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Gidday

Well especially with smaller seeds, you put then on the sticky side in the right spacing for planting, then put a bit of newspaper on when the seeds are dry.

Then come planting time all you need to do is pland the tape and all and water it in. The tape will disintergrate in the damp soil.

Yeah Gidday

Another one down here is the fact the godwits have returned to our harbours from Alaska.
[They migrate in flocks to coastal western Europe, Africa, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Stray birds from Europe and Asia occasionally appear on North American coasts. The Bar-tailed Godwit is the holder of the longest non-stop flight known for any bird, 11,000 km from Alaska to New Zealand (BTO News 258: 3, 2005).]

Gidday

Now those look like some of the best tomatoes I have seen. But nice lookin is one thing, just how good do they taste?

I am very interested in seeing if I could get a packet sent down here.

Gidday

Brenda, just stick your hand into the bale to see if it has cooled down. I have had then so hot that you just don't get your hand very deep before the Ouch!

And second, I normally put 2 spuds per bale but if you look how close my carrots are and they are still a good size then try more.

And Adelita, how is your garden going or haven't you started yet?

Gidday

Hey Crazy, I just got tomatoes in it. They are some I grew from seed and I didn't put enough seeds in so had to plant a few runts as well. That together with the fact that we have had one hellava cold spring and start to out summer they are not doing very good and are very uneven at the mo.

Gidday

Awe shucks, I am getting a bit embarrassed now.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with using last years bales. But just bare in mind if you are using hay, unless it is lucerne or alfalfa there will be thousands of seeds in there and unless you can get the decomposition temperature up high enough they will be all weeds. Your alfalfa bales will probably cost a bit more but they will ba as good as any too.

Gidday

Dap, if I could hurray that damned season up I would.

Here is a brief history of straw bale gardening as I understand it. I first heard of it in the 1980's when I was promoting Sabbatical Fallow at our National Agriculture Fieldays. Some young Jewish people from Israel were fascinated with the Sabbatical Fallow that I was doing and my reasons for doing it, and that's another long story too.

Well these younge people told me about straw bale gardening and showed me some literature about how and why it was done in Israel. When the new nation of Israel was first established in 1949, there was almost no agriculture industry there at all, only large tracts of desert. They had thousands of people flocking into the country and no way of feeding them so had to figure out a way to kick start the production of food.

Out in desert or arid areas where that could get some water, they lay the bales of straw down in rows, on a plastic film. The plastic was to conserve the precious supply of water to stop it just soaking down into the dry soils. It also meant that they could plant in the same area every year without breaking their Sabbatical Fallow traditions whereby the soil had to be rested every seventh year, as the plants weren't actually growing in the soil but on the top of the plastic, killing two birds with one stone.

At the time I heard this, I was living in the North Island where there is very little or no grain grown so that the availability and price of bales of straw meant that it was just something to remember. However I have since found that extremely good results can be got from bales of lucerne or what you call alfala I believe.

So now, in the meantime, you will just have to wait for our spring before I can actually show you what I do.

Gidday

Well very soon now I will be starting a new garden by my tank stand and will be posting photo's as I go. When growing carrots this way the biggest problem is when you try to cut them with a knife they are so crisp that sometimes they actually shatter.

Root crops come out clean as, just a rinse then in the pot, or the mouth, whichever.

Gidday

Well it's 9.45pm here at the mo. I will get one and weigh and mesure it to get a costing from our Post Ofice tomorrow.

Gidday

I was starting to think that I was naughty in posting that.

I made my first prototype about 25 to 30 years ago and apart from using it to water my garden it has just layed around the yard, not even put into a shed but still gets used.

Gidday

Some forms of Kale can take a quite hard frost. We had minus 10C here this year and the only green that took it no worries was a Kale which I have never planted but was here when we came. Quite a colourful looking plant too with shade from deep purple to white.

Gidday

Hey getting back to the original statement, do you jokers over there have what we call a push hoe. It is a small flat hoe that is held parallel to the surface and it is pushed or pulled and cuts the weeds off just under the surface of the soil. I like using it on a hot dry day and the weeds just dry off and never even get picked up and my back hardly bent.

Gidday

Hey Mary, you said , "His wife said to take a gal of white vinegar and two cups of salt, add eight drops of dishwashing detergent, shake and spray the weeds."

I am very interested in that idea. Could you please find out more about it and what it is supposed to kill?

Gidday

Well several months anyway. They don't normally last more than about 6 months before all being eaten so caint say beyond that.

We just bung em into the freezer wit some of the green stuff still on and when they are frozen put them loose into a plastic bag to keep them together. Then we just take a couple out the freezer and bung em into that radiation machine that I normally hate, I think it's call micro wave, and blast the hell out of them for a few minutes each and straight to the plate with the old butter pepper salt etc.