for sure!! The best compost can only be found here – Reliance. When I started my organic gardening, I did a lot of research on compost and the one that came out tops was RELIANCE. The ONLY nursery that originally stocked it was Starke Ayres. So, for being the most progressive in organic gardening…. I shop here  a lot.

[one_half]Set in the suburbs of Cape Town[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Great pots and garden accessories[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Indigenous plants display is beautiful[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Seedlings is where I spend my money[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Always full of colour when entering the nursery[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Worm Tea! Keeping abreast with best practices[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Best selection of seeds anywhere![/one_half]

[one_half_last]A true variety for all gardens and homes[/one_half_last]

I forgot to mention that they also have a popular tea garden, with great food and great coffee – so do yourself a favour and spend an afternoon at Starke Ayres Garden Centre, in Rondebosch Cape Town!

To find out more about Starke Ayres, link here.

Happy gardening xxx

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Barbie's garden Design Do it yourself Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

My Greywater System

We have been planning this simple Grey Water System for quite sometime. It needed to be simple and cheap to do! So today was the day!! I will take you through the process with the photo DIY. We decided to use a collection box to trap the grey water and direct it to the veggie patch through a system of pipes. These pipes are the average plumbing pipes you get at any hardware store. It works like a drip system and spans the length of the 12m veggie patch. Here you can follow our process:

The two outlet pipes on the left comes from the 1st bathroom shower and basin and the other 2 outlets come from the en-suite bathroom shower and basin. The first bathroom is where we will collect the water for the veggie patch in the black plastic box. In this bathroom we will rinse only and use organic soap. The other bathroom we will use to scrub up and shower and wash hair and do the necessary -now these pipes will flow down straight through the black collection box and out to the bottom. This water will not be collected. You can see the grey water pipe coming out from the box – this is for the garden (I’m measuring it!)

Here the water will travel down and across to the veggie patch. You can see all the lengths of pipe waiting to be connected. Now the angle has to be correct so there is always a downward movement of water – no block ups! Don’t worry – we did a test in our planning! The black collection box just rests on the plumbing drain. This will keep it easy to clean. Precise measurements is always needed for a job well-done.

Now here you can see the neat cement job and the neat way the pipes come out of the wall. My hubby had to re-do the shoddy workmanship of the previous plumber – so this was a necessary DIY job. There is an opening at the bottom of the box – an outlet and plug – like in a sink. If it is in the middle of winter, I can release the water to flow direct into the drain – not to over-water the garden! Smart, hey!? Here you can see three pipes collecting into the bin and the right pipe going through to the drain.

Now all neat and finished off with a lid.

Now you can see how the outlet pipe from the black collection box is hidden under the stones. It travels up slightly before turning to the veggie patch and the pipe comes back up to the surface. Now the exposed pipe has holes drilled at the bottom (you can see the black dot drawn on top to locate it). The pipe rests on stones to prevent dirt clogging up the drip holes.

The grey water does not come into direct contact with the plants or their leaves, so it is very safe. It drips into the ground and I have created furrows for the water to travel down to the end, giving good spread of water. You don’t want it to pool in one spot.

Now for the lettuces and vegetable seedlings! The vegetable patch is now ready for the winter planting! We should have done the Grey Water System in summer when the water was needed, but time is always the issue. At least I had the use of all the water we collected in the JoJo Tanks. I only used actual tap water twice when it was really hot!! So this new watering system will work continuously throughout summer!

Very proud that the Grey Water System is now in place and no more waste of precious, usable water. My Jojo Tanks in place as well so this garden is truly water wise!!

We all need to be aware of how precious water really is and to be mindful as to how we use it sensibly. Everyone can do their small part and store it – save it – use it wisely! What other ideas do you have? Lets share our ideas and innovative ways !!

Happy Gardening xxx

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Barbie's garden Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

A Bokmakierie in my Garden

I have never see this bird before!! What a surprise when I saw him in my garden!! I quickly looked up in my Bird Book (Sasol Southern African Birds – a photographic guide: Ian Sinclair/Ian Davidson) This beautiful bird, the bokmakierie, kept us entertained while he played with his reflection in the car window! This bird is not common in gardens, so what a pleasure that he graced ours and that my hubby took a video of him! Enjoy!

The Bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus)

The bokmakierie has a grey head and olive-green upperparts with a broad yellow eyebrow over a dark, not yellow, eye and by its yellow upperparts with a broad black bib across the breast. It flies with fast wing beats and shows a bright yellow tip to its tail (seen as it fans its tail on landing). The sexes are alike. Immatures are duller than the adults, lacking the black breast band. They feed mostly on the ground in arid areas and low down in vegetation in other areas. They take insects, lizards, snakes and frogs. These birds occur in thornveld, Euphorbia scrub in Southern Africa and scrub bushes. They are not common in suburban gardens.

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Barbie's garden Home page features Miscellaneous

The Mouse and the Provita

I am having so much fun with this little mouse who lives under our outside deck! He is the smallest of the bunch (family of 5!!) and he has been appointed the official Provita Scout! That’s why I named him Scout! Today was so funny!! I thought, what would he do if I held onto the Provita………

 

 

This was day two……. Scout the mouse was at my finger!!

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Barbie's garden Home page features Miscellaneous

The Mouse Whisperer

This is the cutest thing! I have a family of striped field mice living under our outside deck and every day I throw them a Provita cracker. Lately, they have been waiting for me. I always whistle and make a “Provita feeding time” sound, so I decided to try hand feeding today. The smallest mouse – I call him Scout because he is the one they send out to collect the food – decided to test his bravery and came to fetch the Provita from me! Check it out!

How big is your brave??

Filmed by my awesome hubby, Hannes! Thank you, my love, for capturing this!

Have a fab day in your garden xxxx

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Barbie's garden Do it yourself Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Garden revamp for water wise gardening

Hi all my gardening friends!!!! I have been re-vamping the garden so that 2014 is going to be a water-wise and energy efficient year! One of the reasons I fell off the radar!! All the work was done by my hubby, Hannes, and myself so any extra free time was spent fixing and building!

I am going to share with you the front garden changes and the new addition of our rain harvesting JoJo tanks.  We have made them a feature of our garden with a gable to hide the downpipes from the roof. The tanks are in a very attractive sand colour and fit beautifully between the veggie patch and the front garden.

All of the plants and raised beds come from the back garden. In the next post, I will highlight the back area! But for now, here is the best way to show you the front of the house – with photos.

[one_half]Raised beds and JoJo Tanks in background[/one_half]

[one_half_last]The Raised beds now a front feature[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Raised Bed 1[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Raised Bed 2[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Raised Bed 3[/one_half]

[one_half_last]All plants are thriving-so glad![/one_half_last]

The rain water harvesting tanks by JoJo are 2500litres each. These will be used to water the veggie patch and the front garden.

[one_half]First we needed to build a platform[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Tanks side-by-side[/one_half_last]

[one_half]The tap combines both tanks[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Here you can see the pipe from the roof[/one_half_last]

[one_half]The pipes are hidden behind the  gable “bling”[/one_half]

[one_half_last]These tanks are already 1/2 full with 1 rain[/one_half_last]

Here are some water facts (courtesy from JoJo Tanks website):

  • Some 1.1 billion people, or 18 % of the word’s population, lack access to safe drinking water, and over 2.4 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation.
  • More than 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die each year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation.
  • A report released in early October 2009 by the Water Research Commission of South Africa found that South Africa has 4% less water than 20 years ago.
  • Rand Water is predicting that demand for water in South Africa will outstrip supply by 2025. It also believes that Gauteng is potentially facing a water shortage as early as 2013.
  • In Cape Town the scenario is not much better with a water shortage prediction by 2016
  • If South Africans continue with their wasteful water practices, there simply will not be enough water to meet the country’s future needs and, we may have to start paying even more for water!
  • South Africans can change the scenario by changing their behaviour towards water usage and becoming water wise and savvy about rainwater harvesting.

Harvesting Rainwater:

  • 1mm of rain allows you to harvest 1L of water per m2 of roof area – just allow for a 15% wastage factor.
  • Make sure that your gutters are installed to direct rainwater to rain water tanks.
  • An annual rainfall of 500 mm on a roof surface of 50 m² amounts to 25 000L of potential safe drinking water that can be preserved (40L per day for 625 days) or wasted! In South Africa, the water allocation per day per person is 25L

My favourite tree – The Leopard Tree. I have added a bottle feeder for the sunbirds!

[one_half]My azalias with The Leopard Tree[/one_half]

[one_half_last]The Mugwood tree still there[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Well-used wheelbarrow out to pasture[/one_half]

[one_half_last]The front deck with roses in the background[/one_half_last]

The cold weather is setting in and the rains have started – all is wet and very autumny. The roses have had a soft prune and a good dose of worm tea! They did not have a good show this year – I don’t know why!!

[one_half]The indigenous confetti bushes like the buckets![/one_half]

[one_half_last]The whirling butterflies – gaura[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Just a few roses peaking out[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Full view of the front from the deck[/one_half_last]

[one_half]The mighty Mugwood tree! Still a hit with the visitors[/one_half]

[one_half_last]From the bench looking to the Leopard Tree[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Love my new planter from my best friend![/one_half]

[one_half_last]Onto the next project!???[/one_half_last]

 

Well, lots of photos and lots of changes still to come!!

Happy gardening xxxx

 


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Barbie's garden Bugs & Pests Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Badboy bugs

This last season I hardly had any problems with beetles, bugs, caterpillars and aphids in my garden. The ones that did come by uninvited, they didn’t leave too much damage – almost as if they were being polite. The aphids were devoured by ladybugs and the caterpillars were hand-picked and “placed” elsewhere (the chickens don’t like the furry, colourful squigglies)

But these little nasties destroyed my rocket OVERNIGHT!! My sweet rocket and wild rocket (arugula) were both targeted. They are so tiny I could not see them with my naked eye. Taking a macro shot of them and – WOW!! They are beetles! I was convinced they were black aphids.

Does anyone know what these are!!???

[one_half]Look at the damage!![/one_half]

[one_half_last]Millions of holes![/one_half_last]

 

I hope someone can help!! I thought that no insect likes rocket because of the pungent smell. I am sorry to have lost my last rocket bush!

I hope you all have a great gardening week!!

 

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Barbie's garden Home page features Miscellaneous

Spotted an Owl

This beautiful Spotted Eagle Owl was spying on me while I was working in the garden. It looks like we have a pair that are breeding behind our house in the field. I think he was the male because his call was only two “Hoooo hooooooo’s”.  I see a number of owls where we live and are not fussed by us. Our mice have suddenly disappeared since seeing them around.  I found out that these owls nest and bred on the ground – so if you happen to see a baby owl, don’t touch them. They have not fallen from the nest – the nest is on the ground!! A little about these owls:

The Spotted Eagle-Owl (Bubo africanus) is a medium-sized species of owl, one of the smallest of the Eagle owls.  The facial disk is off white to pale ochre and the eyes are yellow. It has prominent ear tufts, and the upper body is dusky brown, the lower parts off-white with brown bars.

Its prey consists of small mammals, birds, insects, frogs, and reptiles. The male will hunt and bring food when the female cannot leave the nest.  An adult pair is typically very aggressive in defence of its hunting territory, and one obstacle for an adolescent to overcome is to find good feeding grounds where there are no incumbent adults to eject or kill it.

The calls are generally typical, musical Eagle-owl hoots. Generally the male call with two hoots: “Hooo hooopoooo” and the female answers with three, with less stress on the middle note: “Hooo hoo hooo”. The young do not hoot till effectively adult, but from a very young age they will hiss threateningly and snap their beaks castanet-like if alarmed.

As with all owls this species, when detected, is subject to daylight harassment by local birds. Spotted Eagle-Owls are regular bathers and during summer thunderstorms may be seen on treelimbs or on the ground with spread wings.

I love my neighbourhood birds!!! What strange birds visit your garden?

Happy gardening xxxx

(Ref: Wikipedia)