Roots 'n' Shoots: The last of Summer; Winter preparations 2014

Why is RnS Moving to whiskerflowers.wordpress.com?

Google had brought out an algorithm update in May 2017. With previous updates like Panda or Penguin, Mr G had penalized blogs or websites with low quality content and those more focused on aggressive adverts (including multiple ads or pop-up ads in articles). However, many blogs/websites that weren't shady got penalized beyond recovery too and a lot of people lost their income. The May 2017 update has had wide-scale effect on blogs and websites, but without any explanation from Mr G as to why or what it does. RnS has been hit by it too and hard. RnS organic search stats (i.e. users from Google) have dropped by 75% since. Even though RnS is not a source of income, I tried to figure out why RnS is being culled. It seems that it doesn't really have anything to do with RnS per se, but likely because RnS is FREE and not paying for page ranking (via AdWords or Ad Ranking). Now it is likely being aggressively shoved to lower page rankings to accommodate the paid ads.

I cannot rely on Mr G anymore to get RnS' content where it is needed. So I am busy moving RnS to Wordpress where you can find me as Whisker Flowers @ https://whiskerflowers.wordpress.com/

I am also imposing 301 redirects from already moved posts and pages!

- The Shroom - (AKA Whisker Flowers)

Wednesday, 26 March 2014

The last of Summer; Winter preparations 2014

Summer has ended and for the first time in years we actually have a bit of Autumn (since ~10th March) which is lovely, average day time maximum of 22oC!

I did a last cheeky plant of summer vegetables (during Jan and Feb) seeing that our winters are a bit warmer than usual; so here they are:

Zucchini, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers

Waiting for the tamarillos and raspberries (two true autumn crops) to ripen!

Raspberry and tamarillo

We have had a good pumpkin and winter squash harvest this year and I have several beauties stashed for the winter. Other vegetables we horded and are storing long-term for winter use include sweet potatoes (white and jewel) as well as red and white potatoes! Look at that box of potatoes, complete with packing peanuts J…

Squash and root crops

Winter preparations in the garden has included digging, composting and mulching over my ‘early’ beds. I have potted up some sweet potatoes slips in a sheltered place as insurance for sweet potatoes next summer.

Winter veg garden prep

The ‘late’ beds are still occupied with my last cheeky planting of summer veg. My early bed seedlings have already germinated and include peas, beans, broccoli and Brussels.