Lifestyle Info

Nothing tastes better than fresh, vine-ripened, juicy tomatoes. They are easy to grow and there are many varieties now available.

Growing tomatoes
Here are some tips to help you grow a bumper crop.
• Plant them in an open, sunny spot. They need about six hours of sun a day.
• Prepare the soil before planting. Roughly dig the area to around 60cm deep and incorporate additional compost to open up the soil. Do not overcrowd as they like a lot of room for their roots to run for stability and access to water and nutrients in stressful periods.
• Do not incorporate excessive amounts of animal manure as high nitrogen levels will encourage leaf growth rather than flower formation.
• Make sure the soil is well-drained. Tomatoes like a soil pH between 6 and 8. If your soil is too acidic, add lime or dolomite. Sprinkle a handful or two per square metre onto the soil before planting. Lime will also help prevent blossom end rot developing.
• Apply an organic mulch to suppress weeds and also to conserve moisture.
• Practise crop rotation. This means avoiding planting tomatoes in the same bed for at least two years (this will reduce disease build-up).

Tomatoes are warm-season, frost-susceptible plants. In cooler areas plant out seedlings after the risk of frost has passed, from September to November.

Varieties to plant - NEW Tomatoberry has sweet, strawberry-shaped fruit on beautiful, long cascading trusses. Use in salads, sauces and lunch box treats. Tomato Truss Plum is vigorous, really tasty and holds well on the vine with fantastic looking trusses of deep red, shiny fruit.

Planting tip: Tomato plants can root along the stem, so seedlings can be planted deeper than normal to encourage a larger root ball and a stable start.

Heirlooms
For old fashioned flavour and sheer spectacle, you can’t go past heirloom varieties. With their wild colours, textures and tastes, they look as good in the garden as they do on the plate They tend to crop over longer periods than hybrids so you get a steady supply of fruit, you can collect the seed to grow next season; Good varieties to try are Green Zebra, Tommy Toe, Tigerella.

Although tomato seeds can be planted direct into the garden, you can have a lot of success sowing into pots or trays of Seed Raising Mix and transplanting when the plants are a few centimetres tall. If you're really keen you can start your tomatoes indoors so they’re ready for planting out when the soil is warmer.

The Selling Houses Australia Extreme team change a rabbit warren layout in episode seven of the hit show.

Address: Balmain, NSW
List Price: Offers over $1,600,000
Sale price: $1,350,000
Makeover budget: $30,000

Story Synopsis

Balmain is one of Sydney’s hottest suburbs with a median house price of well over a million dollars. Normally the most run down of properties will walk off the agencies’ listings so why is this not selling? Is it the fact that the layout is more like a rabbit warren than that of a contemporary home in an upmarket area? With two mortgages costing owners Hazel and Aggi approximately $20,000 a month and now on their 9th real estate agent, they are keener than anyone to work out why their home just won’t sell.

Interior:

This was perhaps one of the most ambitious projects Shaynna had to tackle this series. The property had too many bedrooms and not enough living area, so what was there to do but knock out a few walls? Opening up the living space was really the only solution if Aggi and Hazel’s property was to appeal to family buyers or upmarket professionals.

First thing for Shaynna was to get expert advice from a structural engineer. It cost a whopping $5000 out of her budget, but it was essential to make sure the demolition and rebuild complied with council regulations. As Shaynna was knocking out a load bearing wall, the team had to erect a steel beam to support the second story. These massive structural changes were expensive but necessary to open up the entire house.

Once the walls had come down, Shaynna needed to consolidate the area by making it into one massive room. The easiest way to do that is with a uniform floor covering. It was a shame to cover up the existing floorboards, but by putting down ‘Natural Oak’ wide floating floor from Carpet Call, the rooms now run seamlessly into one another, creating the large living area this property so desperately needed.

Shaynna’s aim for the living area was to keep it as light and bright as possible, so she avoided dark wall colours and chose the creamy Taubmans Endure Interior ‘Sandbar’. This is a great base colour for a period style house like this because it suits the local design trend of mixing the vintage and industrial look.

With the amazing new living space downstairs, Shaynna decided to turn the non-descript upstairs rumpus area into a self contained parents’ retreat. Charlie was roped in for this too, and helped out by fixing up the day seat on the terrace. He used a treated pine decking board and stained it to look like hard wood to save money. To continue the classy feel from the bedroom, Shaynna asked him to repaint the terrace floor in Taubmans Endure Exterior ‘River Birch’. To add some privacy, roll up shade blinds from Blinds Online were installed. With some gorgeous furniture and accessories from Valiant Hire and Spotlight, this whole area was transformed, giving it a real wow factor to set it apart from other properties on the market.

Exterior:

Charlie had only a tiny area to work with in the courtyard. He needed to create a sense of space and started by removing the oversized palms and transplanting them to the front yard. Then he brought in a mini dozer to make short work of the brick garden beds. They were way too big for such a small area and just removing them alone really opened up the outdoor entertaining area.

One risk of having a courtyard garden like this too much hard landscaping, which means there’s nowhere for rain to soak into. To avoid this potential problem Charlie used an economical mix of decogranite and cement from Materials In The Raw to resurface the courtyard.

It was one thing to create some space in the courtyard, but to bring this outdoor area up to scratch, Charlie needed to give it a wow factor. Hanging gardens are a striking way to bring green into a small paved area just like this one. Charlie built a sturdy frame covered with geotextile, and once it was mounted on the wall, filled it with perlite and potting mix from Alpine Nurseries. He chose agaves because they don’t need much maintenance and they look great.

Taubmans colour chart

Interior walls - Interior low sheen “Sandbar”
Interior celings, including Kitchen - Ceiling “Flat White”
Exterior garden wall - Exterior low sheen “Iron Stone”
Exterior garden wall gaps - Exterior low sheen “Twiggy”
Exterior top balcony french doors - Exterior low sheen “Snowy White”
Exterior top balcony floor - Exterior low sheen “River Birch”
Exterior courtyard walls - Exterior low sheen “Coffee Cake”

Worms, vermicast and worm wee are essential elements in a biodynamic soil; a healthy soil full of trace elements and nutrients, ready to encourage strong, vigorous growth, especially in the vegie patch. Worm farming is fun and free! Use worms in the compost to accelerate the composting process or have a completely separate worm farm. Worms work best in a worm farm and it’s a clean, safe way of producing organic nutritious fertilizer for your garden, completely free of charge!

Worm Farm
Open the worm farm and use the wrapping cardboard as the bedding layer. After soaking the coconut fibre block in water, spread this out as the worms bedding. Add 1000 worms and top with a layer of 6 sheets of wet newspaper torn into strips. Wet hessian or carpet is also a suitable blanket.

Think of a worm farm like a worm penthouse – the bottom layer is the toilet where you collect the wonderful worm liquid, the middle layer their loungeroom and the top level is the kitchen where you leave the food.

After 7 to 10 days, start adding the kitchen scraps under the hessian. Add more when the scraps are eaten. It might take a while to really get the worms humming – but when they are, you’ll be able to hear them mulching! Chop up kitchen scraps finely for the worms and feed a little and often. Every time you feed them add a handful of soil – this helps the worms’ digestive system. If the food decays quicker than the worms can process it, it could become smelly, so reduce the amount of scraps. Worms don’t like onions, garlic, meat and citrus.

Place the worm farm in a cool, shaded area, morning sun is fine. Every week flush the system out with 5 litres of water and every month add a handful of garden lime.

Harvest the worm castings by attracting the worms into the top layer with melon (they love rockmelon), then pick up worms into a bucket, remembering not to leave them in the sun. Scrape out the castings and siphon out the worm liquid. Use the liquid diluted 1 to 10 with water and use over the entire garden with this – leaves and all! Provide new bedding for your worms, like wet hay or newspaper and off we go again. Soon you’ll have free food and compost for your garden and a happy family of worms.

During the Ceremony
Plan how you want to interact during your ceremony. Intimate moments can get lost in the scale of a park or beach. Perhaps you'd prefer to maintain a space a little away from your guests to keep a connection between you and your partner.

Love notes
Often the hours before a wedding ceremony are hectic with photographers clicking and family flocking in. Write notes for each other to read just a moment before the wedding ceremony starts that focus you back on each other - be as sincere or as frivolous as you like.

Walk the aisle
Connect with wedding guests before the ceremony starts. Ask them to bring a single stem of their favourite flower or whatever's in season along to the ceremony. While walking down the aisle, collect each bloom, and by the time you've reached your husband-to-be, you'll have an armful of flowers, each with meaning.

Wedding vows
Wedding vows can be solemn, but don't fake lofty ideas of eternal love. This is a declaration of 'us two together', so why not include practical promises in your vows to keep it real. We know a couple who agreed to make a real vow to each other. The groom's promise: to finally get his driver's licence!

Wedding photography
Get the romance burning and the jitters under control with an engagement shoot. The images can be used for save-the-dates, but mostly it's a fun way to spend time together, be creative and take some of the pressure off your wedding day.

Say thanks
Traditionally, bomboniere weren't for theming your tablescape, they were for thanking your guests for their support of. Toss the token lollies but say thank you to your guests in some way, whether it's thank you cards or a gift to thank your wedding guests.