Birds are often the culprits for excavating new seeds; and small rodents. One system which may work for you is to get some small mesh 'chicken' wire to put over a row of wire hoops pushed well into the ground. Fasten the wire to the hoops. When the plants are up you can either leave the protection there until you're ready to harves - or move the wire across to a new site. (Aside: if you have found a source of trashed supermarket trolleys those baskets make very good protection for young plants and small patches of strawberries ;-) ) For the euc's: ask on the Australia forum. There are many species of Eucalyptus. Bear in mind that if you get more rain than the Blue Mountains your plants are going to grow much faster. For the tomatoes - generous holes with the soil well-mixed with plenty of compost, a stake or other means of support, and the recommended serving of fertiliser, followed by reliable watering. A trickle system would probably work well and ensure that the leaves aren't left damp. For soil-planted plants - you might want to investigate what it would take to install a watering system on an automatic timer. Trickle is probably more economical and effective than sprinklers as such. For plants you're growing on, or house plants - might be worth looking at capillary watering pads. (More forums to look at!) PS unless you have access to vast amounts of material - and mechanical assistance - your compost heaps will never supply all the organic stuff you'll want in your garden. It pays to allocate a chunk of the garden budget for buying in. If you develop the habit of always adding a couple of gallons of compost to the soil whenever you put in a new permanent plant - and a six inch layer when you renew your beds for annuals and bulbs your soil will steadily improve and so will the water-holding capacity. Mix it through rather than burying a layer. In some soils buried compost can become a toxic mess. Clay can be particularly bad this way. Keep the humus in the top six inches. If you're not home often enough to water things week by week - a deep watering and a hefty mulch layer can help plants carry over. Usually established plants will be fine. It's just the new ones that are making roots to escape from the root ball that can seriously suffer. Bare-rooted planting can take a year or so to create a decent root mass. With that in mind you might want to work a patch at a time to give the high intensity care needed to get plants well-established.

Patrina, I really do live a pretty Spartan existence...don't think I could afford a dehydrator and severe doubts as to whether my solar power could drive one anyway... My dehydrator consists of 2 framed flyscreens, sandwiching the preferred produce, left atop an old 44 gallon drum outside in a Mudgee Summer...successful last year with about 5 kilos of tomatoes and 3 shoe-boxes full of dried chillies! Like you, I have one litre bottles of olive oil, one each with chillies, toms, rosemary, garlic...another with garlic and fetta cheese (yum!). The sqash are outside sunning themselves as we speak...and wouldn't you know it, thunderstorms predicted for next 4 days! Still, rather have the rain than the dehydration (cough, cough...). Regards, Shax

Hi Jampolk The aphids you are experiencing (any aphids)do not attack healthy Brassicas until they begin to set seed. At this stage the plant is extracting its nutrition from the plant bulk and storing it in the developing seeds...to make for happy healthy babies...at which stage the first of the decomposing organisms begin to do the job they were designed to do...ie decompose the dying plant The aphids are the first wave of that system If you are experiencing aphid attack prior to complete maturity of the plant,then you have a sickly plant...ie there is not enough (complete)nutrient in your soil...or your soil is out of balance...meaning some nutrients (although they are there) are not available to the plant and it is starving because of that imbalance Now you can use sprays to kill off your "pests" but these sprays (even organically based ones) are poisonous and will exacerbate the situation It is interesting to note that nowadays farmers (and gardeners too I would imagine) lose more produce to pests (anually) than they did before the advent of chemical sprays The simplest way to make your plants healthy is to increase the level of humus in the soil...this humus (decomposed organic matter) is full of micro-organisms that actually attack fungal and bacterial plant pathogens as well as bonding with the plant roots and assisting with the uptake of nutrients...they even stimulate the plant to increase root forking and generating root growth thus making your plants healthier as well as more resistant to pathogenic attack All this is a bit late for your broccoli now but if you decide to attack these aphids you could begin (if you haven't already done so) the downward spiraling cycle of soil infertility...despite the imaginary belief that you can pump it up with soluble chemicals good luck with what you do anyway cheers Peter

Hi Guys Just a note of caution regarding the use of straw in No dig gardens...the quality of soil produced from decomposed organic matter is related to the qhality of the organic matter it is sourced from when plants (say a grain such as oats) reaches maturity it will begin to extract the nutrients in the leaves and stem and transfer these nutrients into the developing seeds If the farmer then comes along and cuts these seeds and sells you the resulting stems then you get poor nutrients and this can cause deficiencies in your soil On the other hand if you are using hay yoju get the seeds as well and as such you get the "wholefood" so to speak...you actually get all the nutrients the plant ever had Sure some "Gardening Gurus" will tell you to..."Never use hay because you get a lot of weed seeds") but if you are mulching over your mulch...as is the no dig method then you just mulch these "weeds" down...or harvest them for breakfast and you get a really good soil building up I would never buy straw because for the same cost (or cheaper) you can get spoiled hay But that is just my opinion on this and I rarely ever buy any mulch at all...preferring to grow my own...its even cheaper...of course there are times (especially when creating a new garden) I would like to get some feedback on the above comments...especially from those who disagree cheers Peter