Archive for the ‘Soil’ Category

One of the core passions behind setting up my business is to find ways to educate children in not only healthy eating but also education of the food cycle. I am currently training some adults of varying ages in my corporate workplace and not one of them new whether it took a rooster for a chicken to produce eggs. We really have fallen a long way in our understanding of food and the processes involved of where it comes from and how it is produced, packaged and transported to our dining room table. Read the rest of this entry »

The Australian summer is upon us. While I am from the Northern Hemisphere and the 1^st of December is approached with dread (first day of winter), the 1^st of December here in Sydney came crashing through at 32 degrees and a humidity that three years on I still struggle to cope with. It’s not the heat the so much as the stillness of the air, especially down in the city where the noise and the business seem to increase that humidity, even if only in my mind.

As wonderful as the Australian summer is, and I love it, the one thing that always amazes me is how the trees and plants here cope and survive and new growth is born as bush fires, increased through hot winds, sweep through vast parts of the landscape, destroying whatever is in its path. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the earliest lessons to learn when taking up vegetable gardening is to understand the soil you are using. The garden of the property I lived in before my current residence, the soil was so hard and dry that it took a mattock to dig a hole large enough to plant something. When I did manage to bore a hole and plant something, more often than not, the plant would die due to not being able to expand and trenghten its roots. The soil was pure clay and if it wasn’t clay I was trying to break through it was bits of house where the builders had simply dumped their rubbish and thrown down top soil to cover their mess. Clay soil withholds moisture and the roots of the young seedlings do not have the strength to break down the soil and fully establish themselves. Read the rest of this entry »