Moss House has grown from my desire to reconnect to my roots, to these wonderful childhood days spent in rural Poland, tending our vegetable garden, foraging for wild herbs and mushrooms and in autumn preserving hundreds of jars full of summer harvest. This is when I acquired homesteading skills, which I cultivated all my life, growing my family and during years of working in a corporation.
The passion I feel about healthy, natural living has led me to sharing my knowledge and skills with others through workshops designed to empower them and increase confidence in their abilities to live healthier.
Thank you for chatting with me via phone regarding my Slippery Jack questions.
So pleased I discovered your web site .
Look forward to future classes.
Regards Michele
Hi Margaret,
I’ve just started looking at your site, and wishing I could grow a productive garden like yours. I have tried, the possums, bugs or rats eat everything I produce, even the bark on my citrus tree has proved delicious. I’ve grown tomato, (all with bite marks), sweet potato, (eaten to the bottom skin of the tuber and left to die), potato, (comes out mushy, but the rats don’t like it either). Raspberries (full of fruit fly grubs), lettuce (eaten by slugs or snails). The list goes on, and I have pretty much given up on them. Any ideas on keeping the rats and possums at bay?
Kind regards,
Liz
Hi Liz,
There is nothing more disheartening to a gardener than having her crops eaten! In my garden I have both ringtail and brushtail possums, rats and of course insects, but still manage to grow over 100 kg of produce yearly. This is what I do:
Possums: netting fruit trees and vegetables works for me
Rats: trapping to reduce numbers. I do not use poisons because they kill birds that eat rats: owls, hawks and kookaburras
Bugs: I mosty rely on exclusion nets (fine mesh) and biological control (attracting predatory insects, which eat pests such as aphids or caterpillars). My intervention is limited to picking stinkbugs by hand (you could also vacuum them off the trees) and using white oil spray on scale insects.
Snails: I have so many lizards and frogs that I hardly see any snails.
A lot of problems can be caused by microbial imbalance of the soil (easily remedied by making and using compost and worm castings), and lack of crop rotation. Weaker plants succumb easily to diseases and pests.
I would recommend having a look at the Gardening Australia website – they have excellent fact sheets where you can find reliable answers to many gardening problems! http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/
If you live close to Ryde area, I will run a workshop on insects in the garden this Saturday, you could drop in and ask me about your problems http://mosshouse.com.au/natural/events/
Hope this helps
Margaret