Proudly brought to you by Gaby Leone

With the thought in mind that as few resources as possible should leave your property, here’s what to do with them in preparation for your veggie patch.

• Metal: tins, nails, other scrap metal: for the bottom of your trench bed
• Non-glossy newspaper and cardboard– on top of lawn to make up the bottom of your sheet mulching bed and compost heap
• Yoghurt and margarine containers and plastic bottles – punch drainage holes in the bottom and use to grow seedlings
• Dead leaves – for the compost heap, veggie patch and as mulch – carbon-rich
• Wood: logs, branches – burn and place ash onto compost heap – carbon-rich, twigs straight into bed
• Garden plant waste including lawn clippings – nitrogen-rich – for the veggie bed or compost heap or chopped up as mulch
• Uncooked kitchen fruit and veg waste, egg shells, coffee filters and grinds, tea leaves and bags - for the veggie bed or compost heap or chopped up as mulch

Worm bin: If you’re going to make your own compost, you may as well add another ice-cream tub to your kitchen counter décor – marked worm bin! to make your own fertilizer. The beauty of a worm bin is that it provides a way for you to recycle cooked food which is, as you hopefully remember, not suitable for the compost heap. Your earth worms will happily eat their way through your mouldy bread, refrigerator leftovers and even last night’s pizza – they consume up to their own body weight in one day! More about this in a later article.

Water is a topic in itself and we’ll discuss that next time.

At this stage, your family should be highly confused and in need of a formal lecture as to what goes where why persevere through all the groans and accusations that you have gone quite mad. The first home-grown salad will put a quick and neat end to the snide remarks.

Adieu