Encouraging customers.

Today, there were a few people who already knew about minerals for the garden and one even had charcoal in his garden already!
Make soil happy, get happy plants!
Brilliant!!!

Urban agriculture.

Really, everyone should be planting useful and edible plants in their gardens. There are so many beautiful fruit trees and decorative but delicious vegetables to choose from. Theres nothing wrong with a few exotics for show or to attract beneficials and, of course, there needs to be (preferably local) native plants too to support local biodiversity of insects, birds and small reptiles.

Fruit trees have pretty blossoms and if more folk were growing fruit tress and caring for the ones in their garden organically then I suspect that less fruit fly problems would exist, because correct hygiene for fruit fly is quite simple but needs to be done regularly.

With less chemicals for gardens available now and more food gardeners aware of the health benefits of organics there are increasing populations of predatory insects. This year there was a huge aphid population followed within weeks by hundreds of ladybirds and tiny parasitoid wasps. Frogs and small lizards play their part in pest control too, consuming slaters and other bugs.

Some gardeners are getting better ideas.

Ladybird larvae. They eat aphids and other tiny insect pests.
Working in a garden centre, I hear all sorts of funny ideas about gardening but sometimes I do actually encounter folks that have the right attitude toward organic growing. Sometimes this is someone who is aware of using minerals or knows about beneficial insects.
These days we sell minerals and soil bacteria to increase soil health. It's getting easier to advise people to use least-toxic methods rather than head straight for the poisons. I show them ladybird babies and parasitised 'aphid mummies' on the roses. Once the balance of predator insects is in line with the pests there will be less reason to use any chemicals on our food plants.

Water Corp sprinkler restrictions.

Water restrictions for Perth.
In this dry city it is still easy to find people that love to waste water. On the spot fines are being issued for people who use sprinklers outside of their allocated time.
Today it actually rained a bit, but not enough to fix our dry winter.

RIP my old dad

He died last week after a long time of diabetes, kidney and heart problems. We weren't close but I will miss him. I am studying like mad to keep from thinking about it; not sure if that's the best thing to do but it would be stupid to not keep up with my studies. I'm gonna have to make sure I can support myself in the future if I need to. Scary.