crop rotation Archives - Page 2 of 3

EDIBLE GARDENS OPEN DAY

March 19, 2013 No Comments

the garden wasn’t finished until it was filled with the laughter of community.

Photo credit Hobsons Bay City Council

Almost a year ago we opened our garden up to the residents of Moonee Valley & Hobsons Bay Council for the My Smart Garden’s Edible Open Day. As the days begin to shorten and the the cold creeps through the gaps it seems like a nice time for reflection on the last year, the first full year since our Permablitz. These are the photos taken last April by the council photographer, it was such a pleasure to have all the lovely people visit especially the little kids running on top of the garden beds, running toy cars over the wall like it’s a race track.

Sharing knowledge and community spirit embodies Permaculture for me.

A striving towards a friendlier, more loving world – for people, for animals, for the earth. Kelly Heffer is the driving force behind the My Smart Garden scheme and she was such a delight. I’d like to thanks her again for such a beautiful day and the lovely MINTI volunteers. I remember people beginning to filter in, a stream becomin a flood and when it was time for our two talks I could not move their were so many people packed in to our little suburban garden. What a beautiful thing, that people are so inspired by permaculture.

After a year in our garden, I’d like to move outwards, strive further. See if I can transform gardens like we did ours to create a better quality of life for their urban inhabitants. We are certainly happier and healthier for our urban oasis.

Garden

PRUNING & PLANNING

December 18, 2012 No Comments

True Spring Preparation – Temperate Climate – Southern Hemisphere: September & October – Northern Hemisphere: March & April

FEVERFEW – GOOD COMPANION PLANT FOR HERB BORDER – ENHANCES THE GROWTH OF PLANTS AROUND IT

The wind began to whirl, but it was delicious, it was warm. It carried flower petals, dandelion seeds and the promise of rain.

Spring has come, there is no time to catch your breath, the gardening marathon begins.

Like bright, juicy drops of rain raspberries start to slowly ripen, then in a matter of days become a deluge of fruit. Strawberries too are ripening and all at once everything that was quietly growing over the cool months bursts into flower, even those things you’d rather not like broccoli, coriander and celery, but the chickens are please for these sweet offerings.

We’re getting our first hot days, climbing towards 30 degrees and with the first appearances of the predator insects we know we are safe at least for a few months until the more annoying flies and mosquitoes start plaguing us.

It’s our last chance to get the garden bed ready before the tomatoes get planted out in High Summer. Mulching, weeding, pruning and after that planting out some companions to lend some shelter when it starts to get really hot.

weeding

If vegetable seeds are slow to germinate, so are the weed seeds. If you didn’t do it last month this is a great time to pull out those pesky grasses and nutrient hungry fiends and mulch heavily to prevent them from springing up again. Soon with added sunlight and water they can get out of control.

Some “weeds” I leave, like dandelions which are edible and are a good companion for tomatoes as they exude a little something that helps the fruit ripen. Clover is a nitrogen fixer, absorbing nitrogen from the air and putting it back into the soil. There is no use pulling out something that is useful and leaving bare soil for something nastier to take root, better to leave it until you have a seedling in hand to replace it with.

pruning

The herb border around my garden bed has really sprung into life this season. Mint has sent out runners like a web through the garden bed and the Feverfew has grown enormous. True Spring is a great time to take cuttings and divide up your herb border, keeping it under control and if you can’t use those new plants there will be enough time for them to get over the trauma to be gifted at Christmas.

pest control

Everything is sending out juicy, sweet shoots that snails can’t resist. It’s not hot enough for them to retreat and all it takes is a storm for them to pop up under every leaf. They must be controlled before you plant out your seedlings. A week of beer traps and night time torch hunts with your work boots on will; keep them in check.

A strong smelling herb border with spiky leaves will mean less placed for them to hide during the day, these include Winter Savory and Thyme. I have learnt to my horror that edible violas are about the worst thing to grow on your garden edge, the tender, multitudes of leaves and flowers beautifully cascading over the edges the perfect snail mansion and nursery. I am trimming and pulling these out straight away!

mulching

The weather is still quite variable hot and dry one day, freezing and rainy the next, a good thick layer of mulch around the base of all your plants will help keep a balance of warm and damp to prevent your plants going into shock.

Remember snails like to hide in mulch so keep it fine and check each night for the slimey sneaks. More about mulching in my next post!

These two months are when you should really try and sow EVERYTHING you want to occupy you garden until Spring comes again next year, even things like silverbeet that you can plant later can be planted now and kept going all year with dedicated picking, watering and mulching.

This is the time to get the seedlings well established as High Summer will

knock tiny plants to the ground with its sizzling sun and bruising winds.

By Christmas there should be no bare earth in your garden beds, your plants crowded with little soldiers selflessly shading their neighbour and being shaded in return.

Afterall this is not meek and mild Europe where things can flutter in gentle summer breezes, spaced out rows, kissed by fairies and the like. In Australia, if snails don’t go down the line chomping up your progeny then our unfiltered, ozone depleted rays of suns will finish off the job. Plus won’t it be so much more relaxing knowing that your garden can be left for a week or two over Christmas, planting finished and resilient enough to take a few 40C days. (Hopefully you have a nice neighbour check in every 10 days or so)

planning

It’s hard to not be overwhelmed after a long winter of lethargy. I like to organise the seeds I’m going to plant for the season into glass jars with seed tags made out of plastic milk bottles. Clear plastic is hard to read and cardboard crumples with water, so I’ve found milk bottles best. The glass jars make it easy to see the seed labels and keep them dry if left outside on the propagation table.

I use to be precious with my seeds, sowing only a few at a time, but with a shoebox full of expiring packets, I’ve learnt is far easy to sow an entire packet at a time and save the fresh seeds for the next year.

Garden

PRE-SPRING FRUITS – DAMPENING-OFF & PROPAGATION

October 14, 2012 2 Comments

Cold, wet and sickly – that’s no way to start life. Neither is wrenching for the light, dizzy with bleach fumes, roots clawing through lifeless soil.

Close up of a chamomile plant leaves and flowers

When you don’t believe in nuking soil to remove the bad bacteria and fungi or bleaching the hell out of your pots, you have to accept that whilst protecting the good guys in your soil you are also keeping the baddies. (I’ll be honest my decision is based as much around my own laziness as it is about the delicate ecosytems involves, really who can be bothered baking soil for an hour?!)

In the damp coolness of Pre-Spring you might despair as seeds fail to germinate, seedlings wither with yellowing leaves or worse a healthy green seedling suddenly rots at the base and topples over.

But it’s not your fault, it’s Dampening-Off! Wicked fungi that thrive in these conditions and rot your seeds and seedlings, before they have a chance. The solution is not sterilising with chemicals or blasting with heat (sterile and seeds just don’t make sense) The solution is as easy as making Chamomile Tea!

Watering your seed trays with diluted chamomile tea which has steeped overnight and again when the seedlings emerge can stop dampening off. It has natural anti-fungal properties and more importantly whilst it does not destroy all the fungi in the soil, it contains magnesium which not only aids germination by breaking down the natural enzyme inhibitors surrounding the seed, but also is integral to photosynthesis producing more resilient plants that are more resistant to disease.

Fresh leaves are meant to be better than flowers as they have more magnesium, so whilst tea bags will probably work if you can get a hold of a plant that would be best.

Chamomile tea brew in glass bottle

Chamomile tea brew sitting ourside in sun

Chamomile tea brew sitting in window sill

Sowing seeds for tomato experiment in plastic bottle greenhouse/pot

Tomato Experiment

As well as testing out my Plastic Juice Bottle Greenhouses my Tomato experiment is meant as a step-by-step way to test when to sow and plant out tomatoes in your local area for optimum results.

I want to test to see if tomatoes sown later really catch up to those planted later, and if adding beneficial bacteria to the soil really works!

I chose not to use cherry tomatoes in the experiment because really that would be too easy.

What: Tomato Periforme Abruzzo
Why: Good slicing or cooking tomato
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted for The Tomato Experiment
When: Packet expires DEC 2012 so planted 4 seeds in each pot
How: Plastic Juice Bottle Greenhouses, placed in polystyrene boxes on north facing verandah

Sowing capsicum mini sweet and eggplant listada di gandia seeds in punnets

Sprawing solanaceae seed punnets with chamomile tea to prevent dampening-off, plastic bag covers tray to act as greenhouse

What: Eggplant Listada Di Gandia
Why: Early maturing extending the fruiting season. Small, delicious with pretty striped fruit
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires OCT 2013
How: 6 seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhouse

What: Capsicum Mini Sweet Mix
Why: Had far more success with the mini varieties than their larger cousins. Produced through Winter!
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires MAR 2014
How: 6 seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhouse

What: Chilli Joes Long Cayenne
Why: Packet expired, no luck in past, just threw them all in to see if they would germinate.
Where: Heirloom seeds from Diggers Club, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Packet expires OCT 2011
How: Seeds in a punnet sitting in a metal roasting tray with a plastic bag over the top to act as a greenhous

What: Tomato Purple Russian
Why: Early fruiting variety.
Where: Saved from the garden last year, between two paper serviettes, to be planted in my Crop Rotation Plot
When: Saved MAR 2012 from tomatoes sown last year from Diggers Club
How: Tray on north facing window sill with wet newspaper underneath to prevent drying out. Interesting to see how compares to tomatoes grown in juice bottle greenhouses.

For more information on dampening-off and natural remedies please check out Easy Organic Gardening by Lyn Bagnall it’s amazing!

Garden, Recipes

HOMEMADE POTTING & SEED RAISING MIX

September 8, 2012 4 Comments

Potting mix ingredients: worm castings, coir, compost, coarse sand, cow manure

Pre-Spring, creeps up on you gently.

My mornings are still painstakingly timed to allow maximum cuddled up in bed time, the train becomes my breakfast nook and hair salon, all for a few more precious hours in my warm feather cocoon. But with the first few days that hit 20C, the first fruit trees bloom and the warm breeze brings sweet perfumes wrapped up with nostalgic memories of jasmine wreath crowns and daisy chains. Birds are stealing straw and string for nests and parakeets play court jester in the leafy canopy above.

I’m just itching to get planting, but gardeners beware for this is a “False Spring” one day of glorious sunshine can be followed by a freezing one with a real nasty bite to it. It’s going to get busy when True Spring arrives next month so I might as well get the nursery ready before the babies go in! Ha! It’s time to start preparing the Solanaceae garden bed for planting out when the weather is warmer, any planting is better done inside or under glass to protect it from the chill. I’ve been reading up on how to make your own seed raising and potting mix and am excited to share with you the recipes, once my seedlings taste the goodies I put in, they won’t be able to go back to that icky commercial stuff.

Coconut coir after being soaked

Coarse river sand

Seed Raising Mix

Seeds are a neat little packages, with enough nutrients to send stems and leaves skyward towards the light. That means that seed raising mix doesn’t need to be particularly rich in nutrients, but it does need to be friable (crumbly texture, not sticky like clay, easy for root grow through)

Seed Raising Mix Ingredients:
2 parts sifted compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
1 part sifted cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Potting Mix Recipe

When seedlings have developed their first set of adult leaves they need a little boost, so I add some worm castings to the mix. I am careful not to add too much nutrient rich material as this can lead to weak, leggy growth seedlings susceptible to disease and pests.

Homemade Potting Mix Ingredients:
2 parts compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
2 parts worm castings
1 part cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Garden Bed

Annual roots are as delicate as cobwebs and plants like tomatoes that suffer badly from transplant shock need to have their garden beds well settled before they go in, at least a month beforehand so I recommend anyone starting from scratch with a no dig garden get it ready in the next few months.

I have heard that when looking through a microscope settling soil looks like little “earthquakes” around delicate roots. No wonder it results in stressed unhappy plants!

Infrastructure

If stabilising soil is like a mini earthquake, then a stakes slicing into established roots may be like a meteor shower. I planned the location of my tomato stakes carefully so I could put them in now, rather than after the plants have already been planted out.
As shown in my plan I have placed hardwood stakes, offcuts from Agroforestry, in three hexagonal patterns around central stakes. Each tomato will have its own triangular enclosure, supported by string horizontals as they grow.

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