New post with bee picture

Bee pollinating a eucalypt up at the shops 

A good post on the actual real world length of seed viability. The author is in south california, so is going into winter, but its sowing season in both here and there, and her discussion is good quality -

http://www.gardenbetty.com/2015/03/how-long-do-seeds-really-last-plus-a-cheat-sheet-on-seed-storage-life/

Bought new envirobooks; will discuss later.

Promise of an update

An update -

I took some photos of the garden in around Nov 20 and was planning to post an update. Various things got in the way, so now I've changed tack, and will offer a then and now comparison.

In general the plants are growing well, although the thunderstorm (17mm rain and 80 km winds, probably faster in the garden given the windtunnel effect), with tomato plants (all unstaked) very unhappy. A bit of loose guiding fig-tree branches (which I collected last year) have rectified it, and they seem to have bounced back more or less, and are now mostly flowering.

The success lesson is the placement of frozen snails I collected during an earlier storm and put in the ground in late November - the three plants with that have really bloomed.

 Here's a few uncomparative photos until I get my act together and we have a sunny day here -

This blew over in the storm and had to change location 

around to the other side of the tank.

I got a few potatoes out of the dying yellowing plant, 

and planning another 

pumpkin and mustard-leaf soup today

Sunken garden beds

(Strawberries started producing in the garden)

Ive been looking at sunken gardens, which are particularly apposite for hot places that have problems keeping moisture. Seems that it would work for Australia well.

Here's a comparison to raised beds:

http://www.change-making.com/raised-beds-vs-sunken-beds/

An intelligent outline of the case for it -

http://learningtogardenalloveragain.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/waffle-gardens.html

An easy how-to:

http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/8490/the-roots-of-square-foot-gardening

Here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-GvNbzA_o

The extreme form seems to be Anasazi gardening, which is described as 'waffle' gardening, because of the holes in the ground alternating, which is like a waffle-iron.

http://www.learn2grow.com/gardeningguides/watering/application/SaveWaterOldFashioned.aspx

Some pictures of zuni gardens from before WWII -

http://enclosuretakerefuge.com/tag/waffle-garden/