DIY Window Herb Garden

I love cooking with fresh ingredients so have had setting up a herb garden on my to-do list for a while.

In the past my herbs have sat outside, but this usually results in them getting feasted on my the punk teenage possums that live in the tree next door.

This time round I hatched a plan to keep my herbs possum-safe and close at hand for when I am cooking.

I don't have much space in my kitchen so getting the pots up off my counter was essential. This is a very easy project and I finished it in a couple of hours.

Step 1

Measure up your window and cut a piece of dowel to fit. Make sure the dowel is thick enough to bear the weight of the plants you are going to hang there.

Step 2

Measure out the number of hooks you will need for your pots and space them out out evenly. Cup hooks are easy to screw in by hand. To make it easier hammer a guide hole (usually only 2-3 taps then take the nail out) and use pliers to twist the hook in once it gets too tight for you.

Alternatively you can use s-hooks - no screwing in of hooks necessary!

Step 3

Measure up your window sill how high you want your pots. Remember your pots will hang lower than the dowel and you want them to be at a comfortable height to access the pots, but not so low they are in your way - especially if they are over your sink.

Drill in curtain brackets on either side of the window and place your dowel in the brackets.

Step 4

You can purchase pots that are designed to be hung from hooks, but if you don't have these you will need to drill your own holes. Ensure the hole is big enough for your hook and they are in the same place on each pot to keep them hanging straight.

Steer clear of ceramic or glass pots (if you are drilling your own holes) as you are likely to have a broken pot instead of one with a hole in it. I used galvanised metal pots from ikea, but you could also use plastic ones.

 Step 5

Pot up your herbs in pots that will fit inside your hanging pots. You don't want to pot them straight in there for a couple of reasons:

1. You won't have drainage (believe me, you don't want your pots dripping water all over your kitchen) so your herbs will get way too soggy and will die.

2. While your herbs will do well in a sunny window eventually you are going to have to give them a holiday outdoors. Or if they are annuals you will just compost them and replace. This is much easier if you can just take the interior pot out.

Ta-da

Now you have your kitchen herb garden. I have been using my fresh herbs regularly in my cooking and nothing tastes as good as food you have cooked with fresh herbs, especially ones you grew yourself.

Some tips - I have got another group of herbs outside (in a place where the possums can't get them) ready to swap over when my indoor herbs are ready to replace. This rotation schedule makes it easier to keep your indoor kitchen herb garden looking fresh all year round.

DIY Terrarium

My bathroom was in desperate need of some greenery so it was time to knock me up some terrarium.

The only thing I had to buy was the sphagnum moss so this whole project only cost me $10, and I'll be able to use the moss for other potting projects.

You will need...

1. A glass jar, vase, bowl or any other vessel to plant your plants in

2. Some rocks, pebbles or sand for drainage

3. Sphagnum moss

4. Potting mix

5. Some little plants - cacti, succulents, ferns and moss are perfect

6. Little things for decoration - pretty rocks, shells or ornaments are perfect

and... 7. If you are putting a lid on your terrarium you will need some charcoal to help filter the air

I had a glass jar that was given to me years ago. The paint's been progressively chipping off and the lid got broken somewhere along the way so it seemed like the perfect option for my terrarium.

I scraped off the remaining paint with a blade and cleaned it up ready to go.

Add a layer of rocks, pebbles or sand.

(If you are putting a lid on your terrarium add your layer of charcoal next)

Add a layer of sphagnum moss.

Add a layer of potting mix.

I took some cuttings from a few rangy succulents that are on my list of garden to-do's on the holidays and planted these in the potting mix.

Tip - use a pencil or stick to poke a hole in the potting mix first so you don't damage the bottom of your cutting when pressing it into the soil

I added my two little ornaments: a rabbit my Aunt brought me back from Greece and a tiger I bought in Japan - very international.

Water your plants in with a little amount of water and you are done. Easy!

 Perfect for my bathroom

Happy DIY'ing

I made an orchid!

It seems a cruel twist of fate that my mother who has the greenest thumbs in all the land has created an offspring who just has to look at foliage and watch it wilt.

My garden is as dead as dead could be. I am in the process of trying to bring it back to life, but at the moment it's in the stage where I get depressed going outside. 

But apparently I am learning! Or orchids just like to be left to their own devices (I suspect its the later). 

Years ago my mum gave me an orchid she had found deposited in a tree on her footpath by a friendly neighbour. I diligently bought some orchid mix, planted it up and duly forgot about it. It was quite happy to sit in its pot staying not-dead and not-flowering and I was happy to accept this arrangement.

Then a couple of weeks ago two big green sprouts came out of it and I didn't dare to hope they were flower spikes but it turned out they were! And now I have two amazing sprays of flowers in my brown backyard.

Don't ask me what species it is - it's flowering and that's all that I care about :)

Let me know if you have any miraculous gardening stories

edit - had to look it up. I think it's Oncidium altissimum. Let me know if that's wrong

Pizza Oven Weekend

Last Christmas my dad received this book from my Aunt - which I think was a not so subtle hint that she was expecting many fresh pizzas during future visits.

But my dad and I have been steadily progressing this year with building a pizza oven in their backyard. This has required a lot of heavy lifting and has taught me that I can actually lay bricks and that my dad and I work pretty well together.

We were hoping to have the main dome finished this weekend but rain set in and put a stop to our work. So we've got about 2 rows of  bricks left before we can use it as an actual pizza oven.

Saturday morning did not start off well. It had rained all night and didn't look like it was clearing up any time soon. Still - at least the view was nice.

The pizza oven was where we left it last time we worked on it. The arch had been completed and we had done three rows of the dome. But with a giant hole in the top our oven was still more of a fire pit. Dad and I crossed our fingers that the rain would clear and had a cup of coffee in the meantime.

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Mum's garden was enjoying the rain more than we were.

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When the rain cleared up we managed to get another row of bricks on the oven. The next stage is a bit more fiddly. Now that the bricks are hanging over the gap, there is too much gravity working against them so the mortar won't hold it up.

We placed a slat of mdf on some buckets and used a weak mortar to make a false dome that would hold up the rest of the dome.

This would usually take about an hour to dry, but with the weather it didn't look promising.

We prepared for more rain over night and crossed our fingers again for sunny weather on Sunday.

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Hooray! A promising sight for a days work.

The top of the dome is probably the most fiddly of all the work we've done. Each brick now needs to be cut to size in order to fit in the gap left by the last brick.

Dad working on cutting each brick to size. This process took a while and slowed us down considerably.

So this is about as far as we got by Sunday lunchtime when it started to rain again.

There is only a little hole left to fill up at the top and we will have the inside dome ready for firing. Stay tuned for the next update.

Mum's nosy chickens.