Pick These Veggies Daily
That monster zucchini isn’t a prize. It’s the reason your plant stopped producing.
When a vegetable matures its seeds, the plant gets the signal: mission accomplished, stop flowering. Every day you delay picking, you’re telling the plant to shut down. Pick daily and the plant keeps flowering, fruiting, and producing all season.
The ones that respond most:
– Zucchini — pick at six inches. The baseball bat on the vine is why you haven’t gotten a new one in ten days
– Green beans — snap them off at pencil thickness. Once the seeds harden inside the pod, the plant stops flowering
– Cucumber — check daily. They go from perfect to oversized in forty-eight hours in warm weather. A yellow swollen cucumber is a seed factory and the vine’s signal to quit
– Okra — the tightest window. Three inches is tender. Five inches is woody. Check every day once pods start forming
– Cherry tomato — every ripe one you pick sends a signal through the vine to open new flowers. A cluster of overripe splitting fruit signals the opposite
– Basil — every pinch above a leaf pair turns one stem into two. By midsummer a regularly pinched plant has dozens of stems. An unpinched plant is one tall stalk that flowers and dies
Pick daily. The picking is the trigger
Making Dinner
- 505 g Turkey Mince
- 286 g Half Sweet Potato
- 143 g One Onion
- 409 g 2 Potatoes
- 320 g Head of Broccoli
- 47 g 2 Spring Onions
- 68 g 1 Carrot
- 210 g Pumpkin
- 350 g Can of Corn kernels
- 350 g Can of 4 Bean Mix
- 220 g Half a jar of Patak’s Butter Chicken
- 1 cup Basmati Rice
How To Avoid Being Flooded!
Had an interesting Saturday morning.
My daughter rang me and informed me that the water in the apartment above her was leaking water into her home.
5 phone calls later, not a plumber to be had on a Saturday morning.
Grabbed my old tool box and headed down there. Sure enough, the flexible flickmixer hose between the copper pipe and the faucet had split.
A trip to Bunnings later to purchase a new flickmixer and I started to work on replacing it. Of course the standard tube spanners I bought to do the job did not fit so I had to use the needle nosed pliers and eventually got the retaining nuts off the bolts that held the tap to the sink.
Of course the flexible hose supplied with the tap was not long enough to reach the copper fitted pipe.
Fortunately the original hoses were too short too so plumber had created some extension pipes to cover the shortfall. Easy enough to move them to the new fitting.
And I know I am male and I should not read instructions, it takes all the fun out of it. But, I confess. I did. And I learned something that was not in any homeowners manual I have ever been handed when acquiring a property! LOL!
Flexible hoses should be checked every 6 months and replaced at the end of the warranty period! WOW! My mental file clerk quickly returned incidents of a washing machine pipe bursting, another flickmixer pipe bursting under a kitchen sink… …and I realised this manufacturer speaks sooth!
Fortunately the manufacturer of the mixer I bought has a 15 year warranty. Some have 10 and some have only 5 years.
So I thought I’d share it with you.
You’re welcome!
Quote of the Day
“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”
Albert Schweitzer – Humanitarian (1875 – 1965)
Companions In Pots
Most container gardens fail because the plants in the same pot want different things.
These nine trios are matched by sun, water, and growth habit — a tall thriller at center, a medium filler around it, and a trailing spiller over the edge. Same needs, no competition, every plant earning its space.
The combos:
– The tomato tower — cherry tomato at center, basil filling the middle and repelling pests, nasturtium trailing over the rim and trapping aphids before they reach the tomato. Triple harvest from one pot
– The salsa bowl — jalapeño upright at center, cilantro filling the middle, trailing cherry tomato spilling fruit over the edge. One pot, one recipe
– The pepper trio — bell pepper at center, compact marigolds deterring whiteflies at soil level, sweet potato vine cascading over the edge and covering every inch of exposed soil
– The pollinator pot — tall zinnia for bees, compact salvia for butterflies, trailing alyssum at the rim for beneficial insects. A refueling station in one container
– The herb tower — rosemary standing tall at center, basil bushing around it, thyme creeping over the edge. All Mediterranean, all drought-tolerant, same watering schedule, same cuisine
– The snack pot — cherry tomato fruiting all summer, strawberry producing in flushes, mint trailing over the edge safely contained in the pot. Walk-by snacking from spring to fall
Tall center. Medium middle. Trailing edge. Match the water and the sun for optimum results!
Calcium From Egg Shells
The eggshell you buried beside your tomato plant isn’t sitting there doing nothing. It’s dissolving. Molecule by molecule. And it’s going to keep going for roughly three years.
The first month, the shell is still intact underground. But soil bacteria and organic acids are colonizing the surface and releasing the first calcium into the surrounding moisture. Nearby roots detect it and grow toward the shell.
By year one, freeze-thaw cycles, fungi, and moisture have fragmented the shell. Each fragment exposes fresh surface area. The release accelerates.
By year three, nothing remains but a faint white trace in the soil. The calcium has passed into the cell walls of every plant that rooted near it.
The size controls the speed:
– Whole shell buried near a fruit tree or perennial — delivers calcium for multiple seasons with zero effort
– Crushed to rice-grain size and mixed into the planting hole — releases over a full growing season
– Ground to powder in a blender — dissolves in days. The fast response when blossom end rot appears on your tomatoes
The smaller the piece, the faster the calcium arrives. The bigger the piece, the longer it lasts.
One breakfast eggshell. Three years of delivery.
Plant At This Soil Temperature
Your weather app shows air temperature. Your seeds don’t care about air temperature.
They care about what’s happening four inches below the surface at nine in the morning. A warm afternoon means nothing if the soil is still cold where the seed sits.
One thermometer changes everything. Push it four inches deep, check at 9 AM, and the number tells you exactly what to plant today — not what the calendar says, not what the seed packet suggests, but what the soil is actually ready for.
The short version:
– Cool soil (low 40s) — peas, spinach, radish. These crops prefer cold. Planting them in warm soil actually hurts performance
– Warming soil (around 50) — lettuce, carrots, beets, potatoes. The salad-and-roots window
– Warm soil (low 60s) — transplant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. Below this, their roots can’t absorb water efficiently even if the soil is moist
– Hot soil (upper 60s and above) — beans, cucumbers, squash, melons. Seeds that sit in cold soil for two weeks will germinate in days once the soil catches up
The thermometer costs less than one flat of transplants you’d lose to cold soil. Plant to the thermometer, not the calendar.
Wind Turbine Construction
Ever seen the insane effort it takes to “build green”? Just watch how they pour a SINGLE wind turbine foundation: 600–1,000 TONS of concrete, massive excavation, endless rebar, and heavy machinery tearing up the land for days.
And that’s only the base. The blades? Made with balsa wood stripped from the Amazon rainforest, straight-up deforestation in the name of “saving the planet”.
Then add: • Concrete • Carbon fiber • Steel • Cast iron • Copper • Aluminum • Plus boron, chromium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, nickel & rare earth elements All mined, refined, and shipped with massive energy & pollution.
These things last 25 years max. By 2050 the world will be drowning in 43 million tons of worn-out blades, that’s the weight of 215,000 locomotives headed for landfills (most can’t even be recycled). Oh, and here’s the rest of the ridiculous list:
– They slaughter hundreds of thousands of birds & bats every year
– They only spin when the wind feels like it (so we still need gas/coal plants on standby)
– They chew up huge chunks of land and ruin views for miles
– They’re noisy, expensive to maintain, and require giant subsidies to even exist
– They slaughter hundreds of thousands of birds & bats every year
– They only spin when the wind feels like it (so we still need gas/coal plants on standby)
– They chew up huge chunks of land and ruin views for miles
– They’re noisy, expensive to maintain, and require giant subsidies to even exist
This is “green” energy? We’re destroying rainforests, mining toxic rare earths, pouring planet-warming concrete, and creating mountains of non-recyclable waste… to fight climate change?
It’s completely ridiculous. A multi-trillion-dollar environmental own-goal sold as virtue.
Garden Bed Heights
The most common raised bed mistake happens before a single seed goes in. You pick the height that’s cheapest, not the height that matches the body using it every day for the next ten years.
A 30 cm bed — the default kit at every hardware store — requires a full forward bend to reach the soil. That’s the posture that ends most gardening sessions after twenty minutes.
An 45 cm bed cuts the bending in half. Most gardeners can work for an hour comfortably. Enough depth for carrots, peppers, and most root crops.
A 60 cm bed lets you sit on a stool beside it and work at table height. No crop is limited by depth.
A 90 cm bed changes everything:
– Zero bending. Standing-height planting, weeding, and harvesting.
– A person in a wheelchair can reach the soil from seated position.
– This is the height that turns gardening from something that hurts into something that doesn’t — the reason people who quit can start again.
A 120 cm x 480 cm bed at 30 cm needs about 172 litres of mix. If you fill the whole bed with soil, 60 cm requires double that and 90 cm, the same footprint needs three times that.
The soil budget does not need to scale with the height — plan before you cut wood. Most annual vegetable crops develop the majority of their active root system in the top 15-25 cm (6 to 10 inches) of growing medium. The fine feeder roots that absorb water and nutrients concentrate in the upper portion of the bed where organic matter, biological activity, and oxygen levels are highest. The deeper roots provide anchorage and access water reserves during dry periods but do not contribute significantly to nutrient uptake in the same way the upper feeder roots do.
The bottom layer of a raised bed can be filled with any combination of organic materials that will decompose over time and contribute to the growing medium above. This is the hugelkultur principle applied in a simplified form.
Cardboard: plain cardboard without glossy printing or staples. Breaks down within one season. Suppresses any grass or weeds below the bed. Contributes carbon to the developing soil biology.
Small logs and branches: woody material that decomposes slowly, holding moisture and releasing nutrients over years. Fill loosely to allow settling.
Leaves: autumn leaves either fresh or partially composted. High carbon material that decomposes within one to two seasons. Free from any garden with deciduous trees.
Straw: clean straw, not hay which contains seeds, provides bulk fill that decomposes within one season contributing organic matter to the growing medium above.
Grass clippings: mixed with cardboard or leaves to prevent compacting into a dense mat. High nitrogen material that decomposes rapidly and contributes fertility.
The combination of cardboard at the very base, logs or branches above it, and leaves or straw filling the gaps produces the most biologically active bottom layer with the widest range of decomposition rates and the most significant long-term contribution to the growing medium above.
Match the bed height to the body that uses it. Not the kit that’s on sale.