Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue #12.3- 2021 i Good Organic Gardening

Yes, we’re fatter. We usually pack it on over winter preparing extra pages for spring and summer but now there’s a new section drawn from our sister publication WellBeing, Australia’s foremost natural health magazine. We believe caring about personal and planetary wellbeing, enjoying a connection with nature and tending a garden with love and care are interconnected ways of being in the world. So we hope you enjoy the wellbeing pages along with the usual gardening inspiration you’ve come to expect. So what gardening inspiration do we have? Lots. Jennifer Stackhouse has some intriguing clever crops in Lagos spinach and green papaya. The latter is still pawpaw but it’s about when you pick it and how you use it: especially useful for those who don’t favour ripe tropical fruit flavours…

Papaya is best known as a delicious and refreshing orange-coloured tropical fruit with black seeds. Also called pawpaw, it can be pricy to buy at the shops so, if you live in a warm climate and enjoy papaya for breakfast or in a fruit salad, it’s worth giving it garden room. Plants can produce fruit year round. Usually eaten when soft and ripe, papaya is also used as a vegetable while the fruit is still green and the flesh inside is white. It’s popular in tangy Asian salads and stir-fries. Once hard to find, green papaya is now often available at the supermarket — but, if you enjoy it, grow your own. Although unripe, green papaya is packed with nutritional goodies including high levels of potassium and papain as well…

A mainstay of French cuisine and the basis of the classic omelette, fines herbes traditionally comprise parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil, a relative of parsley. The delicately balanced combination was first identified in 1903 by famed chef Auguste Escoffier and later endorsed by no less an authority than the culinary encyclopaedia Larousse Gastronomique, which in 1938 deplored the practice of passing off as omelette aux fines herbes a dish garnished with just parsley. The one thing chefs agree on is that fines herbes must be assembled fresh and chopped with a sharp knife — never a food processor, which introduces air into the herbs and alters their aroma. Dried herbs are a no-no. Unless homegrown, fresh chervil in particular can be very hard to find and is practically tasteless when…

Dalyellup Beach, where the Indian Ocean meets the Tuart Forest just south of Bunbury and two-and-a-half hours southwest of Perth, is that rare Australian location that experiences four seasons a year. Living so close to the beach, Joyce Jordan says the sun shines there no matter what the season. Even when it rains, which is usually in winter, there’s a warm breeze from the ocean. Autumn is cool and spring is beautiful, with light breezes and warm sun. Not that she’s always there. Joyce is a crew trainer at a lithium mine in the red dust of Marble Bar, where she drives trucks and trains crew. With temperatures as high as 50°C, the Pilbara mining town rejoices in the title “the hottest place in Australia”. When not flying out of…

What’s the best way to design a food garden? In the natural world, form follows function, so the way things appear reflects what they’re intended to do. Likewise, the optimal design of a garden should mirror its purpose and function — assuming there is one to begin with. Productive gardens all perform the same activity, which is the provision of food, but their design can be radically different, depending on their function — how they’re used and the reason for growing food. THE PURPOSE OF FOOD GARDENS The cultivation of food crops can be an end in itself but this activity can also be performed for various other outcomes. Home gardens usually produce food for personal use, often to support a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle and provide increased self-reliance. Urban…

SEASOL LAWN + SOIL BOOSTER Awaken your lawn and soil this spring with Seasol Lawn + Soil Booster. It’s the natural pelletised solution for your lawn’s health. It contains a rich source of natural ingredients, seaweed and compost to boost soil health and growth in all lawns, including Buffalo. Perfect to use throughout the year, in spring it helps to revitalise tired soils, ready for lush, green growth. seasol.com.au GREENLINES THREE-TIERED STEEL PLANTER Perfect for a compact kitchen garden or a stunning flower display, this steel three-tiered planter can even accommodate a small citrus tree in the main ring. The planters are made to order in different sizes and are now offered in a square design. These “rusty” Redcor® steel planters are a practical and easy way to add that…

MARCH OF THE SLIME MOULDS Have you ever seen a yellow, grey or brown mass of slimy, frothy or powdery material suddenly appear on your soil, lawn or mulch? Chances are it could be a slime mould. Slime moulds are generally found in moist areas where they feed on bacteria, fungi and decaying organic matter. They were originally considered to be fungi (hence their name), then animals, but are now placed in the kingdom Protista. Protists are simple eukaryotic organisms, meaning they have a membrane-enclosed nucleus and organelles but are not plants nor animals — nor fungi. Sarah Lloyd, one of Australia’s leading experts on slime moulds, has documented 2000 individual examples representing about 120 species in Tasmania alone. There are 260 identified species in Australia but new ones are…

This is a plant with lots of common names — one person’s Lagos spinach is another’s feather cockscomb — and the name you use depends on why you’re growing the plant. As the multitude of names suggests, this can be an edible plant or one that’s grown for its ornamental value, as it’s a fast-growing annual with green to red-tinged edible leaves and heads of feathery silver to pink and purple flowers. The leaves are high in antioxidants. It’s widely grown as a leafy green vegetable in Central and West Africa, including Nigeria, where it’s known as soko yokoto, which apparently means “make husbands fat and happy”. I’m relying here on secondary sources as I couldn’t get Google Translate to come up with any English equivalent for the Yoruba words,…

Hamlyn Heights perches on a windy ridge overlooking Geelong’s Corio Bay. Named after 1940s resident Sidney Hamlyn, the suburb is noted as the childhood home of actor Guy Pearce, whose international career began in the cast of Neighbours. How appropriate then that Dr Saranyu Pearson is such a good neighbour. As a holistic veterinarian, she runs her practice Paws to Heal from her home in Hamlyn Heights, advising her clients on the importance of nutrition and the natural environment to animal health. She’s actively involved with the Sri Chinmoy movement and participates most years in the Sri Chinmoy Oneness Home Peace Run, a global torch relay. She’s also a member of Transition Streets Geelong, a community group that fosters environmental awareness and empowerment through energy self-sufficiency and connection to place…

SEPTEMBER 2021 Spring is the season everyone loves, gardeners and non-gardeners alike. It seems like the whole world is coming to life with new growth and profusions of flowers. OCTOBER 2021 It’s high spring and everything is growing its socks off. Regular feeding, consistent watering and staggered plantings are the keys to a good harvest. When the moon is waxing from new moon to full moon, it is increasing light and drawing sap flow upwards. During the waning from full moon back to new moon, light decreases and sap is drawn downwards. This movement of sap flow has an influence on how well new plants will grow. There are four phases, each lasting seven to eight days. Sowing, planting and taking cuttings should not be done in the 12 hours…

Pumpkin patches are generally messy, sprawling areas where rats often find the fruit before you do. What’s more, the best ones always seem to pop up, inconveniently, in a compost heap with nightmare management issues such as rambling. We have the solution! Not only can you grow pumpkins vertically but you can power-charge them by using organic waste recycled in your compost bin to produce bountiful fruit in a tidy fashion. STRUCTURES TO GROW ON There are myriad structures to grow pumpkins on, from existing vertical arrangements like a pool fence or brick wall to your own pumpkin pyramid. I trained pumpkins onto existing pool-type fencing that divides my orchard from my dog’s play space. An open structure like a pool fence provides premium sun exposure and airflow and has…

COOL & TEMPERATE VEGIES • The air may be warmer but the ground can still be cool. Hold off on mulching new plantings so they get the most from the early spring sun. • Alternatively, if sowing summer crops such as chilli, capsicum, tomato, eggplant, beans, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, zucchini, lettuce and herbs, try warming the soil with a temporary cover of black plastic or use a heated propagation tray. • In areas that are still cold and frost is likely, hold off on warm-season crops. Instead sow broad beans, broccoli, English spinach and rocket. • New shoots are appearing — and so are weed seedlings. Regular hoeing will be needed; later you can mulch to deter weeds around vegies. • Potatoes, beetroot and carrot can be planted in all…

A delicious tropical fruit from South America, the pineapple is the most economically significant plant of the bromeliad family. When this herbaceous perennial blooms with up to 200 flowers per plant, the flowers join together to create the “multiple fruit” we call the pineapple. This fruit is organised into two interlocking spirals: eight in one direction and 13 in the other, a perfect example of Fibonacci numbers. Interestingly, the English word “pineapple” was first recorded to describe a pine cone from a conifer and the tropical fruit was named for its resemblance to a pine cone. The botanical name, however, comes from the South American Tupi word nanas, meaning “excellent fruit”. NUTRITIONAL VALUE One hundred grams of raw pineapple contains about 50 calories. Around 80 per cent is water, 13…

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Some like it hot — do you? If you eat chilli every day, then you’re not alone; one quarter of the world’s population eat chilli at least once a day Despite its current world domination, until 1492 chilli wasn’t grown or eaten outside of Central and South America, where there is evidence of its cultivation and consumption for 8000-plus years. It’s thanks to Christopher Columbus’ spice-seeking travels and adventurous Portuguese traders that chillies spread around the world and the global obsession with this fiery fruit began. The compound in chillies that gives them their burn is capsaicin which, when ingested, triggers pain receptors in our body, alerting it to a dangerous physical heat. It’s the same mechanism that helps us know to drop a hot pan if we hold onto…

When Kylie and Steve Stapleton decided to turn their garden in Brisbane’s northern suburbs into an edible forest, one of the first trees they planted was carambola, also known as starfruit — so naturally they named their little piece of paradise The Green Carambola. The Southeast Asian native isn’t the only tropical exotic growing in profusion on their 612sqm block. There’s also black sapote — a South American persimmon sometimes called chocolate pudding fruit — and New Guinea bean, which is neither from New Guinea nor a bean but a vigorous African climber that produces a long, pale-green gourd somewhere between a squash and a zucchini. This so-called bottle gourd, a cucurbit also called calabash and used in West Africa to make eating utensils and musical instruments, shares space with…

It may be part of permaculture ethos to have plants in your garden that have more than one purpose but, really, it’s just common sense and good, sustainable garden design to have such a planting palette. It’s good not only for a productive backyard but also a garden that’s practical, creates habitat and more. So why shouldn’t a hedge have more than one purpose? Most of us who plant a hedge want it to act as screening from unwanted views or to create privacy. Hedges can also have a design perspective, defining garden spaces to create separate rooms and guide visitors through them. They can also be used as living fences on the boundaries of your property. Hedges, formal and informal, can be used as windbreaks. They can also be…

One of the fastest ways to get rid of an insect pest that’s feeding on your plant is to squash it — but what if you can’t find the pest or there are just too many to squash? Most gardeners would opt for a safe, organic method to get rid of pest insects. The good news is there are three ways to beat pests on your plants: exclusion or physical methods, organic pesticides and biological controls. 1 Exclusion It’s easy to physically protect the plant from the pest by using exclusion netting. This may range from a fruit cage to permanently protect fruiting plants, temporary netting over ripening fruit or a mesh bag over individual fruits or clusters. Fine mesh can also be used to exclude white butterflies from brassica…

We know it’s unwise to count chickens before they hatch but if you can get the fertile egg selection right, you may achieve a full hatch. Boost your chances with some effort. It’s not enough to aim for fertile eggs; you want a setting that’s chock-a-block with nutrients from fit, stress-free hens. Healthy breeding birds need to be free of ectoparasites. Roosters troubled by lice or mites suffer reduced fertility, so check and treat if necessary — chemical free, of course. Aggressive rooster behaviour is a major stress for hens and this can result in the deposition of corticosterone in eggs. Chicks from such eggs tend to be anxious and slower to learn life skills. A placid rooster is a real asset. With feed, remember you’re supporting both hen and…

COOL & TEMPERATE VEGIES • October is a top month for planting out all potted plants as well as starting seeds or seedlings of summer crops. • Summer crops to plant now include beans, corn, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, tomato and zucchini. In areas that experience late frost, hold off planting out frost-sensitive vegies such as tomato and cucumber. • When sowing or planting, allow plenty of room for each plant to reach its optimum spread. Avoiding overcrowding helps reduce diseases and makes plants easier to manage, so follow recommended spacing. • As well as getting spacing right, train sprawling crops to reduce problems. Tie tomato stems to tall stakes or a trellis and trim excess branching. • Also train climbing beans and cucumbers on a tepee or trellis. Use soft…

Making your own drinks from organic ingredients picked fresh from the garden has multiple benefits. Along with the joy of self-sufficiency and saving money, you know exactly what’s in your glass. There’s less storage and zero food miles from harvest to sip. It’s also another means of experimenting with flavours, obtaining nutrients and staying hydrated. Best of all, you don’t need a huge garden. HOT AND COLD TEAS One of civilisation’s oldest and easiest beverages, teas are infusions of plant ingredients created by steeping leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds or roots in water. Mint is one of humanity’s favourite flavours. Along with its cooling, menthol flavour, peppermint is a traditional treatment for indigestion and colic (it relaxes the digestive tract), fevers and colds. There are, however, many edibles suitable for teas…

POTATO LATKES WITH SMOKED SAUSAGE & SPINACH SERVES 4 Potato-hash pancakes — or latkes in Yiddish — are known as a traditional part of Jewish cuisine. It’s not surprising, therefore, that they are also commonplace in Lithuanian cooking, since Lithuania (like many Eastern European countries) had a huge Jewish community prior to World War II. For hundreds of years, recipes, ingredients and techniques were shared in a way that makes tracing their origins impossible; luckily, it’s also unnecessary. Likewise, I find it unnecessary to peel the potatoes unless they are looking a bit worse for wear. Some may find the kielbasa sausage a surprising addition here, given the Jewish name of this dish, but it’s delicious! You can, of course, use kosher sausage instead, if you prefer. INGREDIENTS • 50g…

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