Hi EM

Lovely to hear from you as always and it sounds like you’re making wonderful progress with your garden.

I might have to rethink my composting arrangement. I have one of those tumbler-style ones off the ground. It’s ok until there’s a lot in there and then it becomes difficult to turn.

Thinking to get one of those big round ones that sit on the ground with a lid. And the worms could get in there too.

Lots of Autumn colour around atm :)

Ah! Thank you Mark. I thought it might have been Angel Face. It’s an amazing and unique colour. Beautiful!

I had a moment the other day, The universe has been speaking to me lately haha.

One of my roses wasnt looking so good and getting attacked by chilli thrips. I trimmed the affected parts and I thought 'maybe if I move it to a new position it might get a little extra light' so I moved it and gave it a bit of seasol

few days later it started growing back! and its coming back pretty strong.

I was thinking about how this could apply to me/life in general really - sometimes I need to remember to take a step back, give myself some TLC and I too will grow like this rose bush.

amazing stuff.

Hi all,

I love that little story Gambit! Truly, the garden goddess was speaking to you!

My garden is giving me rocket, and cabbage atm. It survived the onslaught, no slugs despite all the rain we've had! So pleased! I've bought some red cabbage seedlings to give them a go. No time for seed raising atm.

The tomatoe plants are doing well, altho it's been a dry wind and we've not been used to watering, so I may lose one which was in a half buried pot. The slow cool weather growth makes it much easier to keep up with jobs in the garden!

Cheers,

J*

Hi all I picked my neighbours Cumquats and made marmalade and it turned out absolutely perfect.Now I just have to do some pruning for her while she is over in New Zealand.

In my garden I have had the best crop of mandarins bush lemons.I need to make some lemonade and Tangelos are almost ready for picking so more marmalade on the way.I been starting to pick my cabbages as well.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

Hi all we had a nice wet day here yesterday and now we get followed up by some nice cold winds today.Some of my deciduous trees have lost all their leaves while others have still got all there leaves like my mulberry tree and my mystery tree at the front.While my nectarine tree has lost all its leaves yet my neighbours one still have all its leaves.Very interesting observing things that seem to make no sense in the garden.Dose anyone else notice anything unusual happening in the garden?

Take care,

Mark.

Hi Mark and happy BB Gardeners 😁🖐🌺🌴🍀🌈

Yes! Us too Mark, I've noticed the same thing happening here with my deciduous trees.
I have no idea why and have talked with my kids and friends about it too - no idea at all.

My Mystery Tree (wonder if you and I have the SAME Mystery Tree? lol) has ALMOST lost all it's leaves.
My Nectarine lost all it's leaves ages ago and is getting a few blossoms! I'm like what??

The Crepe Myrtles in the back yard lost all their leaves ages ago BUT my 3 in the front garden only just LAST week began to lose their leaves in any bucketful form lol.
The only difference between these 2 sets of trees is a few metres location difference but the ones in the front garden are considerably younger than the back yard trees.

Yes! Same with the citrus. We have hundreds of lemons and they're huge. They're also really sweet for the first time ever. So sweet that the possums are eating them this year lol. The only things I think are different is that I hired a gardener to prune this tree about this time last year, I cut down ALL the lantana choking it lol, recently I took away all sorts out of the ground like broken bricks etc and I raked the ground around this tree so it was clear. It's barely rained here for months but whatever water hits the soil may get down to the roots now?

My oranges are the size of grape fruit. One orange is like TWO pieces of fruit lol.

Alexa's mandarins are going as crazy as our citrus. LOTS and huge but no where near ripe yet, we're like why?? No idea. They're very late ripening.

One thing I know is that we had a misty wet Summer. Not alot of heavy rain but consistent misty rain - VERY strange and I've never known the weather to do this. Could be after effects of Covid? Meaning alot less pollution effecting the weather.

Plus the year before our vegetation was heavily effected by the ash from endless months of bush fires.
Even though ash can suffocate our plants by covering their leaves, the ash on the SOIL is very good for everything in moderation ofcourse.
So when it was all washed off our plants, this could have had a positive effect.
I've had to wash the dirt off of our orange and lime tree's leaves.

The other thing I've noticed is no stink bugs. Great.
Very little leaf curl.

Puzzling.

Any feedback peeps?

Love EM

Hi Em isn't mother nature interesting and can not make any sense for us at times.I think the lot of rain we had in autumn has had an effect on plants trucking them in thinking it's growing season but why not all of the same tree responded in the same way?I think plants are like people and some just want to be different.

I read an article on marcotting papaya trees in the Philippines which was really interesting and never thought of that method of propagating them.Always learning something new about gardening

Happy gardening,

Mark.

Hey Mark and happy BB Gardeners!

Yes it is funny watching the crazy antics of my trees atm. The crepe myrtles have finally dumped almost ALL their leaves in a short time, very unlike previous years.
Half my nectarine tree is blossoming. The other half totally bare.

I've never heard of marcotting???

I DO know that human's mucked up the reproduction habits of bananas!
They used to be able to grow from seed, but after generations of us humans noseying in, they now have to give pups to multiply.

We have to be careful!

Mark you'd be so proud of me lol.
I've all but cleared a 20 x 10 square metre pile of branches!

I now have a very neat pile of logs in ONE place.
We've decided to build a fire pit area where the cabin will be one day (hopefully).
Dry pave the area and build come make shift seating around it, in a pentagon shape.
A local man makes huge fire put bowls, so I'll get one of those later.

Last weekend I had a huge bonfire to burn 3 stumps and alot of the brush around.

Happily what goes around comes back to us at times!
I've been giving my raw macadamias to one of Alexa's neighbours who's family has struggled due to Covid. Now she has a job with my Accountant lol! And I got a discount this year TWICE.

She has another 11 litre bucket of nuts coming her way. OMG SO MANY nuts!

My gardeners "great idea" was not so great (again). I really need to go with my own instincts and NOT let him do some stuff.
He insisted on putting some of the lantana cuttings in the old pool and NOW it's growing lantana - yep. Grrr.

I'm keeping him out for a while due to finances AND the extra work he's created.
About 5 day's extra work because he decided to cut up the lantana into tiny pieces grrr.
I had to use a heavy duty metal rake to drag them all out of the long grass!

The BLACK soil underneath is beautiful though! hahaha.

We have 3 more stumps to dig out plus 5 two storey high dead pines with no branches on them.

Our old neighbours left, sadly. Their "kids" put so many fence palings on MY side of the fence, so I burnt them all lol. The new neighbours will want a new fence asap no doubt which is not fun money wise for me.

I'm slowly digging up more rubbish, getting rid of it slowly too.

Native violets are my "lawn" near my house lol. It's easy to see baby lantana seedlings poking up from that. The violets are really sweet too!

My surprise passionfruit is happy too. I used a pyramid trellis for it to climb up. Nice!

Happy gardening!
Love EM

Hi Em sorry I haven't been on for awhile.zi have been ill with Pneumonia slowly recovering.

Bananas are an interesting plant being the largest herb and the trunks being made of leaf.Still can find bananas with seeds in the wild.The commercially grown ones have infertile seeds in them.The little black dots in them are the seeds.The craziness of trying to produce fruits without seed in every fruit has taken over unfortunately.

Lantana is the worst thing to get rid of and your gardener definately made you more work.

Its always nice to get rid of piles of branches.it looks like you have achieved something.

The most I have done in the garden is pick some citrus and cabbages and pruned two of my grapes.Still have two to prune and been striking cuttings of them.I will try and do some more in the garden when I feel better.

Happy Gardening ,

Mark.

Hello Gardeners All,

As usual EM your garden adventures seem epic, and of a scale I could only dream about :) Mark it is good to see you are up and about :)

I have not really noted any unusual phenomena in my garden this year aside from two deciduous trees of the same species, one turned yellow, the other red. I guess the one that is red got a bit colder? All leafless now though.

The fire pit area sounds grand, nothing beats a fire to draw people in.

I saw wild bananas in the forests in fiji, they were small red ones, that the bats like to eat. They are not as palatable to humans though.

I love violets, but they don't grow well here, they remind me of my great grandmother's place which was populated by citrus trees, violets, geraniums and raked white gravel. I have passionfruit vines coming up all over from the birds, but all growing in the wrong places at the moment, I want to leave just one for the flowers though.

I have been a bity gloomy, so I though I would fight it with flowers, and have gone crazy buying lots of really bright colourful flower seedlings, which I have planted anywhere I have sufficient sunshine. I do not really grow lots of gaudy flowers but I am very much in the mood for them right now (purple pansies, burnt orange chrysanthemums, yellow flowering kalanchoe, red hot pokers). I have ordered 10 different kinds of seeds for when the weather warms up too, so my garden will be absurdly colourful this year. My mother kind of grimaced when she saw the crazy bright combination of things I am planting, but it will give me a smile nevertheless when I walk in the house!

My flax lillies (dianella) are just going crazy. I divide them each year. I started of with 1 clump, now I have about 40, even after giving 15 to a neighbour. I am planting them on footpaths etc now. The native insects seem to like them. I was told the local Indigenous folk (Kaurna) used to pull the leaves and chew on the white base to alleviate colds (have not tried this myself yet).

Does anyone grow bush foods in their garden? I have lilypilly but not much else. I would like to try to grow a quandong I think. mmm quandong pie :)

Hi Boudica great to see you want to get into growing some native fruit bush Tucker.I have grown a lot of the years and had a smorgasbord of bush Tucker on the creek I lived near and was always down there picking sandpaper figs and Burdikin plums to make jam.

At the moment I only have a native Gympie lime( a very thorny little lime native to the the Gympie region) Currant Bush (Carissa ovata)has lots of sharp spines on it sprawling shrub with a sweet berry like fruit.The sap can be used for a liniment for rheumatism.And I have Black Apple (Pouteria Australia) a very tall tree that gets a black plum like fruit.

Quandongs (Santalum acuminatum) is a great bush Tucker and great for jams and sauces.Comes from more drier arid regions of Australia.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

Hi all

Well l'm new to this thread and not much of a gardener! But oh yum, quandong jam! My dad used to make that when I was young and I'd die for some, I think :) Never seen it available to buy...

I've put in some peas. They're just in pots with some plastic mesh to climb on. But the snails are attacking them. Any ideas that are dog/cat/other friendly? If I'm successful with the peas I might have a go at seeing what else I can grow. I'm enjoying watching the peas grow already :)

Hi Katy,

yiu could try bordering your pea plants with finely crushed egg shells. Can dry out in a slow oven then squash with a jam jar or mortar and pestle.
I’m not sure if beer traps work for snails, they do for slugs. But Mark will know for sure!

hey Mark, I’m sorry to hear you’ve been sick. Pneumonia -that must hurt! I had a dose of the worst flu I’ve ever had, that was bad enough.
I harvested a couple cabbages today also. The birds have had a go at them so I hung a couple cds up- hopefully that will keep them away from the rest.
I planted some peas also- not sure if they’re coming up, I didn’t water much.
Em it sounds like your hard work is showing in your garden! I’m so happy for you! You deserve it my friend.
cheers

J*

Hi Katy and Jstar yes eggshells are great or you can even use wood chips to prevent snails getting to your plants.Yes beer traps will work for both slugs and snails.Full a small container with beer burried in the ground leaving about an inch above ground.The snails will drown in them.Its the yeast I the beer that attracts them and the snails can smell from 100m away.Encouraging birds and having chooks or ducks are good for keeping the population down.

Happy gardening,

Mark

Hello Peeps,

Mark, I like the sound of your bush tucker, I haven't tried sandpaper figs, or burdekin plums, but sound delicious. As I live in a dryish coastal area the types of plants I can grow are quite different. I have grown iceplant and ruby saltbush in the past too, which are edible bushfoods too, but I think I would have to be dying of starvation before I wanted to eat either of those! The best quandong pies I have found, came from the cafe up in Quorn in the Flinders Rangers, so I always stop if I go through there. The pies are really expensive to buy in the city.

Katy, I have the same problem at the moment. My son and I planted snow peas (as we love to eat these), but they have been obliterated by slugs and snails. They have also been eating the flower petals from my chrysanthemums, leaving depressing mangy bobbly heads. I have used the beer before, but not for a while, and know it works, but you'll have to keep it up consistently for a while if your population is anything like mine!

J*, I hadn't heard of crushed eggshells for snails, maybe I will give that a try on select plants. My neighbour also suggested surrounding plants with coffee grounds, but this only seems to work while dry, once it rains you have to replace. I like coffee, but I don't drink enough to supply my whole garden! Some cafes give away grounds though.

Hello all,

I've remember from a gardening show the idea of using copper bands / strips works to stop slugs & snails as they don't like crossing it... I haven't tried it but I've seen them for sale in garden places.

Paws

Thanks paws for the suggestion of copper for preventing snsils and slugs.You can buy a copper tape that you can wrap around pots.The snails and slugs have a chemical reaction to the copper.You can even try coper pipe in a garden situation.Many ideas to control pest some work and some don't work so well.My chooks have a good feed on my snails and rarely see them now.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

Hi everyone

Thanks for the suggestions. I am stone broke so some suggestions are out, but will try the eggshells :)

I've spent the last 2 hours in the garden weeding. I didn't realise I was out there so long as the sun is shining and it's cool but pleasant. My cute pooch was watching me but fell asleep sitting up hahah.

Hi ecomama,

Thank you for your beautiful posts. You made me smile even just thinking about gardening. Haven’t done it in awhile, though, just not enough time in a day. A pity as a relationship with plants can be as rewarding as with animals. They can be so vulnerable and they will always, always thank you for the love and care you sprinkle on them.

Take care.

Dear Learn to Fly, thank YOU for your beautiful post lol! How sweet of you to say.
And a belated HUGE WELCOME to the forums.
I'm hearing you about never enough time. Atm I'm time AND energy poor.

I'm on leave for a while now, but I still have to watch my energy levels. So much sickness about ugh.

Mark, omg pneumonia? How horrible! I'm so sorry to hear that. Please stay super warm and nourish your wonderful self. We NEED you here lol.

Katy, you know what they say in Permaculture circles... an over abundance of snails (or spiders) is just an UNDER abundance of birds.
I have to COLLECT snails to feed my chickens lol. We have none BECAUSE of the birds.

Having a bird feeder nearby will help.
DEFINITELY the oven roasted egg shells crushed up works well. As does the beer traps.
Haven't heard of the coffee idea but worth a try. Our local cafe bags up their spent coffee grounds and leaves them outside. I pick them up for my compost.
The more diverse a compost's meals, the better the product. Plus I love the smell - not the taste ugh.

Hey J* and everyone, thankyou for the encouragement. As per, I've just done some light maintenance lately. Today I succumbed and bought a battery powered Leaf Blower lol... watching YouTube videos of ppl using them made me do it. My hands and whole body aches from the work I've been doing just for work and the family.
I've got some long drains with really heavy grates, so blowing the leaves out will be much kinder to my body and my time (hopefully!).
I want to blow the leaves down to the back garden and then the Brush Turkey will have LOTS to scratch up for his ever growing mound! Saves him digging out my garden beds grr. He efficiently scraped off my entire chook's shed roof lol! The mound's about 6 ft high & 12 foot wide now and getting bigger.

I'd LOVE to get my high pressured hose out because all my paved and bricked areas are so grimy! That soft rain all Summer and some more rain periods has made moss grow and just made things grimy. BUT I need to watch my energy levels and make sure to get REALLY good rest when I can this leave time. I have a long haul when I go back to work and need to keep working.

My kids are desperate for my home cooking lol, so lots of boring inside cleaning and nourishing my babies is called for.
I'll still get out in the garden morning & afternoon for my chickens. Have to hold myself back a bit from working too much though.

Happy Gardening everyone!

Love EMxxxx

Hey Katy

Today I've been thinking about your want to grow some things in your garden on a zero $$ budget.
I've SO been there and did lots of things to get things growing. I wanted to share some of my tips so hopefully you and some other wonderful BB Gardeners can still grow stuff.

Growing plants from SEED is very economical.
Remember to use as LOW nutrient soil to start the seeds off in. Seeds don't need ANY nutrients to begin, in fact too many nutrients can be detrimental to the plant's health overall in the long run.
When your seedlings begin to leaf up, it's then we move them to soil with nutrients or plants them out in richer soil in the garden.

Using our own WEED / SEAWEED TEA / WORM CASTINGS in the soil or worm castings AS the soil is great!
If you want to know how to make WEED / SEAWEED TEA then just ask. I wrote about these before but have no idea which page lol.
Worm castings can be taken from Community Gardens for free. No one minds!
A worm farm can be set up for virtually free (no need or commercial ones at all).

Another way to get free plants is by PROPAGATION.
If you see a nice tree or bush in your area, then propagating is a FREE way to duplicate the plant.
NOW is the perfect time for this process (and Autumn too).
Just prepare by getting some honey, a set of containers with drainage, soil.
Cut the plant including SOME old wood and some new growth.
Dip the cut end in honey and plant in the soil.
If I want 6 plants, I do 12 cuttings.

You can set pairs of plants in their pots in different parts of the garden. This will increase your chances of success.

My friend always cut the leaves in half. She ran a business this way. Mainly she sold Gardenias and Photinias.

Grabbing sidewalk plants when you see the opportunity is GREAT! I've done this so many times over 40 years, I couldn't tell you lol.

I've been brave enough to ASK some gardeners in my neighbourhoods if I could take some cuttings and I've never been turned away. Some ask me to come back in a certain season, but I've had 100% success with this process! hahaha.

Lastly but firstly, I can't promote groups like Community Gardens and Permaculture Groups enough! The SHARING within these groups is nothing short of altruistic. Gorgeous people.
We'll hold your hand as you contact them!

Hopefully you'll be pleasantly delighted you did.

Much love
EMxxxx

Hi everyone,

I am so glad I have found this post. I spent so much of my career advising people on how to look after their soils and plants. I am now a teacher and part of my role is running a new school garden. I have spent 3 years developing a rock hard clay hill into a native garden and a number of vegie gardens for the students. It has been amazing to see the kids try new things and even their questions that I take for granted. One student this year asked me what this strange fruit was and what to do with it... it was a tomato. Amazing!!!

As it is a public school I have absolutely no budget so I struggle every day. I have spoken with local nurseries and get seedlings very cheap or free that are rank that they want to clear out. I also ensure a few plants each year go to seed. Once the seedlings come up I transplant them to the new beds and I know I have seedlings suited to my climate.

My main pests are aphids and heliothis. Aphids are a pain but with simple soapy water they can be suffocated so I get the students to spray soapy water very regularly over the plants. As I have kids everywhere I can't use chemicals but I do have lots of students. I normally find a little group each lesson to manually find heliothis and collect them and feed them to the chooks. Labour intensive but the disengaged students seem to love it.

I also get kids to cut out butterflies from old milk bottles and I put them on thin wire to blow in the wind amongst the vegies. The theory is that the cabbage white moth is territorial and won't lay eggs in another moth's territory. I am still not sure how effective it is but we do it none the less.

Having worked in agriculture and now in smaller horticultural settings there is so much to learn. The one thing that drives me is... healthy soils leads to healthy plants which leads to healthy animals (and us). Work hard on your soils and the rest will begin to look after itself.

Happy gardening everyone.

Hi Leonay welcome to the beyond blue forums and I am glad you found this thread.Sounds like you have some great experience.The school gardens are great and have been envolved in them over the years.Its a wonderful hobby and you never stop learning and finding great ideas to try.Finding ways of controlling pest organically is the way to go today.My research on chemicals that we have used on our crops is frightening for the effects they can have on us.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

I wish schools had vegie gardens all those years ago when I was there.

I would love to have a vegetable garden but my very best skill is killing any plant I ever have. It’s so frustrating and discouraging.

Hello

Well my peas are still under attack despite putting eggshells around them, but I think most will survive. One looks like it's done for! I do have a lot of visiting birds, despite the presence of the cats, who they seem undeterred by, but perhaps they aren't snail eaters?

Thanks EM for all the tips. I start prac next week and I know there is a community garden near abouts, so I will attempt to be real brave and go check it out. Have you seen/heard of seed libraries - same concept as street libraries. I'd love to have both in future. I think it would be really cool to do trades :)

I have masses of succulents and I've been attempting to propagate them. I've had varying degrees of success. I haven't got any going at the moment though as I thought it would be too cold - does anyone know if that's the case? Otherwise I might get some more on the go just for fun :)

Happy gardening all. PS: School gardens are awesome. My son (24) always talks about the cool stuff they grew. The other day he asked if I remember the dragon tongue beans they grew. So cool.

Katy the snails and slugs that are found in our gardens are introduced pest and the best native birds to eat them are magpies,kookaburras,mudlarks and starlings and it can very to how the numbers are controlled by birds by what other native food source is around for them if that makes sense.

I have had some involvement with seed libraries through garden clubs I have been in from exchanging fruit veggies and natives.I use to have a gardening penfriend who I use to swap seeds with years ago.

And Katy I have been propergating succulents during winter.Very way to propergate.Just make sure they don't get to much water.

Happy gardening,

Mark.