Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue#6.5 - 2016 i Good Organic Gardening

If I were to give a vegetable an award for cuteness, the mouse melon would win hands down. It looks like a watermelon for the little folk. The small fruit, which are produced prolifically, is light green with darker green stripes, and about 3cm long. Its cuteness makes it highly appealing to children and could entice vegetable-phobic kids to eat their greens. Although known as a melon, it is better described as a tiny cucumber. The fruit is crunchy and can be eaten skin and all. It has a cucumber-like taste with a slight sour kick from the skin. It’s eaten raw like a cucumber, diced as a salsa or sliced and added to a stirfry. I’ve even seen it suggested as a substitute for an olive in a martini!…

There’s hardly a weed that hasn’t been used as food by someone, somewhere. Fennel, which grows in wild profusion all over Sicily, its bright yellow flowers a harbinger of spring, is central to Sicilian cuisine. The Cretans use everything from endives and beet leaves to wild rocket and dandelion greens in their cooking. Other weeds commonly used as food include wild celery, watercress, purslane and borage. And then there’s nettle. Familiarly known as stinging nettle — the fluid in the barb-like hairs on its leaves and stem can inflict a temporary sting — nettle occurs in Australia as native scrub nettle (Urtica incisa) and in introduced European varieties U. dioica (large leaf) and U. urens (small leaf). The sting is intense but short-lived and can be relieved by the application…

Danny grows a great selection of fruit trees and shrubs, including pomegranate, passionfruit, Brazilian guavas, boysenberries, peaches, oranges, limes and lemonades, as well as native hibiscus. Danny and his wife Carolyn have lived near Murgon in southeast Queensland for the past 15 years. Both have a passion for art; while Carolyn loves to draw and paint, Danny creates installations for the garden using recycled materials. He especially loves to collect old electricity post insulators and install them as garden décor. Danny feels sentimental about burning the 100-year old timber. “It’s too sad to burn history,” he says. He’s fascinated by the antique ceramic insulators and says the workmanship in them is incredible: “They look as good as new.” He jokes, “I wish I looked as good at 60 years old.”…

Radishes are fast and easy to grow with colourful roots and a crisp, firm texture that brings crunch and a peppery zing to fresh salads and side dishes. Research different radish varieties and you’ll be surprised by the sheer range you can grow. If you’re after a standard, round, red radish with crisp, white flesh, ‘Early Scarlet Globe’ is a pretty, fast-growing choice. Or for something extra bright in the salad bowl, try ‘Champion’, with cherrycoloured skin and a mild flavour. For an extra big crop of radishes, try ‘Giant of Sicily’ with large red globes that can be harvested 45–55 days after sowing. Then there are decorative varieties like ‘French Breakfast’, which dates back to the 1890s and produces pretty oblong, rose-coloured radishes with white tips, which make an…

Beetroot is related to sugar beet and the amazing mangel-wurzel, which are also grown for their swollen roots, as well as to the more commonly grown leafy vegetables silverbeet and Swiss chard. All are in the plant family Chenopodiaceae, which also accounts for some weeds, including goosefoot (Chenopodium album). Although beetroot is usually thought of as a root vegetable, you can harvest the tender young leaves to add to a salad. Their red stalks and veins add colour to any green salad. Many varieties Beetroot is best known for its round red root, but these vegies come in many shapes and colours and today there are lots of named varieties to buy and grow. They can be large and round, such as the widely grown ‘Derwent Globe’, small and round…

NEWS FROM THE ORGANIGROW FARM Great progress has been made at the Organigrow farm. We have completed the new brooder shed, which is rat-proof and insulated with 200mm of rock wool insulation. It’s now working well, though I still have to put in the final touches of hanging the temperature sensors and completing the automation of vents fans etc. It has cut the gas bill by hundreds of dollars per batch, and thus our CO2 emissions, and protected the chicks from the antechinus, which decimated the last batch we raised in the old brooder. We converted the old brooders into a grower run with new fencing and overhead netting; there’s now almost 5000 square metres of protected area for the growing chicks to run around in. They are having a…

DRAGON FRUIT LABEL Common name: Dragon fruit, pitahaya Botanical name: Hylocereus undatus Family: Cactaceae (cactus family) Requires: Full sun, well-drained soil, regular fertiliser Dislikes: Frost, prolonged cold conditions Suitable for: Trellis, fence, wall, post Habit: Climbing cactus Needs: May need hand pollination Propagation: Cutting (leaf) Difficulty: Easy Ripe dragon fruit are as spectacular as the mouse melon (page 14) is cute: hot pink with lime-green scales. When cut open, the contrast between the pink outer skin and white flesh peppered with tiny black seeds is striking. Because of this eye-catching appearance, they are popular in restaurants and with caterers. These fruits are often first discovered on the fruit platter at a breakfast buffet in a hotel while holidaying in Asia, where they are widely grown and sold at markets and on…

It’s hardly surprising that the heart-shaped strawberry should have such a long and romantic history. Some of the earliest records of strawberries are found in the writings of Roman poets Virgil and Ovid as far back as the 1st century CE. In medieval and Renaissance culture, the fruit embodied goodness and purity and was often depicted as a holy symbol of the Virgin Mary. European aristocracy adored the fruit. Strawberries and cream was a noble indulgence, as were strawberry wine and perfume. For centuries, Europeans ate woodland strawberries (Fragaria vesca) growing wild on the forest floor, but it was sometime in the 1300s that the French began cultivating wild strawberries in the garden. The French king Charles V is even said to have planted a prized strawberry patch in his…

F There are people who like herbs and then there are people who are passionate about herbs — who live herbs. Sandra and Mick Nanka are such people. They grow one of the largest ranges of herbs in Queensland, if not Australia. Self-sufficiency is the backbone of their lives, home and business and what better location for it all than the Gold Coast hinterland in a delightful spot called Mudgeeraba? Sandra and Mick have lived there since 1982; they’ve raised their four sons there. Their home is their haven, filled with love, memories and a garden to soothe the soul and bring joy to their lives every day. The Nankas have created a garden paradise on their half-hectare block and, with a subtropical climate on their side, there’s gardening going…

VEGETABLES COOL & TEMPERATE Avoid the worst of the day’s heat by gardening in the cool of the early morning. Use this time to water and tend crops, check for pests, remove weeds and spot vegetables that are ready to harvest. On very hot days, shade crops to prevent sun damage. Repeat this inspection in the evening, paying particular attention to plants that need extra water. Make sure tomatoes are well watered to avoid blossom-end rot in fruit. If some crops are failing to form fruit — particularly cucurbits, including pumpkins, squash and zucchini — try hand pollination (transferring pollen from male flowers to receptive female flowers). In fruit fly zones, protect all soft vegies (such as tomatoes and capsicum) from fruit fly attack. These pests become more active as…

I strongly believe that in any child’s life, time spent the garden is an important stepping stone to understanding the greater picture of the natural world around them. Our children are the next in line to be the caretakers of this amazing, beautiful, fragile planet we call home. Now, more than ever, there are too many distractions and entertainments that don’t involve nature at all. We are seeing children parked in front of screens for hours on end, resulting in considerable health, mental and weight issues. Nature Deficit Disorder is becoming a thing. And what of the health issues of the planet? If the next generation has no connection to it, how and why will they care? But enough doom and gloom. If you’re reading this magazine you’re on a…

Like our bodies, soil contains billions of bacteria. In fact, they are crucially important to the health of soil as they’re involved in important processes such as breaking down organic matter and converting nitrogen from the atmosphere into plant-available nitrogen. One particularly special soil bacterium is Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring, aerobic, spore-forming bacterium that has insecticidal properties. The history of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is fascinating. A Japanese biologist first identified the bacterium in 1901 while researching the cause of an unknown silkworm disease. Ten years later in 1911, a German scientist rediscovered Bacillus thuringiensis during investigations into a flour moth disease and, by 1920, farmers were using Bt as an insecticide. HOW DOES BT WORK? When the Bt bacteria produce spores they naturally form crystalline proteins (endotoxins) that affect…

I’ve just been standing with a neighbour, Naomi, looking at the remains of her passionfruit vine. It’s a sad sight. What’s left is the unproductive, weedy understock. The productive vine succumbed to a cold snap, but the coldand disease-tolerant understock, Passiflora caerulea, can’t be halted. She has tried tearing it down and digging it out. The latest weapon is the family’s pet lamb, currently feeding around where the passionfruit understock is growing. Before the passionfruit died back, it produced buckets of passionfruit, so Naomi is keen to plant another vine, but she says it won’t be a grafted vine. Grafted vs own roots Passionfruit are usually sold as grafted plants. Grafting makes the vine more tolerant of poor soil and climate conditions but, as Naomi discovered, the graft can become…

SA Joe’s Connected Garden Sat Feb 6 to Sun Feb 7 6 Argent St, Elizabeth South With an amazing collection of temperate and subtropical trees and a large collection of vegetables, this garden is a cornucopia in suburbia. There are no clipped ornamental shrubs but instead well-pruned fruit trees: limes, lemons, figs, loquats and apples are just some of the trees in Joe’s Connected Garden. There are three different blocks and you can travel between the three amazing gardens to enjoy pruning demonstrations, stalls, edible and sustainable gardening talks, and plant sales. opengardensa.org.au QLD 2016 Ginger Flower and Food Festival Fri Jan 22 to Sun Jan 24 The Ginger Factory, 50 Pioneer Rd, Yandina The 20th Ginger Flower and Food Festival will have an exciting lineup of local kitchen masters…

Farouk Khaled marvels at the memory of gardening on his tiny balcony in the Lebanese capital, Beirut — in his words, “an overbuilt, traffic-clogged concrete jungle” of 2 million people. Even in that crowded, war-torn city of high-rise apartments with no yard space, Farouk managed to grow up to 20 vegetables in pots on his balcony under the glaring Mediterranean sun. “We grew what we could,” he says. “Agricultural production was severely disrupted due to ongoing war. Fishmongers were hard up selling their produce but we always managed to buy fresh grapefruit, olives, lemons, potatoes, bananas, limes, oranges and peanuts from the local market stores. “No one has fields or garden beds in the inner city but we considered ourselves pretty lucky to have a balcony garden. What we could…

Plant a crop of lettuce every few weeks and you’ll always have fresh leafy greens at your fingertips. Lettuces are quick and easy to grow and can be planted and picked year round in many areas. So why not fill decorative pots or garden beds with lettuces in every leaf colour and texture? Choose from loose-leaf lettuces that can be picked leaf by leaf as you need them or hearting varieties that form dense heads of leaves and are harvested in one chop. The best-known hearting lettuce has to be ‘Iceberg’, which has crisp, succulent green leaves with a mild flavour that complements everything from sung choi bao to the good old Aussie prawn cocktail. I like to grow the loose-leaf lettuce types, which can be picked on demand, like…

VEGETABLES COOL & TEMPERATE In addition to daily watering, liquid-feed leafy vegies each week with organic plant food to keep plants actively growing. Leafy crops such as lettuce and parsley may bolt (that is, begin to flower and seed) if allowed to dry out or become stressed. As hot days continue, shade crops to prevent sun damage and allow new plantings to establish. Seedlings are particularly vulnerable to sudden hot temperatures or drying winds. Continue to make the most of the cool of the morning and evening to tend crops. Stay on top of pests, diseases and weeds by inspecting plants daily and taking fast action when anything damaging is seen. Search for 28-spotted ladybirds and pumpkin beetles that skeletonise leaves on pumpkins, zucchini and eggplants — squash adults, larvae…

Interested in eating truffles? No, not the chocolate type, but those curious, black, richly scented fungi that can cost a fortune. A truffle is an edible ascomycete fungus. The edible part is found underground where it grows like a tuber. The name “truffle” literally means lump or tuber, which is also the fungus’s botanic name: Tuber melanosporum. Truffles are very expensive to buy, strongly flavoured and used sparingly when added to dishes such as omelettes, pasta or pizza, or infused into oils. ORIGIN OF TRUFFLES Edible truffles are native to Europe, particularly Spain, France and Italy, but are now grown around the world. Truffles form a close relationship with the roots of certain trees — including birch, oak, hazelnut and pine — and grow naturally in forests. The relationship is…

Although a parsnip resembles a white carrot, it’s a little trickier to grow than a carrot or its other close relative, parsley. For success with homegrown parsnip, start with fresh seed. Seed that’s old or has not been well stored has a low germination rate. Parsnip’s botanic name (Pastinaca sativa) and the longevity of commonly grown varieties tell a lot about its cultivated history. The genus name simply translates as “food” (from pastus), while the species name sativa means “cultivated”. This name suggests it was a commonly grown staple, much like potato is now. This is backed up by the age of many of the varieties that are still grown. Most date from the 19th century or early 20th century. The variety commonly grown in backyards is ‘Hollow Crown’, which…

Sweet corn is a big, bold vegetable that’s sure to be popular with all the family. If you’re planning to grow a crop of sweet corn, allow plenty of room. Not only does it grow tall, it’s also best grown in a block at least a metre square. This is because sweet corn is wind pollinated — planting it in a block maximises pollination and produces well-filled cobs. Sweet corn has its own language to describe the flowers, fruit and the plant itself. The male flowers are called tassels. The female flowers are known as silks, which is also the name for the silky wispy filaments at the top of each cob. The fruit is referred to as a cob and the kernels on the cob as an ear. The…