Growing with Love is about Caring:
From Cracking Clay to Something Wonderful in 18 months
We founded Australia's first Sustainable Small Farm between 1997 and 2012. After we sold that we bought Good Heart Farm mid 2012 in the beautiful farming area of Lapoinya on the edge of the Tarkine wilderness. I made the first garden here, the Hobbit
garden, thinking we were going to stay in the packing shed but the shed
turned out to be too noisy near the road. So then we moved down the
bottom to the cabin. Of course, I had to make another garden down there
(the Magic Circle garden in 2013).
September 2014 saw Lisa wanting to go to a herb conference in Arizona. I
was against leaving in spring - after all it was a major planting time -
and if we don’t plant we have to buy shop food - yuk! Lisa was
determined to go however, so I said I’d go and protect her (Women! I’m a
sucker, I listened to my heart). Besides, it gave me a chance to hike
the back trails in search of native edibles.
We were going to need to expand the garden anyway. So I built onto the
back of the Circle and made the BC (Behind Circle) garden.
It took about three days.
We were about to leave - the day before I planted the beds out to potatoes - just finishing mulching before we left. Close call.
This is what it looked like in November 2014.
and December 2014
January 2015
We ate a lot of potatoes that year! In fact we were sick of potatoes.
Luckily I had good lettuce and peas in the Magic Circle to break the
monotony.
Later in the year my goodly neighbour, Stan, then gave us, you guessed it, sacks of spuds! I thanked him.
January 2016 - and we’d had very little rain all winter and spring. It
turned out to be drought. The ground (clay loam) cracked, nobody had any
grass - it was the worst drought this area had ever known. Wisely, I
left some beds in the circle unplanted - I figured I might not have the
water to water the crops with and as it turned out I was right. We had
drought followed by 100 bushfires burning throughout Tassie. I watered
all my beds in the BCg by hand with watering cans.
But inside the fence was a different matter. This is how it looked on the 29 January 2016.
Yes, an explosion of Food!
The yellow vine above is Dutch Purple podded peas ripening - pea soup in winter - yum.
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| Lisa in the corn 16feb16 |
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Cucumbers and squash above
A heritage cherry tomato here - planted late on the back fence. Had about 200 off two bushes.
Pumpkins growing 21st Feb 16
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| "Pumpkin!" |
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The harvest basket 23 Feb 16. Button squash (Patterson Panache Juane et verte), cherry toms and purple beans.
First of March
and the pumpkins are still exploding and threatening to take over the whole valley
Time to harvest some (no frost yet but somethings starting to gnaw one - so time to come out just in case)
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| 7 March 2016 |
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This was in the driest summer ever and watered with watering cans. No
poisons or chemical sprays - totally organic - you CAN do it.
I call this Self-Sufficient Gardening™. It works.
If you want to learn how to grow with love please contact us at
Good Heart School of Self-Sufficiency™
Hope to see you there!
