“ You don't have a slug excess, you've got a duck deficit! ”  This quote by permaculturist Bill Mollison pretty much sums up our approach to ‘pests’ in the garden. Best way to manage them is to have a diverse garden that welcomes creatures who will eat the pests for you!

We had a timely reminder of this lesson this week. The ever expanding population of little vinegar flies hanging around in our compost bin was becoming a bit too much for my liking, especially after one flew up my nose! However I soon noticed this little grey fantail sitting on the fence, repeatedly darting out and doing a circle above the compost bin before returning to his spot. Then the light bulb switched on – he was having a feast on the vinegar flies! All afternoon he feasted, must have eaten a hundred or so of them. And today he’s back again. It’s natural pest management in motion!

The better we create a diverse ecosystem in our yard that welcomes local wildlife, the better we can keep ‘problem’ species under control – see ecological gardening for more thoughts on how we’re going about this.

Hi, I'm Gruma and this is my mate Charma, nice to meet you! We’re the first two girls to move in to ‘Happy Earth.’

We’re silkies, gorgeously fluffy and very cute if we do say so ourselves. We’re from Kembla Grange, so it wasn’t a long trip to move here which was nice. Can’t wait till we’re a bit older (we’re 9 weeks now) and can get out and free range around this backyard – it’s incredible! Lush green ground covers as far as you can see, including heaps of chickweed, our favourite! We’re lucky we get fed lots of greens along with our grains, and we even get hand picked slugs on a plate of nasturtium leaf for extra protein. These guys are so nuts about fresh food and fruit, they even named us after the South American fruit tree - Grumichama!

We think we’ll like it here, things are looking pretty good – we’ll let you know how things progress hey.

 Catch you later :)

With cosy sleeping quarters, a spacious area for scratching around amongst green prunings, their own water tank and a five star eco rating (all made from recycled materials of course!) we’ve got chickens and ducks from across the country signing up to get in to our newly built chicken house!

 

At the moment the likely lucky girls selected for the spring housewarming party are (drum roll please!)….two silky chooks (charming nature and gorgeous fluffy factor), two Australorp chooks (strong work ethic and impressive laying abilities), and two Khaki Campbells ducks (sweet nature and reputation as good small backyard garden companions). They’ll be our first backyard ‘girls’ so please let us know of any advice, recommendations of different breeds to go with, or locals from whom we could get our lucky girls – thanks!