Down to the Ground

Diana Noonan is an award-winning writer who combines a life-long passion for food-gardening with a love of foreign places and international cuisine. She has published numerous books and articles on gardening and cooking for both adults and children. Diana lives in The Catlins with her illustrator-husband, Keith Olsen, their two donkeys, a small fleet of pet chooks, and more raised vegie beds that you can shake a stick at!

You can read more about Diana and her gardening adventures on her gardening 4 real blog.

Compost is What You Make It.

Compost can be a great messy pile onto which, haphazardly, you throw everything you pull out of the garden, sweep off the path, or mow off the lawn.

The Perfect Pick-me-up

Gardening is fun, exciting, relaxing and rewarding. It is also, at times, repetitive, exhausting and disappointing. That’s life.

The Wild West Wind

The wind this week is intolerable. It’s blowing the clothes off the line, giving me a headache, and knocking the seedlings for six (especially when combined with warm temperatures).

Re-introducing the … Radish!

We buy the seed and so and grow them, but how many of us actually like radishes?

The Gen on Geraniums

I’m a vegetable gardener – and a busy one at that. This doesn’t mean I can live without flowers.

With Sympathy

I’ve just come inside from inspecting the germination success of my carrots, parsnips and beetroot and I estimate it to be around 100 percent.

Curious Questions

I do a lot of thinking in my garden – a garden is a thinking kind of place. I also do a lot of wondering.

If in Doubt, Rain Dance!

Plants are too precious to loose to drought so, as promised, here are even more ways to quench your garden’s insatiable thirst during the long hot months of summer.

Plant and Protect

It’s sowing and growing time again and if you’ve done a little spadework in the garden and added some compost, animal manure or fertilizer...