Sewing. Motherhood. Domestic Engineering.

Guest Blog by CartBox   CartBox specialises in cooking, baking and all things Asian :) Click the CartBox link to the right to see all of her other guest blogs. I recently bought a plant for my bedroom. It's called Baby Panda or  Pogonatherum paniceum. It's a perfect indoor plant and adapts to low light in a bathroom or high light on a window sill. So it seems perfect for my bedroom, but I do take it outside for a daily dose of sunshine because I don't really get any in my bedroom. Baby Panda likes a lot of water, so it likes to sit in a saucer of water. No need to worry about over watering. And t he pot I chose is perfect because you poor the water into a small hole at the back and it feeds back up to the plant.

Ever seen a bug or beetle and wonder what it was or be really annoyed by a bug or beetle infestation and wanted to be able to identify it so you can find it's weaknesses? Well here is a cool website - What Bug is that? - that can help you identify bugs and beetles in Australia thanks to the CSIRO. What got me onto this is a super annoying bug that was infesting the office at work and I just could not believe that they just kept on coming back. So after a little bit of googling I found the CSIRO website and following the propts I am fairly certain that I have got the bug I'm looking for....the Milkweed bug :) They hang around where they can find Milkweed flowers...I am 80% sure that we have those in the garden at work. Best way to get rid of the Milkweed bug....crush them. Bring back a bit of that Chuck Norris treatment (like I did with the aphids ) and destroy them. However the work crew get up me for crushing them so I have to release them back into the wild only...

After much trial and error I have deemed this product a fail...BUT...if you want to water your plants over 3ish hours them this will work for you. If you want to water slowly over a few days then this not the product for you. I recently contact the manufacture to find out if there was anything else I could do to make it work. I have recently purchased a number of Holman Adjustable Drip Spikes . I followed the provided instructions and have been unsuccessful in maintaining water in the bottle for more than 3 hours even when the device is set to 9. I have tried having a smaller hole in the bottle and the device is as tight on the bottle as possible . Can you make any suggests to improve this?  I received a very prompt response from Holman tech support: I am very sorry to hear you are having problems with one of our products. It seems like you have done everything right, if it is only lasting three hours this means it is operating on the highest setting and not the min...

Hopefully this is clear enough for you to see. I am trying to work out what the hell is going on with my strawberry plant. Firstly, it had aphids so I sat down, picked of as many aphids as I could and applies a very weak detergent solution to kill the rest. A couple of months later there is this pink/white furry weirdness happening on the top of the leaves but mostly on the bottom. To touch, it is very dry and dusty but the leaves remain hydrated. The plant is still flowering and fruiting, and had full foliage. I've done a bit of googling and reading but hard to know if I'm asking the right questions. If you know what is going on, please post a comment so I can fix it up.

These are the lovely, almost ripe strawberries that I have grown in my veranda garden. I was very proud that I was able to grow them. Them I came out one morning and my strawberries, tomatoes and chillies were ALL GONE! I was really disappointed cause I had done so well. Bede was my first suspect but after interrogations he has been eliminated from my list of suspects :P High on the list are birds (lots on the area), possums (could be living in the massive tree in front of our flat), and bats (plenty getting around, plus warmer weather). I will need to either set up some surveillance or try a few different methods to try and eliminate suspects. Like, netting on the pots, plastic snake, fake owl, and shiny/reflective things. If anyone else know what the hell is eating my garden please let me know. A half eaten strawberry Tomato seeds left all over the place

It's not actually mould. If you look closely it's quite different to mould. It is in fact a build up of salts and minerals . I noticed this on my pot ages ago but wasn't too worried about it as it seemed to have no effect on the plant itself. After a bit of googling, flicking through my gardening books and reflecting on my current gardening practices I'm confidant that it is salt build up. I appears on the base of the pot and over a couple of months I have noticed it "growing" up the sides, but I believe that it can also build up on the top soil. Although I think this may be less noticeable. Commonly caused by the plant and pot becoming water logged - over watered, nutrient fed and poor drainage . This combination of factors has resulted in the plant being unable to draw up any more water and the roots and soil are sitting in the surplus water in the bottom of the pot. How to Get Rid of it Cut down on watering and check if the plant requires watering...

Over a year of gardening is starting to pay off. We did have some harvest last season but this time is expectedly heaps better. Beautiful chillies My special chilli... This is a strawberry flower - very cute Bunch of cherrie tomatoes This is a baby strawberry!!! He has to grow into his seeds :P FINALLY! Rosemary! Have been trying to germinate these seeds for soooooo long.

"Upside down, upside down" ATTENTI ON: THIS COMPETITION HAS CLOSED To win a free Adjustable Drip Spike for your garden all you need to do is be the first person to comment on this post with who said the above quote*.  To read the full post on drip/water spikes click here . *Terms and Conditions: Competition ends Wednesday 31st October 2012 at 11.59pm Australia EST. The prize can only be posted within Australia.

Got these adjustable drip spikes (aka; aqua/water spike) from Bunnings for $1.20 each. There are others available on ebay but these are Holman . Nifty little knick knacks that have some very mixed reviews online. Still running tests to get them to work perfectly. Will provide more information when I have mastered  it. This is how they work... Instructions (or destructions according to Mr Wilson) This is how big they are... Settings for drip rate Everywhere that I looked on the web didn't show these angles. So I wanted to be helpful to everyone else looking for the same thing I was. Gives you an indication of the type of bottle it will fit. These fit standard Australian soft drink and water bottles. "Upside down, upside down" Punch a hole in the base of the bottle. This was done with a skewer but I'm currently trialling using a smaller hole from a sewing pin. Pick somewhere next to the plant (closer is probably better but don'...

My tomato plants have just started fruiting but they look really unhealthy, the leaves are brown like they are burnt or something. Based on what I have read in my books ( Book 1 & Book 2 ) it is not blight or blossom end rot. I suspect it is a water/nutrient deficiency. These plants get a fair bit of sun time and when I go to water them in the afternoon the soil and pots are almost always dry. Solution – I’m going to construct a slow release drip bottle. Check it out....

--> I found these a while ago when I was doing research for my veranda garden. Thought they looked really cute. There are plenty websites with instructions on how to do them yourself OR you can even order them off the internet. The letter and number stamping sets were a lot cheaper than I expected, but still umming and ahhing if I will get one. Can even get punches for little pictures like hearts, dogs, four leaf clover, Christmas shapes etc.

3/5 - This book includes all the information on growing fruit and vegetables but also how to raise chickens, goats, pigs, bees, cows and more. I'm not such a fan of the layout of the book, just a bit all over the place. There is a fair bit on how to design the garden and building things like trellises and frames for vertical plants. A good reference for herbs. It's completely American - so months of the year, regions and plant types will be different for most other parts of the world.

4/5 - I got this from Amazon a while ago after we started gardening on verandah. I really like the layout of the book, it makes sense. And it provides a really good time line for when to plant, and cut back. It's also done by seasons  and not times of the year so no need to convert it for different parts of the world :) I frequently refer to the book when new things happen in the garden or when I want to plant something new. It also has some information on crop rotations and how to prevent certain diseases.

What are aphids? Aphids , also known as plant lice , greenflies , blackflies or whiteflies , are small sap sucking insects, and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea . Aphids are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions (Wikipedia, 2012). Why are they a problem? Because they cause damage to the plants and can spread plant disease. What will they attack? In my garden I have found them on my chilies (this was their favorite and needed the most attention), tomatoes, and parsley. I hear that they also enjoy strawberries, citrus, sugar cane, roses, and potatoes. How do I identify them? You may know that they are getting about your garden when your plants exhibit damage such as, decreased growth rates, mottled leaves, yellowing, stunted growth, curled leaves, browning, wilting, low yields and death (Wiki...

Bede and I started our verandah garden over 12 months ago with just 3 small pots and now I have LOTS more. Some are fully established plants, some juveniles and a couple of seedlings running about :P We live in a smallish rental unit so not a lot of space and can't use any of the shared areas so we sacrifice some of our verandah for garden. Just wanted to share some pictures of the garden and the harvest (however small it is). This is probably tomato (they all got mixed up) when it was a baby... A chilli, something, and basil... My gardens development... ...from plastic plates for bases to actual bases...  I always lines up the seedlings with their corresponding big plant for some reason...  The chillies top left got sick with aphids so they had to look silly for a while with a foil skirt among other treatments ( How to Prevent/Get Rid of Aphids ). And We also added some strawberries which are 2-3 times the size and flowing right now!! A...