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- Right now is a good time to plant and immediately feed
cabbages. I was recently reminded that cabbages thrive on beer slops, as do
some other plants in the vegetable patch, but the price of beer even after
Canberra’s recent fillip discount, is enough to keep using superphosphate
for most gardeners.
- I’m a great advocate of using worm water and worm
castings on various hungry plants in the garden. Lettuce just love it. I’ve
no idea what’s in it, but I found recently that it has killed my rhubarb.
It dropped all its leaves immediately and after just four weeks I dug around
to see how the big fat rhubarb crown was fairing and it was just a rotten
cavity. Stone dead!
- I had to keep some Dahlia tubers until some recent
filming in March and when the segment was completed I planted the ‘Figurine’
tuber just for fun to see if it would recover, bearing in mind it had spent
all summer out of the ground. Well it grew one sturdy stem to half a metre
and the most enormous pink water lily like flower 15cm (6”) across all in
five weeks! I did however prune off all laterals to foster a strong stem,
but surely this is a plant that anyone can grow?
- I see lots of Crassula in pots in this area. It’s a
succulent plant called “Chinese Jade”, but it’s the one with the large
leaves and has become very popular as a Feng Shui method to guard the evil
forces from entering your front door. Anyhow they colour up well in winter
if they get cold enough and will flower when pot bound, so move them to a
full sun exposed spot to flower at their best and get the succulent leaves
to tint red.
- The Feng Shui recommendation for wealth generation is
to have a pair of “Boita Cupressus” or “Bookleaf Pines” at your main
entrance too. They grow well in containers here too, so if making that BAS
return last month has got you down, look at these as financial insurance. If
you buy a few small Biotas and pot them on into 30cm pots, make sure to give
them a small serve of superphosphate, say 30 grams, which is enough to fill
a film canister.
- While your Boitas are making growth, plant some blue
flowering Lobelia seedlings under them. They don’t compete much and look
stunning with no effort at all, in shade or full sun.
- Most of the fruit crop has been picked, unless you
still have some late apples, avocados or the odd sapote, but make sure you’ve
removed all the old mummified fruit as well. That forms the over wintering
diet for fungal diseases that will strike early in spring, if left. Relegate
the old fruits to the bin rather than compost them, unless you have a good
hot system.
- Every year gardeners promise themselves that they will
green manure the vegetable patch, but most don’t. Well now is the time to
sow broad beans and dig them in when the pressure is on to plant the spring
crops. I hardly ever get to eat them unless you leave a few in amongst the
emerging seedlings in spring. Looks a bit weird, but it’s a sound dual
use.
- I must mention that the practice is to not remove the
plants but knock them over and then chip them where they lie and rough dig
the area, so they partly decompose. That provides fibre and makes sure all
the nitrogen rich root nodes are left where they are needed. In the soil!
There can be a short term nitrogen draw-down caused by decomposing green
stems, so top dress with water soluble nitrogen and it’s not a problem.
- With the majority of metropolitan councils in Australia
now collecting green organics at kerbside from households, in an attempt to
divert this valuable resource from expensive and destructive landfill, one
wonders what keeps the Adelaide Hills Council from complying?
- The land filled organics break down slowly to release
the greenhouse gas methane over the next 30 years from their anaerobic
cesspool, while windrow composted organics, which is what happens when
councils collect and process it, becomes useful compost, that fixes the
carbon element into the earth’s carbon sink as a solid.
- Such a proposition seems so rational, one wonders what
opposition a council could possibly have to collecting green organics at
kerbside and processing it rather than add to our greenhouse emissions? Our
Local Government was after all a vocal participant at the Kyoto Greenhouse
Conference that decided on ‘local environmental action’.
- I know…I can already hear hills councillors carping
‘but what about the costs?’ Well it costs to do nothing too. Bite the
bullet. Introduce a smaller 140 litre domestic bin, use the existing 240
wheelie as the green organics bin for fortnightly collection and fall into
line with the rest of the civilised and responsible local government in
Australia. Most councils writing waste collection contracts, do 10 year
deals with their processors to defray costs, so capital outlay is not the
issue.
- Apart from the global warming benefits of composting
green organics diverted from landfill, there is the chance to move to best
practice at the same time. I find that I still home-compost my soft material
like lawn clippings and table scraps to the worm farm, but the woody
perennial prunings are perfect to consign to the green organics kerbside
wheelie.
- I even buy the processed composted mulch from the
processors to top dress my whole garden. No weeds, no plant pathogens and
all my plants thrive under it. Market gardeners and vineyard owners are
clambering to get this processed product, so why do hills councils continue
to bury it?
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