Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue#7.2 - 2016 i Good Organic Gardening

Within days of Jo Immig filing her piece on microplastics in our oceans and all the horrors that entails, the ABC ran a story on the same subject in its Catalyst program. The program showed how the levels found in the bodies of sea creatures were measurable and scary, providing yet more bad news about our food sources and cause to think more deeply about food safety. And what can be safer than growing your own? So what are we growing in the pages of this issue? Jennifer Stackhouse writes on sweet potato, olives, cauliflower and mushrooms, as well as clever crops jaboticaba and marrowfat peas — the kind used for English-style mushy peas and Japanese wasabi peas. Meanwhile, Melissa King says it’s time to plant sage and oregano, flavours…

Jaboticabas are strange fruit to see growing. They form in bubbling clusters along the stem and branches of this rainforest tree from Brazil. The species name cauliflora describes this habit, which is also known as cauliflory. “Cauliflory” is a word botanists use to describe plants that cut out the middleman — the stem or shoot — when it comes time for buds to form. It literally means stem flower. Many rainforest trees are cauliflorous, including some of Australia’s figs and lilly pillies such as Syzygium moorei and S. cormiflorum. This type of flowering is a clever adaptation as it allows the plant to make use of small animals as pollinators. Small pollinating animals can easily access the flowers as they climb up the trunk and along the main branches, while…

Garlic (Allium sativum), onion’s pungent and spicy relative, carries a heady whiff of folklore as well as the musty smell of many scientific studies — and that’s a combination we like. When science backs up traditional beliefs about the benefits of a food, then it’s fairly safe to say it’s something you want to eat plenty of. To give an example, John Newton writes in The Roots of Civilisation, “Its presence in Gerard’s Herball, 1597, with ‘figge leaves and cumin ... against the biting of the mouse’ only confirms modern science’s view of it as a strong antimicrobial agent.” Of course, the belief that the so-called “stinking rose” can ward off vampires and werewolves has no foundation in science — but it’s good to know it’s there if you need…

Morag Gamble’s passion for gardening came from her dad’s interest in permaculture. Her mother and grandfather also grew a range of edibles as well as native species for wildlife and there were always a few hand-raised chooks and fruit trees. Morag’s imagination was really fired, though, when a small group got together in the heart of Brisbane to start a community garden, which was to become the well-known and well-loved Northey Street City Farm (nscf.org.au). Now, with her partner, Evan Raymond, and their three children, Maia, Hugh and Monty, Morag tends an acre of subtropical heaven in the idyllic surrounds of Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, located near Conondale in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. The main garden takes up a quarter-acre on a tricky 1:5 slope, so Morag and Evan built…

There are varieties of salvia that you would grow for flowers alone, but common sage (Salvia off icinalis) is a tough, attractive herb that deserves a place in both the garden and the kitchen. It has lovely silver-grey leaves and spikes of violet flowers, which appear in late spring. The wonderfully aromatic leaves pair well with veal, poultry, sausages and pork dishes. It’s also an essential ingredient in a good turkey stuff ing. The leaves are intensely flavoured, so a little goes a long way and you only need a few leaves to enhance a dish. Sage is native to the Mediterranean and grows best in full sun with good drainage. If drainage is poor, dig plenty of compost through the soil or grow plants in a goodquality mix in…

Growing some of your own food has to be one of the most rewarding things you can do. Not only does picking handfuls of vegies such as leafy greens and cherry tomatoes or even a few sprigs of rosemary for your kitchen give you the freshest produce around, but you’re also likely to eat more vegies if you grow them yourself. So, if you’re keen on starting your own vegie and herb patch but not sure where to begin, read on. To some extent, there is always a bit of trial and error in food gardening as it’s not possible to know what the weather will do each season or how well things will go in your particular location until you’ve tried them. But proper planning will ensure more hits…

Mushroom kits make it possible to not only have a supply of fresh, organic mushrooms on hand, but also to grow some of the more expensive and hard-to-get varieties. Grow-your-own mushroom kits have been around for decades. My mother used to buy them regularly when we were kids. She usually kept the bag or box in our garage where it took on an air of mystery. We enjoyed watching the pinprick-sized mushrooms appear in mushroom compost then seeing them grow to full mushroom size in a matter of days — sometimes even overnight. Picking them, too, was fun, as was eating homegrown mushrooms on toast for breakfast. Growing from a kit Mushroom kits are pretty foolproof. Most contain mushroom compost that’s been inoculated with mushroom mycelium. You bring them home…

Composting made simple Everyone hates smelly council bins full of maggots and rotting old food. But how do you get rid of ALL this waste without the hard work of conventional composters? Simple. Plant a few Compots around your garden, rotate filling them with all your kitchen waste (including meat, citrus, onions, oil, dairy, doggie doo or anything biodegradable) and let nature do the rest. No turning, no hard work — just fill, forget and refill whenever you have more waste. In contrast to conventional composters, you don’t need to wait for everything to decompose before you top it again; just keep topping it up and it will look after itself. It couldn’t get much easier than that. And you get beautiful, rich garden soil, create a little ecosystem in…

Every time we are in the tinned-food section of the supermarket, my English-born husband scans the shelves looking hopefully for mushy peas. They’ve long disappeared from the shelves of our supermarket but recent news suggests these peas may have a clever future ahead. Mushy peas are made from a large, starchy pea developed for canning. You may have eaten them with a pie floater — a meat pie served on a bed of peas — or accompanying fish and chips. Mushy peas are at the opposite end of the pea spectrum from the fresh green baby peas or sugar snaps grown by most gardeners. As well as being suited to canning, it turns out that marrowfat, or marafat peas as they are known, can be eaten as a snack food.…

The persimmon’s botanical name, Diospyros, means “food of the gods” and the ripe fruit certainly is heavenly. Persimmons are oldfashioned beauties that deserve a place in the modern garden and kitchen. They are treasured trees that are both productive and beautiful, laden with attractive, brightly coloured fruit at a time of year when the garden could really do with a lift. The fruit arrives in autumn when the tree’s foliage also changes colour to vibrant shades of yellow and red, so you get double the enjoyment. The fruit on many varieties then hangs around well into winter, dangling off bare branches, so it’s one of the prettiest trees around at this time of year. There are two main types of persimmons: the original or astringent and the sweet or non-astringent…

For about four years now, Phil and Carmel Pate have been living on 10 acres near the town of Kingaroy in south-east Queensland. Phil is a jack-of-all-trades and his work ethic and design are based on attention to detail. A man with a vision, his dream is to create a landscape that’s at once visually beautiful, productive, attractive to wildlife and a place of healing. Having grown up on the land, Carmel is not afraid of hard work. She enjoys working with soil and plants and helps Phil with the physical labour in all their endeavours. Both of them love the land and the creatures they share it with. “When we first moved here, we took out all the barbed-wire fences,” recalls Carmel. “They were everywhere, ringbarking some trees. It…

Vegetables COOL & TEMPERATE For a productive but trouble-free vegie patch over winter, concentrate on fast croppers such as snow peas and Asian greens, including Chinese cabbage and bok choy, along with more traditional crops such as English spinach. Keep everything growing well with weekly feeds of organic liquid fertiliser. Most pests and diseases take a break over winter, but the cabbage white butterflies are about. Hand-pick and squash any of their green caterpillars. In areas with wet winters, also check for snails and slugs. Use traps to catch these slimy visitors. Squash or dispose of snails and slugs in a bucket of salty water. TROPICAL In many ways, winter is a top time to grow crops in hot zones. Pests and diseases are less of a problem and milder…

I’d like to think that our values as a society are poised at the tipping point, ready to find value in what is no longer deemed useful and usually consigned to the garbage tip. That doesn’t mean we must embrace as gold the hoarded mountain behind the shed; rather, we can sort the valuable from the junk and, in the process, find all kinds of treasure we can incorporate into our garden designs to create a look that is distinctive and uniquely our own. When deciding what is treasure, what is trash and what someone else could put to better use, I look to see if the item meets one of the following criteria: Sentimental attachment: If there are positive memories associated with an object, it’s valuable and worth some…

Did you know? Sweet potato is often known by its Maori name of kumara and is widely grown throughout the Pacific. These vegies, however, are not native to the Pacific but have spread there from Central and South America perhaps more than 1000 years ago. The lumpy sweet potato tuber that you are chopping up to make soup or to add to the roasting pan gives no hint at all about the plant that grew it. Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a relative of the familiar blueflowered weed known as morning glory. It has heart-shaped leaves and spreads across the ground as a trailing plant. Don’t panic, though. Sweet potato doesn’t get out of hand like its weedy relative but it does like room to spread. It can be grown…

Sometimes, what you see really is what you get. The Farmer’s Place is a good example of the old phrase, “truth in advertising”. It’s a small working farm, cafe and farmers’ market in Freshwater Creek in Victoria, 15 minutes southwest of Geelong and the Great Ocean Road. A family business owned and operated by Robert Pascoe, his wife, Fiona, and children, Amelia, Louis and Charlie, The Farmer’s Place comprises about two acres of raised garden beds, orchards and planted mounds. By autumn 2016, with the preparation of new gardens, the acreage under cultivation was expected to double. Robert is a lifelong gardener. “There have been lots of farmers in the family,” he says. “My grandparents always had vegetable gardens, so there’s a long family history and a passion for sustainable…

Versatility in the kitchen combined with good looks and ease of cultivation makes oregano a must-have herb for the garden and decorative pots. Grow it and you’ll be surprised by how much you use it. It’s the go-to herb for flavouring homemade pizza and pasta and its sweet, spicy scent and slightly bitter flavour make it the perfect complement to meat and poultry dishes. The name originates from two Greek words that mean “joy of the mountains”. I’ve seen it growing wild on the mountain slopes of Greece in tough conditions so, not surprisingly, it’s a low-maintenance plant that stands up well to heat and drought. In the garden, it’s an attractive, wonderfully scented herb with trailing growth and pretty white or purple flowers. Oregano can be grown from seed,…

Each June, at its biodynamic medicinal plant garden in Schwäbisch Gmünd in southern Germany, the company Weleda hand-harvests more than 14 tonnes of calendula blossoms. The healing properties of calendula (or marigold) flowers, recognised since ancient times, are the basis for nearly 30 Weleda pharmaceuticals, natural cosmetics and baby-care products. Named after the Celtic goddess of wisdom and healing, Weleda was founded in Switzerland in 1921 under the combined influences of Dr Ita Wegman and Austrian scientist-philosopher Dr Rudolf Steiner, the father of Steiner Schools, biodynamics and a branch of philosophy he called anthroposophy. Together, they explored how, with a bit of stimulation, the human body is actually remarkably adept at healing itself. Weleda’s holistic pharmaceutical products are based on the understanding that medicine provides the crucial stimulus to kick-start…

Cauliflowers are delicious comfort food to enjoy in winter and early spring, but they’re not the easiest of vegetables to grow to perfection. Often, home garden results are less than perfect. We are used to buying impeccable creamy heads in the vegie shop, but we can struggle to get our homegrown crops to look as good. The white head of cauliflower is a flower or at least a mass of tiny immature buds in one large clump. The flower head — known as the curd — forms best when temperatures are cool, which is why it’s most successfully grown through autumn and winter following a late spring or summer planting. Problems encountered when growing cauliflowers in the garden include discoloured curds (they may be yellowish), hollow stems and insect damage…

Did you know? Olive leaves are traditionally a symbol of peace. Olives are widely planted in gardens and are not always grown for their fruit. This productive, long-lived evergreen tree from the Mediterranean becomes gnarled in old age. Across Europe, there’s a lively trade in venerable olives, which are now in high demand as landscaping plants. Many of these trees are more than 80 years old and some could be as much as 500 to 700 years old and weigh up to four tonnes. As young trees, olives are valued in gardens for their good looks and heat and drought tolerance. Young olive trees have slender trunks and silver-green leaves. Reaching 5–7m high, they’re used as shade trees or as windbreak plantings. They are also grown as potted plants. Fruit…