Carrying on from the post on sowing seeds yesterday, I'd like to add the following vital information.  While the seed is still covered with soil, it does not need anything other than moisture and warmth to make it grow.  However, when the seed germinates and sends up green shoots, it will need bright light as well.  When it gets a little bigger, the plant will need food; the energy in the seed will be exhausted.  Then you should start your fertilising schedule.  When you plant the seedlings out, there should be abundant food in the soil in the form of compost, manures and castings, or whatever it is you've decided to use on your plants.  That should be in the soil.  While the seedling is still in the tray, you'll need to feed it - there is very little nutrient in seed raising mix, sand or vermiculite.

We only ever use organic fertilisers here - either bought from the nursery or homemade.  Generally when our seedlings are still in their trays, we fertilise them with weak fish emulsion, weak liquid blood and bone OR weak comfrey or worm tea (homemade). Not all of them, choose one.  Comfrey or worm tea is an excellent choice for both leafy green vegies and for fruiting ones, like cucumbers and capsicums/peppers. Fish emulsion and liquid blood and bone will put on healthy growth on your green leafy vegetables.  I never go by the container recommendations on the fertiliser, I make up a 50% solution and apply it twice as often.  For instance, if your fertiliser instructions recommend making up a 10 litre/quart watering can with two caps of fertiliser concentrate and apply it fortnightly, I would make up a watering can with one cap full of concentrate and apply it weekly.

A tray of tomato seedlings, newly emerged.  At this stage they need no fertiliser but strong light.  Enough light so a shadow is cast.

So, now on to tomatoes.  Forget what I said above about fertilisers, tomatoes are different.  I picked up this way of growing tomatoes from Peter Cundall, surely Australia's master vegetable gardener.  I plant the seeds as normal and wait for germination.  When the plant has grown to be about two inches above the top of the soil, I transplant it to a slightly bigger pot, fertilising with comfrey and a pinch of sulphate of potash (it's organic).  Each time I transplant, I also water the plants with seaweed tea - this helps significantly with translpant shock. I wait again and when it grows another inch or two, I transplant it again to a larger pot - each time I remove the bottom leaves and bury the plant deep, and water with seaweed tea  You can do this with very few plants, it would kill most of them.  But tomatoes have the ability to produce more roots along their main stem and the more roots you have on a tomatoes, if you grow a healthy plant, the more fruit it will produce.  Tomatoes also like being slightly root bound.

You keep your tomatoes seedlings going like this until they're strong and healthy and when they flower, you plant them in the garden - again, deep in the soil into which a pinch of sulphate of potash has been added.  You might even bury half the stem and have the top half of the tomatoes about the soil.  Put the stakes in before you plant the seedlings so you don't damage the roots by doing it later.  If the plant is big enough, tie it to the stake straight away.  Remove any axis shoots because if you allow them to grow, they'll make a very bushy plant and you'll get fewer tomatoes.

 When you transplant again to a larger pot, pinch or cut off the lower leaves.

Once you've planted the tomatoes out and tied them to their stakes, mulch heavily with straw or hay, packing it in around the stem and up about three inches.  Again, most plants would hate this but tomatoes thrive with this treatment. Water the mulch well without watering the tomatoes leaves.  Always water tomatoes from below, never over the top of the plant. Splashing mud onto leaves with the hose will encourage disease.  If you mulch well, the tomatoes will send more roots out into the mulch.  Do not over fertilise tomatoes with nitrogen, it will make the bush grow like mad but you'll get almost no tomatoes.  Make sure you keep staking and keep the branches off the ground.  When the tomatoes are big enough, pick them still green, and ripen them in the house, out of the sun.  They will develop their full flavour that way and be out of harm's way.

Tomatoes suffer from a disease called blossom end rot which is caused by inconsistent watering, resulting in a lack of calcium in the plants.  You'll see a big circle that runs around the blossom end of the fruit.  To avoid this, set up a watering schedule so your plants get consistent watering and don't suffer periods of dry.

So, my friends, that's one of many ways of growing tomatoes.  I'm sure you won't be disappointed if you try it.  Just think of all those delicious tomato sandwiches and jars of tomato relish standing like jewels in your cupboard.  Mmmmm.  If you're growing heirlooms this year, don't forget to keep your very best tomato to save seeds from.  Yes, I know it's a huge sacrifice to save THE best, but you want to pass on THE best seeds.

If I were a betting woman, which I'm not, I'd bet that almost all our gardeners here would be growing tomatoes at some times during the season.  Who will be growing tomatoes and what varieties are you growing?

We've been slowed down by the rain but it's not stopped us, nothing can.  We're now in our planting season, getting our new season garden going for the year ahead, and seeds need to be planted.  Hanno started this season off by enriching the soil with cow manure, worm castings and compost.  He does it every year and often between crops as well by digging out a hole and replacing the soil with a rich mix of compost and aged manure.  In the world of the vegetable seedling, nothing helps them more than good soil.  If you're gardening for the first time this year, or the hundredth, that is your starting point.

There are many seeds you can plant straight into the soil, but others benefit from being grown in a container in sheltered conditions, and then being planted as a seedling.  The main one of these is the tomato.  You will get more tomatoes if you plant them as seedlings and I'll show you how to do that later.  Root vegetables like carrots, radishes, parsnips, turnips and legumes - peas and beans, are best planted directed into the soil.  For the rest of  your seeds, be guided by the instructions on the seed packet and if you're an experienced gardener, by your own experience.  We prefer to raise lettuce, capsicum, cabbage, leek, cucumber and celery seeds in trays and plant them out when they're ready.  We over-plant seeds so we can choose the strongest looking seedling and discard the weak ones. If you want a very orderly garden, you'll benefit from planting seedlings rather than seeds in the garden because with seeds you either over or under plant, and some seeds don't germinate and you're left with an empty space.  Planting from a seedling tray will allow you to plant out the garden exactly to your liking.

When planting seeds in trays, use a good quality potting mix, not potting or garden soil.  You need a mix that is open and drains perfectly, with no lumps of bark or charcoal that will stop a tiny seedling from emerging.  It's quite easy to make your own seed raising mix, but I prefer to buy mine already made. Fill the trays, poke your finger into each cell to flatten the soil slightly, then top up the cell with the mix again.  Plant according to the instructions on the packet.  Generally, the rule of thumb is the larger the seed the deeper it's planted.  So for a seed that is tiny, you'd only have to place them on the top of the soil and scatter seed rasing mix over the top to cover them and pat down.  For a larger seed, plant it at twice its size - so a seed that is ½ mm would be planted 1 mm deep and a 1 mm seed would be planted 2mm deep.  Pat the soil down over the top so the seed stays where it is planted, then gently water in.  Don't do that with the hose, it's too forceful, get yourself a plastic spray bottle and use that.  It will take a while to completely wet the soil, but that's what it takes - gardening will help you slow down.  The seed and all the soil in the cell needs to be saturated, and then the water should freely drain away, leaving a moist seed and cell.  The water is what causes the seed to germinate.

Once the tray has been planted up, you must keep it moist. Seedlings don't cope well if you let them dry out.  Give them a good spray of water every day.  Seeds contain everything, except water, to make them grow, they don't need fertiliser.  Once the true leaves appear, you can gently fertilise them, but not before.

If you're using new seeds, you should be fine as long as you checked the use by date on them.  If you're using older seeds that you've had for a while, or those given to you by a friend or seed swapper. you can test them for viability before you plant them to make sure they'll germinate.  I wrote about how to do that two years ago, here.

If you plant by the moon, and that really does work and make sense, there are moon phase calendars to be guided by, just google "moon phases London" or wherever you are and you'll find a moon calendar to help with your planting.  In Australia, the planting time for March will start next week with the new moon on Monday 15 March.  Here is a moon planting guide.

When planting seeds directly into the garden, most seeds can be planted, in dry soil, watered in and then left to be watered again each day until the seedling emerges.  The seeds of legumes need to be treated a bit differently. When planting peas or beans, water the ground well before you plant the seeds.  Then, planting according to the spacing on the seed packet, place the seeds into the moist soil.  Don't water again until you see the new shoot emerge.

When you plant as many seeds as you need and have some left over, most seeds can be kept for another time.  Wrap them up again in the packaging they came in, making sure they can't fall from their packets, and put them in a glass jar - recycled of course - and put the jar in the fridge.  Seeds stored in the way will last a few years.

This post is getting too long so I'll write about tomato seeds and seedlings tomorrow.  We all still have a week before we need to plant according to the moon.  I have a very good Australian gardening book by Lyn Bagnell what speaks of moon planting.  If you can get a copy, it's worth the read.  I believe Lyn's book to be the best Australian vegetable gardening book.  Lyn has her own   informative blog as well, you can find her here.

This week will be an excellent time to plan, collect and prepare your seeds.  If you're a new gardener, it would be a good idea for you to draw a garden plan.  Don't be too ambitious in your first year - there is hard work ahead.  We mindful of the time you have and don't make the task to difficult for yourself.  Gardening can be a wonderful and creative use of your time, but overdoing it will make you resent the first time you picked up a spade.

Even without the overcast sky I think it would have been cooler this weekend.  We've passed through the time when hot turns to warm and now we're getting closer to when warm becomes cool.  Perfect!  I want it to be March and April all year.  Hanno and I had a traditional, for us, Sunday.  He ventured out to the wet and squelchy garden to put up trellises for the cucumbers, I baked and did some sewing.  All in all it was a lovely day.

I had been meaning to use up some of the delicious chocolate the people at Green and Black sent me before Christmas.  I'd already given some to Shane and Kerry, and made some chocolate mousse, then forgot to take photos of it. Yesterday, in my celebration of quiet domestic Australian Sunday, I made choc chip biscuits.  It was an easy task because I already had the cookie dough made and frozen, all I had to do was defrost and chop.

The cookie dough I used is the cheap and easy recipe I found at the down to earth forum which I think is an old Australian recipe from many moons ago. When I make this recipe I always halve it and have the second half in the freezer for a month or so:

Makes 7-8 dozen, cook for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 180C

500 grams butter (approx 1.1 lb)
1 can condensed milk (390-400 gram) - my homemade condensed milk recipe is here.
1 cup sugar
5 cups self raising flour (or all purpose flour and baking powder)

With the dough already in hand, it was simply a matter of chopping the chocolate - I used the deliciously bitter sweet 70 percent dark chocolate with a small hand full of mixed nuts - brazils, hazels, almonds, cashews, macadamias.  Mixed together and flattened out with my hands on the kitchen bench, it only took a few minutes and they were in the oven.

Ten minutes later the house filled with the aroma of freshly made biscuits and Sunday was smelling the way it should smell.  There are two aromas that make a real domestic Sunday - baking biscuits or cake and roasting meat.  We had roast chicken for dinner.  Lunch was a tuna, tomato and onion pumpernickel sandwich and a still warm from the oven biscuit and black tea.  Delicious! 

Just after lunch, I planted some vegetable seeds and looked around my bush house where I put sick plants to recover, grow my orchids, and keep new seedlings.  There has been so much rain, moss is growing on the benches and all my watering containers were full of rain water.  Not that I needed to use them with the plants still saturated and growing wildly.  It was a real treat to be surrounded by new growth and the promise of new life.  So many things are made possible with abundant water.  I checked all the water containers and found cane toad tadpoles in one so I tipped them out and made a mental note to return before the week was up to use the water before mosquitoes have the chance to hatch.  This year has been the worst one yet for mosquitoes.

All in all it was a lazy day with things being done when I felt like doing them. The bed was made in the afternoon when I started to think about sleeping in an unmade bed, no floors were swept and the laundry stayed unwashed for another day.  In the afternoon, while the chicken started roasting, we watched a documentary about happiness.  Bliss!  I hope you enjoyed your weekend and that the week ahead is a productive and rewarding one for all of us.

"Enclosed are a few pictures of my kitchen.  We built our home from the ground up and moved into it three years ago.  It was a giant undertaking but worth the effort in the end.  Our kitchen is open to the great room and includes a dining area; all of which are the 'hub' of our home.

The built in spice cabinet is actually a vintage ironing board cupboard that I refurbished with paint, new hardware, and glass shelves.  It's perfect for storing large jars by freeing up valuable pantry/cupboard space, all the while keeping the spices cool.  Living in North Idaho, USA, we often have moose and other wild game to view while we enjoy our meals at the kitchen table.  Keeping the critters out of my garden is a non-stop effort! "

If I could, I would send all of you the magic words that would change your life to what you wish it to be.  I don't have those magic powers, all I can do is write what I know and hope that the way you understand those words helps you towards a better life.  The best I can do today is to say: slow down.   I received an email from a reader saying that she wanted the kind of life I'm living but doesn't know how to go about it. I wrote back to ask if she'd read the 2007 parts of the blog where I write about budgeting, paying down debt, housework, gardening, slowing down and being at home.  That explains how I came to this life and the closest thing I've written to the kind of guide she was looking for.  She wrote back asking if I could condense it for her.

No, I can't.

Everyone who reads here can take what they need from what I write, but what I hope everyone gets is that we all have to take the time to slow down and at every opportunity, add value to our day.  I add value to my hours by knitting, gardening, reading, sitting, talking, listening, watching and being still.  We can all carry out the tasks of a simple home and live a more simple life by cooking from scratch, sewing and mending, making green cleaners, baking and gardening.  That's the easy bit, although it takes persistence and the energy to do it every day.  The more difficult bit is to connect the dots and to make those simple tasks mean something to you so you enjoy doing those tasks on a daily basis.  The way I do that is to slow down, think about why I'm working in a particular way and to consciously enjoy what I'm doing.  Sewing isn't just sewing, cooking isn't just combining ingredients in a pan, I think about why I'm sewing, who I'm sewing for and how I can make it special, not just for them but for me too.  I feel the fabric, admire the colour combinations and take my time.  I don't want to rush anything.  I want the act of sewing to add value to my day.

There are no condensed versions of a slower and simpler life.  You have to live the full measure of it.  It is a life long process  - a journey with no end.  If you look for short cuts you will short change yourself because the point is not to get to the end fast or with more chickens or loaves of bread baked, it's to enjoy the journey.

Hello everyone!  Today's kitchen belongs to Jen who lives in Michigan.  She has added a nice touch that I've never seen in any other kitchen.  Well done, Jen!

She writes:

"I'm really excited to share my photos as we recently did a little fixing up of our kitchen. Ours is a small space, about 9'x11', so it is difficult to get good pictures of it, but I hope these will work for you.

The first picture shows the kitchen sink, and the main part of the kitchen. The cabinets in this area are original to the house (1950's) and are metal. I love them. With so little storage space, many of my cooking utensils are out in the open and easy to grab. The red skillet hanging above the stove is cast iron. I am just learning to cook with cast iron.

The cabinets and countertop next to the refrigerator are new; we installed them ourselves. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find metal cabinets to match the originals. These were stock, unfinished cabinets from Home Depot and I painted them the same color as the old ones and hope they blend OK. We used to have open shelving in this area and it was difficult to keep things looking neat. I am happy that things are contained now and that I have a bit more counterspace.  We were unable to match the cabinet hardware on our old cabinets, so we decided to upgrade all the cabinet hardware so it would match. I love the new knobs and pulls - it is surprising how it modernized and pulled the space together.

The magnetic spice containers on the fridge were a Christmas gift and allowed me to free up a lot of space in one of my cabinets - important in such a small kitchen. You can see my apron hanging on the side of the fridge. You can also see from the picture that yes,  I have a chandelier in my kitchen. :) I think it is a fun and unexpected addition to a hard-working space."

I think most of us become more selective as we age.  When I was younger I wanted to experience everything I could so I would know rather than surmise. I'm happy enough now to leave things I'm not interested in.  The ability and the sense to do that came to me with age, although I think many people are like that all through life.  Now, at this point in life I know that it would have been prudent to choose a husband who possessed skills that would compliment, and not duplicate, mine.  If I were looking for a husband now, the colour of his eyes wouldn't matter, I would want to know if he could successfully raise an organic vegetable garden.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the truth is I was rarely prudent in my younger years and when Hanno wandered into my life I never once thought of any of those practical considerations, I just loved him.  I was more concerned with what was in his heart rather than in his bank account.

When I hang clothes or towels, the frame sits on its own legs.  When I have sheets on the line, we use a little steel support to hold the line up a bit.

Now it's a bonus to me that he is multiskilled.  Not only does he possess the skills of his former trade - mechanics, he can turn his hand to most things in the home.  He can make furniture, repair the roof, rewire a lamp, unblock the plumbing, fix the car and cook delicious potato pancakes.  I think I hit the jackpot.

It just pulls down from the roof where it sits when not in use.

A while ago, I asked Hanno to make me an all weather washing line.  I wanted something better than the rope line we had strung up on the back verandah.  I wanted a line that I could use when it was raining, that was ready to go all the time but would be out of the way.  I needed a line that I could reach without stretching and one that would hold a full load of washing.  That was the brief - it's been delivered.

When the washing is dry, the frame is lifted up to the roof again, out of the way.

Even though it was some time ago that I asked for this washing line, Hanno did start working on it almost immediately.  We settled on a steel frame that would be able to hold a full wash and last a long time but we had no way of welding the pieces together.  Luckily for us, our neighbour John just bought a new welder. Hanno and John put the line together on the weekend and the ideal testing weather promptly arrived soon after.  Five inches of rain fell yesterday, much less that what was predicted - 12 inches, but a real soaking nonetheless.  I pulled the line down from where it is safely tucked away, pegged on the laundry and stood back to admire the scene.  There are a few things that really improve with age, a capable husband is one of them.  Thank you Hanno (and John).