Rotate

CROP rotation is critical to growing healthy food.

In an old basket in my garden shed is a tattered back issue of Gardening Australia magazine permanently open to the an article on rotating garden beds.

Torn, smudged with soil and looking more than a little weathered, this back issue is my mantra when it comes to planting a new garden.

I've made notes about what I have planted and where so I can be sure to not plant the same species there next season.

Six bed are the ideal but now I am in a downsized garden this time round rather than having eight beds spread out over 100sq m, I'm going for smaller beds placed in the best area for sunshine - all wired off to keep the feather riot out.

This is my tomato bed and at the

rear I have planted broad beans

			Keeping a garden diary is fascinating and prevents you make mistakes.

Composting

NOW spring is here I'm ready to get my new compost heaps humming.

So far I have simply been layering green waste such as lawn clippings with food left-overs I can't feed the hens and torn newspapers, etc. Two bins are full and quietly simmering away in it's full position, while the third is about 1/6th complete.

The old garden was much bigger and its unrelenting clay soil meant seven bins were constantly on the go, but now I figure three will do for this smaller plot.

There's also a heap of sawdust left-over form the removal of two old, rotted gum trees which were removed before they fell on the hen-house. As eucalyptus oil is a growth inhibitor, I'm going to run the sawdust through the compost bins to leach it and convert it into something useful.

So this weekend I'll commence turning over the mixture and ensuring the balance is correct - hopefully encountering some worms along the way!

As usual, Gardening Australia have some useful tips - you can never know it all with composting!

Video composting

COMPOSTING is a never-ending story.

Ask three gardeners about how make great compost and you'll get four or five different theories!

I came across this Gardening Australia video showing Jerry demonstrating some tried and true methods.

My Darlek-like compost bin has slowed down over winter but as long as I keep turning over the layers, it produces excellent results.

This weekend I'll be emptying most of the bins as they are just about ready to be refilled and start the whole process over.

The Thrifty Gardener

TALKING to Millie Ross, the original thrifty gardener is like chatting over the fence with an old friend.

The popular ABC TV Gardening Australia senior researcher is at once charming, refreshing and knowledgeable, without making you feel silly for not knowing the difference between a geranium and a pelargonium.

 

 

You feel that if you invited her around for afternoon, she’d show up with a home baked cake, help weed the herb patch, make you a charming planted garden seat and stay to help with the washing up. Her effervescent personality shines through in her new book THE THRIFTY GARDENER which is chock-full of groovy, fun and stylish garden projects, Milli shows us how to grow edible cubby houses, make a terrarium, build a self-watering pot to ponds and fire pits, all made from repurposed materials, pre-loved and recycled materials.

She says with this book she wanted to make gardening accessible to everyone.

Millie sets out to prove that you don’t need rules, stuff or knowledge to have a great garden – just get out your back door and get involved! In the introduction she says “It might be counterproductive to tell you this from the start, but I don’t really believe in rules, particularly when making a garden.”

Mill reckons we should embrace life and just get out there and grow.

”Experiment, play, plant, cut, kill, compost, dig, and, every now and then , push your luck,” she says. “Your efforts (or lack of them!) can help a garden to thrive or just survive, but don’t stress – tomatoes were making tomatoes well before we got involved.”

Subtitled Building the garden you want with whatever you’ve got, thrift is the book’s underlying theme. Milli loves scavenging and uses the most mundane items as containers – including a toaster she found on a scrap heap.

“Everything in my garden has a story and everyone loves my toaster,” she says with a laugh.

“I like everything I have has a bit of a story.”

“I garden this way because it efficient and time save and looks kind of great.”

 But Milli says people need to think about how they go about gardening.

“People will spend hundreds of dollars on technological won’t last the year but baulk at spending $5 on a plant that won’t work in their garden,” she says.

So Milli offers clear and easy-to-follow instructions on designing and building everything from practical yet picturesque chook runs to selecting seeds, propagating and planting.

Renters are well catered for, as Milli herself has been dragging pots around Melbourne for a decade.

And she knows the Geelong region as her parents live in the area.

“I encourage everyone to have a crack at gardening,” she says.

“Roses or radishes it does not matter, just don’t be afraid have a go!”

 

(A version of this story appeated in the Geelong Advertiser on June 8, 2013.)

 

Gardening behind the wire

THERE'S a great article in the latest Gardening Australia magazine about a prison gardens.

Written by senior researcher Millie Ross, it makes you realise how lucky we are to have our own gardens.

 

Now the rain has (temporarily stopped) I'm hoping the sunshine will give the spring veggies a bit of a boost.

 

As Peter Cundall so ably wrote in the Weekly Times today, so many plants require a certain amount of sunshine to reach their optimum growth.  

On the verge

GROWING edible plants on the nature strip is always a chancy business - will someone steal my pumpkins or use them as a footy?

How about natives? Some councils are happy to have you greening uo the street while others seem to take pleasure in ensuring the strip stays plant-free.

When I moved in down the west coast over five years ago, I did the right thing and rang them to enquire about nature strip gardens. Go ahead I was told by council, but remember, if we need to dig the pipes or something it could be disturbed.

Tough-as-old-boots native iris will hopefully survive in the replanted verge garden

So inspired by many gardenerswho have had fun with more garden space and went for it. My plan was for a mix of natives and exotics with a focus on attracting more birds and bees to my front and rear gardens where I grow fruit and veggies.

Soon a 'captain cook' bottle brush, some tube stock of grevillias and a handsome hakea were surrounded by a dash of nasturtiums. The plants all bloomed there and soon little birds including blue wrens and New Holland honeys eaters were flitting in and out of the vegetation - until last month when the workers came through to put in a footpath.

Alas, I came home one night and found a ripped up mess - just a hakea and the bottlebrush looking worse for wear while the grevillias were upside down, roots to the air and foliage buried in the mounds of dirt.

Go figure.

So I've replanted the grevillas, hoping for a recovery but despite watering they are looking pretty shaky. They have been joined by some divided clumps of mature native iris, a 1m protea which popped up in my front garden after i took out the monster a few years back to make way for a fruiting cherry and some more nasturtium's.

Here's hoping they take.

So it was good to see Gardening Australia's Costa's take on verge gardens.

Despite this setback, I'm all for everyone to get out and plant something that makes your heart sing, the birds and bees a bit happier and the street a greener place to be.