Online gardening

THERE'S a plethora of fabulous gardening resources online.

One of the best is the monthly newsletter from the good folk at Sustainable Gardening Australia.

Plus SGA has developed four informative booklets for home gardeners: Home Harvest, Sustainable Gardening, Waterwise Gardening and Gardening Self Audit.

They have other excellent resources so you can plan your spring planting and beyond on those days it's too wet and cold to pull on the gumboots and dig.

Chooks are a great way to get greener in the garden - they love turning over the compost!

One off-line choice to get some hens.

They are less trouble than you think, provide gorgeous eggs, manure for the compost bins, eat bugs, provide an amazing way to de-stress because they are so hilarious and will happily turn over an old veggie bed to prepare for the next planting.

Now it's winter it's a great time to plan your new chook run, hutch and investigate what type of chickens to keep.

 

Sustainable gardening

INTERESTED in getting your garden more sustainable?

Well, I'm so glad you said yes, because Sustainable Gardening Australia invites you to join them for an informal gathering and discussion evening in Melbourne on Monday June 17. During the evening a facilitator will lead a conversation around the question:

“What are the possibilities when modern communities

grow more of their own food?”

The evening will then conclude with questions addressed by a panel including:

• Natasha Kuperman (Founder of My Home Harvest)
• Cam Walker (Friends of the Earth)
• Peter Huff (Urban Agriculture Facilitator, City of Yarra)

When: Monday June 17^th 2013 from 7:00-9:00 pm
Where: Function Room, The Courthouse Hotel, 615 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
Transport: Tram, Train (Anstey Station), Car (Sydney Rd meter free after 6pm)
You can purchase meals and drinks at The Courthouse and there are lots of great eateries on Sydney Road.

To register for this free event go to:

http://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=50481
Places for this event are limited so book early, and please let us know if you are then unable to attend so we can give someone else your place.

And get their excellent free newsletter Cuttings delivered to your email box each month - it's chock-full of great advice and gardening tips.

Autumn in your patch

THOSE stalwart folk at Sustainable Gardening Australia are at it again - this time with heaps of good ideas for getting our veggie beds all sorted.

But although my veggie garden needs some attention - and more rain, I concentrated on the front non-food garden today.

Not a lover of chocolate, after breakfast I spent Easter Sunday weeding and replanting the front nature strip garden after it was decimated by the local council when they constructed the (unwanted) footpath in our street.

Good old native iris - it divides easily and is a great plant, enjoy and neglect options and produces lovely flowers.

Thankfully, while the poor old grevillias were upended roots to sky (they have been replanted but it's not looking good), the bottle brush and hakea survived. So this afternoon I divided and planted out loads of native iris which if grows a smidgen as well as it has in the front garden, will soon grow nice and bushy and keep any weeds out.

Hopefully we will see some rain tonight and the grevillias will recover, thrive and survive.

Crop Rotation

Now we are finally removing he last of the late-ripening veggies, it’s a good time to get your head around the crop rotation system so that you can be sure of a great crop of winter and spring veggies.

Check out the excellent SGA info on spinning sround your crops.

Preparing a vegetable bed for the next crop.

It’s obvious that different vegetables require different soil conditions. So when rotating the vegetables, the soil needs to be treated to suit the new vegetable. For example tomatoes like their soil to be acidic whereas onions prefer it more alkaline. So you need to lime a garden bed where you grew tomatoes before planting your onions.  Then after harvesting onions you plant beans and peas (legumes) because they also love sweet soil. Legumes are fantastic because they capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and pump it into the soil, so they can be followed by leaf vegies such as broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, spinach, bok choy,  lettuces and silver beet. After these guys you can sow the yummy root crops suh as beetroot, carrots and parsnips as they don’t need much manure to flourish.

 Crop Rotation Tips
• Rest your beds for a few days (a week is even better) if adding manures to allow the soil to absorb the goodness
• Put your chooks in the old bed as they will delight in turning over the soil and eating any leftover bugs such as caterpillars
• Use a garden fork to turn over the soil and mix in your compost as this will aerate the soil and you are less likely to damage the worms.

Open the POD bay doors Hal…

Even better than cult SF film 2001: A Space Odyssey is joining a Sustainable Gardening Australia POD. There are PODs all over the country  chock-full of people looking to share ideas and their passion for growing great food! If there’s not one in your neck of the woods, then take a deep breath, contact SGA and start one. I did, so it must be easy! There are so many advantages to meeting new people and having fun swapping seeds, plants and ideas. I’ve just cycled back with a basket of bok choy and broccoli seeds from one of the Jan Juc gals whose garden is a Monet-like swirl of irises, vegetables, fruit trees and lush vegetables. Live dangerously. Contact Liz and get involved in SGA today.