There are quite a few ways I go about improving the soil of my organic garden. Growing legumes happens to be one of the easiest ways to add some nitrogen to the garden, while also getting to eat some of the harvest.
I’ve just pulled up my latest lot of snow peas and took a photo of the roots to show you what I mean.
See the little whiteish “growths” on this healthy pea plant root system? They are called nodules. Legumes (peas, beans, some acacias, peanuts etc.) have the amazing ability to take nitrogen from the air and transport it down to their roots.
When you pull up the spent plants most of the nodules stay in the soil and go on to feed your next crop. Many organic gardeners grow legumes as a green manure crop. They grow the legume until it is flowering and then plough the entire plant into the soil. This breaks down and adds valuable organic matter back into the soil - along with the added nitrogen.
Growing legumes is part of my organic gardening system, which keeps my soil, and the rest of my garden, healthy and enriched.
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Filed under: Uncategorized on August 27th, 2008 | No Comments »
A few days ago we were given a new rooster. He’s gorgeous and is a big hit with my girls (the hens). Take a look at them here, scratching around free-ranging in a weedy part of our yard.
They have a run as part of where they are locked up at night, but they love to get into this part of the yard. I don’t weed it or grow anything here. It’s exclusively for the chooks to enjoy scratching around for grubs and other insects. Plus they get as much green feed as they want.
I usually let them in here about an hour or two before sunset. They have a good scratch out here and them put themselves to bed (roost) as the sun sets.
They are an integral part of my organic gardening system. But they can’t get into my organic vegetable garden beds. They would destroy them in just an hour or two. So I make sure they have their own area and the rest of the garden is well fenced off from their free-ranging area. Everyone’s happy 
If you’re thinking about getting chickens, here’s some great info on poultry.
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Filed under: chickens on August 19th, 2008 | No Comments »
What a gorgeous plant. Yes, I mean both to look at and the flavour… it’s divine! It’s a recent discovery of mine. I don’t know why I had never heard of it until recently, but I’m so glad that it’s part of my organic garden now. Perhaps I should say part of my collection of herbs, rather than organic garden, because it actually lives in a pot, in my poly tunnel. It loves the warmth and humidity that the tunnel provides.
It is quite an easy plant to grow and propagate. It loves warm, humid conditions - so you’ll need to keep the water up to it. If you were to grow it outside, look for a damp and shady spot.
It propagates very easily, even producing arial roots which can be cut off with a 10cm section of the plant and put into a good potting mix, with a small amount of organic fertilizer and kept moist.
Use the leaves in your asian cooking for a flavour similar to coriander, with a spicy difference. A great addition to curries, rice and hot soups.
Give it a go - it’s so easy to grow. You’ll be so glad you did.
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
P.S. If you’re not sure how to get started organic gardening, take a look at my e-manual - Organic Food Gardening Beginner’s Manual to get you headed in the right direction!
Filed under: Herbs, Uncategorized on August 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
I just want to show you quickly how some plants die down through winter, and then rejuvinate themselves as soon as it starts to get warmer again.
Here’s a photo of my Stevia plant. Stevia’s the sweetner herb. You dry the leaves and use them as a sugar substitute. This is when I first bought the plant and it was in vigorous growth.
Below are photos of how it suffers from the cold (left) and what to do about it (right).
Just take your snips and trim off all the old and withered wood, leaving a little of the old wood. When the basal leaves grow larger you can trim it down lower if you want to.
So don’t despair if some of your herbs seem to die over winter. Many herbs actually need the cold to rejuvenate themselves for the following growing season.
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: Herbs, Uncategorized on August 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
Here’s a few photos showing how easy it is to grow a few salad greens in a container that you can bring indoors if the weather turns cold. I grew this container during summer, but you can grow lettuce and other salad greens in cooler weather too, it just takes longer.
Start with a decent size container - it doesn’t need to be deep as you can see from mine.
Use good potting soil and add an organic fertilizer to keep your greens well fed as they grow quite quickly. The photo above shows the seeds germinating, just 3 weeks from being sown.
There are several types of lettuce in this container, radish, rocket and spring onions. This photo was taken about 6 or 7 weeks after the seeds were sown.
I choose to garden organically because I think there are great health benefits and there is little impact on the environment. Give it a try… you’ll have fresh greens, and it looks gorgeous too!
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: Uncategorized, vegetables on August 7th, 2008 | No Comments »
OK… I thought I’d given my peas enough support. But there you go - you might think you’ve done something well, but Mother Nature can make you think again sometimes!
I put in two start-droppers and ran some wire mesh between them. This would probably have been enough support, but my peas did grow quite vigorously. I’m not complaining of course, they we’re (and still are) yielding really well. But they reached the top of the mesh and just kept growing. Even that was OK for a while, but we had a strong wind…. and, well just take a look at the photo below. The mesh collapsed inward with the weight.
The yellow flowers in front of the peas are my bok choy going to seed. The peas even pushed them over a bit. The picture below is how they were looking a little over a month ago. Heaps of (white)flowers, standing up straight and tall.
So the moral of the story is to make sure you stake your climbing veggies (all climbers really) solidly, because you might underestimate their vigour and the weight of the fruiting plant/s…. especially when you’re growing organically, because the yields can be quite surprising.
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: Uncategorized, vegetables on August 5th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I walked past my organic veggie garden a day or two ago on my way to feed the chooks, and to my horror my 30cm tall (12 inches) broad beans were all bent over. I was mortified! Then I took in the surrounding landscape…. misty, very cold, crunching sound as I walked… yes, there was a frost over-night.
Now we only get mild frosts here in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. But it was enough for the grass (weeds in my case) to freeze. I don’t let my chooks out before about 9 am ususally (we have a fox hanging around), so the sun had been out for a while. But the sun hadn’t reached my veggie plot yet.
So anyway, the broad beans were all limp and I thought “that’s it for them!!!”, but as it turns out, they are pretty robust. By lunchtime they’d straightened up and were looking as perfect as I’d seen them the day before. What extra-ordinary plants!
So if you live in a frosty area, don’t despair if you should see your broad beans suffering from frost. Most likely, by the time you’ve clicked your heels together and whispered “there’s no place like home” three times, your broad beans will have been done with their trickery.
I didn’t think to go grab the camera… ’cause I was still in shock, but if it happens again I’ll take a snap to show you!
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: chickens, vegetables on July 31st, 2008 | No Comments »
This doesn’t have anything to do with organic gardening, but I just had to show you the tenacity of some plants. Take a look at this photo below of a really old geranium plant “growing” (more like hanging on by a thread) in a very decrepit half wine barrel.
This is how we found it when we moved into the property. After turning a blind eye to it for a long time, having many more urgent tasks to tend to, hubby yanked the poor plant from it’s crumbling home and threw it by my potting table.
Now I swear I haven’t touched it for at least 6 months (yes, I know….. but I have such a hard time getting rid of any plant that shows even a remote will to live), and it’s still living… not just living, but it even flowered lying there, bare roots exposed to our extreme summer conditions, and now through winter too.
What an amazing plant. I must say, I’m a bit perplexed at what I should do with it. It has survived this long without so much as a lick of water or a grain of soil nurishing it’s roots. Really I should chop it into little cuttings and plant them in our sandy soil and see exactly how tenacious it is! What do you think????
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: Uncategorized on July 27th, 2008 | No Comments »
Here’s an updated photo of the lettuce we’re growing in our poly tunnel, taken late this afternoon. They’re looking great, even though they are growing quite slowly for lettuce grown by this method (nutrient film technology).
I’ve read that some commercial growers can have lettuce grow to saleable size within 4 to 5 weeks. Pretty impressive… but we’re growing without chemicals, using organic fertilizer. This is our first attempt, so it’s a huge learning curve for us.
Ours aren’t even close to being ready and they were germinated 8 weeks ago. We’re not using artificial lights, only sunlight and it’s mid winter here. But we’re having a go. Which is what gardening is about
Purists wouldn’t consider this to be organic gardening, but I think with the water restrictions that we’re dealing with at the moment (and possibly forever), this form of “organic gardening” may be the way of the future. This method can use up to 90% less water than traditional gardening methods - something to think hard about!
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: vegetables on July 23rd, 2008 | 1 Comment »
If you’ve read a few of my posts, you’ll have already worked out that I really love herbs. I mean, they are just such wonderful and versatile plants. They have so many gorgeous scents and flavours and there’s one for just about everything that ails you.
But it’s not just people that can benefit from including herbs as an integral part of our diet. Did you know that chickens will self - “medicate” if you give them herbs to pick over? That’s right… they know what to eat, for what ails them. Or maybe they choose certain herbs because they have a deficiency in something.
I heard recently that when we crave some particular food, it’s usually because that food will give us the vitamins or minerals that our body is low in. Aren’t we clever?
So whenever I’m tidying up my organic garden, or dividing herbs, or even just walking by and it occurs to me - I throw some into the chook yard. My chickens just help themselves. And whatever’s left over just breaks down over time.
I don’t limit my veggie growing area to just vegetables. I have herbs growing throughout my organic garden, even in the flower beds. In fact, some herbs are so pretty that a lot of people don’t even know they’re herbs - they compliment the flowers so well!
Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…
Julie
Filed under: Herbs, chickens on July 22nd, 2008 | No Comments »
Hi, I'm Julie. I hope you get inspiration from my blog and come back often for great tips and organic gardening info. For more info about me, 
