Latitude 14 Eastern Australia

[sun burn]

Hi

I'm from North Queensland. I'm so new here, I haven't even looked around yet. It's exciting to find this forum, I must say. I hope to meet and learn from other tropical gardeners especially. Here in the north, we have a monsoon type of climate. My home is by the sea so it gets quite humid. Our winters are mild and tend to be dry.

Like the crazy cellist, I am also a cycle tourist. I'd love to meet any others peddling through the forum too.

I'm just starting out on my first vegetable gardening experience. We have one hectare of land here. Its already planted up with lots of unproductive things and to start off with, I am just planting whereever there is sunshine. As things go on, I will chop down other things cluttering up our patch that are not doing much except preventing the grass from growing and replace with fruit trees.

I hope to grow chickens and ducks but I have to rely on someone with know how to build the house first as I am pretty useless at that sort of thing. I'd have a go if i had plenty of money but I am working on a limited budget.

Today I put in a lot of seeds for the first time, except a few coriander which i noticed have just started to show their little green tops. Which is very thrilling.

I look forward to meeting and mixing in here.
Cheers

[Michaelangelica]

Welcome
A sunny hectare is enough to keep you out of trouble!

As things go on, I will chop down other things cluttering up our patch that are not doing much except preventing the grass from growing and replace with fruit trees.

Yes see my post on what i destroyed today

I hope to grow chickens and ducks but I have to rely on someone with know how to build the house first as I am pretty useless at that sort of thing. I'd have a go if i had plenty of money but I am working on a limited budget.

Have a go at the building thing. You may surprise yourself-- I did.
When I was a kid I couldn't hand my dad a hammer the right way. He could build or make anything. But i quickly got sick of being yelled at and lost interest and confidence in my building ability. When i did build in mud bricks i got advice help, asked a lot of questions, and read a lot. i found that when I had a problem i went of to research an answer,this could take some time. When I got " professional builders" to help me and they ran into a problem they banged a 6" nail into it. "She'll be right" -of course it never was.
You can't do a lot worse than most Australian " professional builders"!

Today I put in a lot of seeds for the first time, except a few coriander which i noticed have just started to show their little green tops. Which is very thrilling.

Yes, every snail will be watching too!.

[aroideana]

Welcome , I find gardening in the tropics so rewarding . SOOO many things will grow very easily , put in bananas and plant any seed of unusual fruits in, as most will grow well and bear fast .

[seed savers]

All you have to do now is to wait till your coriander seeds fall on the fertile ground and a portion of them will come up in their own time or you can just pick them when they are dried to the touch and brown like the one in Indian shops.
Just replant some for plant sake, just to observe what happens, or/and dried them further in an enveloppe with date and name and from how many plants you harvested from. ( will tell you why later) You can share the seeds with friends.... all valuable.
continue the drying process one more week in shady ventilated out of the rain place.
Put in jar if you want for next year IF and only if it is fully dried as they could end up composting in the jar ( it happens) . Will tell you more about storing seed later theory and practices. Michel

[eco4560]

See if you can beg, borrow or steal a copy of the Permaculture Home Garden book by Linda Woodrow. I too am totally useless at building stuff, but even I managed to make her basic chook dome.

[sun burn]

all right I shall look for it.