Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue # 6.3 i Good Organic Gardening

The Garden Clinic® is here for you! “ We love to our passion for gardening with you, it keeps us fit, happy and healthy. We lau nched the Garden Clinic 35 years ago so we could share our knowledge with you - now with the web, magazine, helpline and radio - there are more ways to give you the in for mation and inspiration you need to get things right in the garden” Better Homes & Gardens, 2GB The Garden Clinic® is all about sharing. Join up to share in our passion for gardening. Journal 82 pages of inspiring and doable gardening information. What’s new, what’s in season, great ideas, amazing gardens from around the world, practical tips and great projects. Help Line Garden Clinic Help Line 1300 133 100…

If you’ve space to grow vegies you are probably already thinking about planting tomatoes. They are one of the most popular edibles and highly rewarding to grow. When it comes to flavour, the home-grown tomato is in a class of its own. Not only do tomatoes from your own garden taste delicious, they are also full of valuable nutrients. Tomatoes provide lycopene, an antioxidant found in red fruit, along with vitamins A and C and carotene, and they are packed with fibre. SOME GOOD VARIETIES Many gardeners stick to old favourites such as ‘Grosse Lisse’, but there are literally hundreds of tomato varieties to try with more new releases coming each year. The surprising discovery for a new tomato grower is that not all tomatoes are red. My current favourite,…

With the warm weather comes new growth, clouds of blossoms, emerging fruit, longer days and BUGS. Now, there are many, many tiny flying, crawling and burrowing insects and they don’t all predate on your favourite plants. In fact, the reason you may have a bug problem could be a much deeper issue than you realise. Consider these questions: • Are your plants water-stressed? • Are they planted in the right location? • Are they growing out of their climate zone or season? • Are they starving? Healthy plants growing in suitable climate zones and in the right locations and season, receiving the right cultural requirements, are less likely to succumb to pest attack and disease. Remember, insects play a very important role within our ecosystems, even the ones we consider…

Probably the best advice to heed when growing rocket is “plant and stand back”. This fast-growing leafy annual is grown for its peppery leaves, which are delicious in salads, added to sandwiches or made into pesto. Also known as arugula (a name mainly used in the United States), rocket has other common names, including roquette and rucola. Rocket is a Mediterranean plant but is now grown around the world. There are two main forms of rocket. The so-called “wild” rocket (below) has narrow dark-green leaves, while the large-leaf form (opposite) has broad, scalloped, lighter-green leaves. Rocket flowers are edible and also attract beneficial insects, including pollinators, to the vegetable garden. Getting started Rocket is best grown from seed sown directly where it is to grow. It can be grown throughout…

Oranges are convenient packages of vitamin C that can be enjoyed as fresh fruit (which is high in fibre) or juice. Oranges also contain useful quantities of potassium. Kids usually love them but, as the fruit is difficult to peel, they are more likely to eat oranges when they are peeled or cut into quarters. Although we tend to think of oranges as fruiting trees, they also bear extremely fragrant white flowers in spring. The scent of an orange grove in full bloom is intoxicating, and when the trees flower they hum with bees. Varieties Oranges are sold as grafted trees that are two to three years old. They can be planted throughout the year, but plants are plentiful in autumn, winter and early spring. If you have space, select…

NEW SPRING GARDENING SHOW 9–11 OCTOBER Want to know more about what to grow and how to cook it? Or would you simply like some great ideas to take your garden to the next level? Sowing, growing and cooking, as well as traditional gardening, health and sustainability, will all be the focus of the Horticultural & Gardening Festival 2015 at Melbourne Showgrounds. The festival will be opened by gardening legend, Peter Cundall, and feature celebrities including Indigenous chef Mark Olive, MasterChef winner 2013 Emma Dean, ABC Gardening Australia hosts Angus Stewart and Costa Georgiadis, plus some of Australia’s favourite horticulturists, like Stephen Ryan, Attila Kapitany and Simon Rickard. The festival will be packed with exhibitors and display gardens with opportunities to buy plants, tools, gifts and edible produce, and attend…

As we go to print, we are still in winter and enjoying tons of snowpeas, sugar snaps, spinach and brassicas from our patch. In the cool months, our tomato cages make a good home for the peas, but come the warmer spring weather the cages will go back to the tomatoes. I can’t wait to plant toms of all colours and sizes, especially with the excellent advice from Jennifer Stackhouse in her special feature on tomato growing. Spring is also time to get your pumpkins in the ground, and Melissa King has gathered together a great collection of heritage varieties to bring colour and interest to your beds so you can look forward to a gorgeously diverse crop for autumn. It seems to us that Australian gardeners ought to grow…

SAWTOOTH CORIANDER LABEL Common name: Sawtooth or perennial coriander Botanical name: Eryngium foetidum Family: Apiaceae (carrot family) Group: Biennial Requires: Sun to part shade; constant moisture Dislikes: Dry conditions Suitable for: Herb gardens, vegetable gardens, containers Habit: Rosette-forming herb Needs: Warmth Propagation: Seed Difficulty: Easy Growing annual coriander (Coriander sativum) can leave gardeners frustrated and craving the taste of its leaves. Coriander has a habit of bolting to seed when it comes under the slightest stress, such as too much heat, humidity or a lack of water. As it begins to flower and set seed, the leaves become strongly flavoured and unpleasant to eat. When this happens, you can give up and simply harvest coriander seed, which is a popular spice, or you can try growing another plant altogether. Sawtooth or…

The first time I ever came across this plant was in a Thai restaurant many years ago. Its heart-shaped, glossy, dark-green leaves are used to make a delicious snack (miang kham) topped with (or wrapping) a fragrant mix of minced prawn, lime, chopped peanuts, herbs and spices in a tangy sauce. The leaves have a nice chewy texture and a mildly peppery, spicy flavour. While these leaves make perfect finger food or starters for a Thai-style meal, other South-East Asian cuisines also use them shredded in salads, omelettes and stir-fries to add their peppery flavour to the dish. In fact, among betel leaf’s common names are wild pepper, vegetable pepper and betel pepper as well as wild betel. This plant is not only valued for its culinary uses, however. In…

Joe Paola started gardening around the age of three in Conflenti, a small Calabrian town just above the foot of Italy. His inspiration and guiding lights were his parents, Antonio and Giovanna. “We were passionate about how we lived and how we farmed animals and grew vegetables,” Joe recalls. “I owned a small patch of soil and grew beans and potatoes. It was exciting and fun. “Mama and Papa grew tomatoes, capsicum, cucumbers, chestnuts, grapevines, Morello cherries and especially wheat. We milled our own flour from it. We had plenty of livestock growing up that included goats, cows and chickens.” It was a beginning that led naturally to a lifetime commitment to organic gardening. “If you have the opportunity to grow an organic, healthy food source, in the end you…

Perhaps you haven’t heard of Davidson’s plum before. If not, there are a few good reasons to get more acquainted with this Australian beauty. It’s one of few fruiting trees that flourish in the shade, which would also qualify it to be a Clever Crop. In addition, the plum-looking fruit has more disease-fighting antioxidants than blueberries and 100 times the vitamin C of oranges. Davidson’s plum is a native rainforest tree that grows from tropical North Queensland to northern New South Wales. There are two varieties available commercially: the northern Davidsonia pruriens and the southern form, Davidsonia jerseyana, which is generally smaller growing. Davidson’s plums are small to mediumsized trees with attractive evergreen foliage, vivid pinky-bronze new growth and reddishbrown flowers, but their most distinctive feature is their unusual and…

VEGETABLES COOL & TEMPERATE In all but the coldest areas, plant summer crops now, including beans, cucumber, tomato, zucchini and pumpkin. As they grow, tie tomatoes to tall stakes and train climbing beans and cucumbers onto a tepee or trellis. Use soft ties to avoid damaging stems. Make the most of the good growing times ahead with succession planting. Every few weeks, sow more seeds or plant a few more seedlings of leafy greens such as lettuce and English spinach (best in cooler zones) to keep a continuous harvest happening. To help shade crops as the summer heat intensifies, sow a row of sunflowers along the western side of the vegie patch, or use this space for a block of corn.. TROPICAL If your family enjoys corn straight off the…

Hugelkultur, which roughly means “mound or hill culture”, is a very old method of food production achieved by creating a mound of fallen branches and other plant/tree debris and covering it with soil. It closely resembles a forest ecosystem in that the fallen branches are a source of moisture and nutrients and thus food for the soil. The branches absorb moisture-feeding fungi, which decompose the wood. The fungi then become a food source for insects, which shred the wood into smaller pieces. This shredded, decomposed organic matter ultimately becomes a food source for other fungi and bacteria, which in turn feed soil bacteria and protozoa and ultimately plants. The buried wood therefore supports a whole food chain and creates a selfsustainable ecosystem. CREATING A HUGELKULTUR MOUND Materials • Branches, logs,…

The story of Angove Family Winemakers, one of Australia’s oldest and largest family-owned wine producers, goes back five generations. It begins with Dr William Thomas Angove who, in 1886 emigrated from Cornwall to set up a medical practice at Tea Tree Gully in the foothills east of Adelaide, then a patchwork of orchards and cereal crops. Like his medical colleagues, Doctors Lindeman and Penfold, Angove began growing grapes and making wine. In his case it was mostly fortified wines as a tonic for his patients. In 1910, by which time William’s original 10 acres (4ha) had grown to 100 (40.5ha), his son Carl made the visionary decision to move northeast and establish a winery at Renmark, then a struggling community on the Murray in a region now known as the…

This interesting plant is a brassica, so is related to mustard and cabbage. Watercress is a leafy aquatic plant that’s found its way onto our tables in watercress sandwiches, in fancy salads and as a garnish. It is also a delicious sprout. Watercress is nutritious but has a very short shelf-life: two good reasons to grow your own. A recent study from the US Center for Disease Control named it as the most nutritious vegetable to eat. Analysis shows it is a good source of iron, is rich in folic acid and also contains high amounts of calcium, protein, fibre and vitamins. One of its constituents — gluconasturtiin — may even inhibit carcinogens. But this is a plant of many faces. I’ve seen it growing in streams and creeks in…

The big orange Jack-olantern type of pumpkin has become the poster child for pumpkins all over the world, but the early pumpkin, thought to have originated in the Americas, didn’t bear much resemblance to the Halloween favourite. It was a crooked-neck variety with good storing qualities and a variety of uses. The Native Americans used every ounce of the pumpkin, from its sweet flesh and skin to its seeds and flower blossoms. The flesh was even dried and ground into flour and the shells used as bowls or for storing seeds and grains. Fast forward to the present day and there are hundreds of varieties of pumpkin, both old and new, to tempt our tastebuds. Pumpkins are delicious and highly productive, and the fruit can be stored for months, so…

On Queensland’s Darling Downs, 30km north of Toowoomba, lies the rural village of Hampton, home to Justin and Kylie Russell and their three children, Marley, 11, Monty, 9, and Fergus, 7. Their acre-and-ahalf (0.6ha) property, Thistlebrook, was originally part of a dairy farm that was subdivided back in the 1970s. This region on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range is not part of subtropical Queensland. According to Justin, it receives around 35 to 45 frosts between March and October. The temperature quite often drops to -5°C and occasionally as low as a rather chilly -8°C. Springtime is usually dry and the summer months warm to hot — and getting hotter, the Russells have observed. Rainfall is variable but the yearly average is around 1000mm. Since the disastrous floods…

When you taste the caviar-like pulp of an Australian finger lime for the first time, it’s a moment you don’t easily forget — little balls of tangy citrus exploding on your tastebuds. It’s the unique texture and sour lime flavour that has catapulted finger limes to the top of the native food charts and onto the menus of many top restaurants. There are some six different species of Australian native citrus, but it’s the finger lime (Citrus australasica), which grows wild in the rainforests of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, that is best known. In the garden it’s an odd-looking plant, with thorny evergreen foliage, but what the plant lacks in beauty, the fruit makes up for in decorative appeal and flavour. The wild species grows as an…

1 SHADE SOLUTIONS Well-placed plants and trees can insulate your home year round. If you live in a temperate climate, use plants that lose their leaves seasonally so you can shade your home during summer but still take full advantage of the warming winter sun. In hot climates, it’s best to plant evergreen trees, as their foliage will shade the house throughout the year. 2 A MORNING SHOWER By watering your garden in the morning, you’ll lose less water to evaporation as temperatures will be lower and the plants’ roots will have enough time to absorb the water before sunshine hits the soil. Create a slight depression around each plant to hold the water and funnel it down to the root system. Disguise the moat-like area with a layer of…

If you keep a rooster, he may be imbued with spring fever, too. At worst he could turn into Mr Nasty, but hopefully his good nature will come to the fore with just protective concern for his girls. It’s not only bulbs and blossom that burst out when days lengthen and the sun shines in spring. Chooks also respond to seasonal changes. The extra hours of daylight stimulate egg lay and suddenly every hen in the yard will be cackling and the egg basket overflowing. If you keep a rooster, he may be imbued with spring fever, too. At worst he could turn into Mr Nasty, but hopefully his good nature will come to the fore with just protective concern for his girls. WHY THE EGG GLUT? The absence of…

Did you know? It is possible to grow a tomato that also produces potatoes. This exotic, space-saving combination is achieved by grafting a tomato plant onto potato rootstock. Both plants are in the same plant family (Solanaceae) and are closely related. Each potato plant produces several kilograms of potatoes, so even one or two plants will provide enough for many family meals. Down the road from me is a huge potato field. All summer I watched the plants grow until they began to die back in autumn. One night a huge harvester moved in, while a procession of trucks carted the freshly dug potatoes to the local food processor. We live in the heart of a rich agricultural region in north-west Tasmania. Potatoes are one of the main summer crops…