No-dig gardening. Its inventor’s unclear. Wikipedia mentions [1] Japanese Masanobu Fukuoka, American Ruth Stout, and Australian Esther Dean [sic, Deans]. For reasons unclear, I’m an inveterate tiller. But last Sunday Sweetheart Vivienne and I began our first ‘no-dig’ garden bed. Or more precisely, its derivative called ‘sheet mulching’ [2]. We started our new garden bed in our orchard where there’s some spare space protected from possums, wallabies and wombats. First we laid down, straight on the grass, a thick cover of newspaper. It should have been wetted first, but with two inches (49mm) of rain in the prior 24 hours, the ground was wet already. Then on top of the newspaper we spread a thick layer of hay. Actually it was the hay from our round bales [3] that the sheep and goats had left because they’d trampled it and pissed and shat on it. The trampling and piss and shit make it perfect for sheet mulching. We want to extend the new bed three times the length of last Sunday’s tranche. We’ll leave it to mature for 6-8 weeks. Hopefully it’ll stay wet courtesy of late winter and early spring rain. Then we’ll enrich it with some compost and maybe some Dynamic Lifter too. We haven’t finally decided what to plant there yet. But we’re tending towards potatoes and pumpkins. It feels great to be using newspaper and waste hay in this way. This is a work-in-progress, folks. Stay tuned.

Eradicating unwanted house guests

When I was a nipper I loved Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Mighty Mouse. But I don’t love mice in my house. Where there are at least two right now. They’re the first mice in our house since we moved in 7½ years ago. I’ve no idea how they got in. Until now I considered our house mouse-proof. But clearly now it’s not. Unless, as I surmise, they entered through a temporarily open door. I’ll never know. I first became aware of them a week ago – via visual and olfactory cues in the pantry. Sweetheart Vivienne says there are always more mice than you see. She also told me poison’s the first line of attack. So a week ago I put down four bromadiolone [1] bait blocks. And I also removed all food from the pantry, leaving only canned and bottled food. But the mice continue nibbling at the bait blocks. So yesterday I upped the ante and bought a couple of mousetraps. Not your common wooden ones, mind you. Rather, safe n’ sure ones [2]. The box blurb says it’s ‘Truly a better mousetrap!’ – because stealing bait’s impossible, it snaps shut with more force than a wooden trap does without breaking the mouse’s skin, you don’t touch the dead mouse when releasing it, and after rinsing the trap in warm soapy water it’s ready for re-use. The best mousetrap bait? I don’t know. But I’m trying peanut butter first. This is work in progress, folks. Click on the Comments (below) for updates.