1stop Organic Gardening

We’ve had some glorious spring weather here in South Australia this past week or so.

Some lovely warm spring days and a couple of wintery, windy days too. Today was just perfect for being out in the garden.

We’ve decided to sell some produce at our local farmers market (Barossa Farmer’s Market) and are gearing up for it. Hubby has dug in a heap of compost to our very sandy soil. And he’s just set up a new irrigation system so that we can automate at least some of our “chores”.

Summers here are really hot and dry, so the plants can’t cope without regular watering. And neither of us have time to hand water for hours on end, so thankyou Michael for taking care of it now.

Of course I’ll still be taking my ever expanding variety of herbs and other edible plants to the market each Saturday, but we also plan to have an assortment of summer vegetables and a few heirloom veggies as well.

Anyway, get outside while it’s gorgeous and develope your green thumb. You’ll save yourself a packet by growing your own veggies and there’ll be zero food miles (kilometres).  Plus, if you’re growing organically (highly recommended), you will be eating healthy, chemical-free, living food - hooray!

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Uncategorized on September 17th, 2008 | No Comments »

Here’s a great perennial herb to grow in your organic garden. It’s called lovage, with the botanical name Levisticum officinale. It’s like many herbs, in that it has multiple uses - in fact lovage has many, many uses.

For starters, it grows all year round in temperate climates. So you can have a celery type flavour whenever you want - unlike celery, which takes about 5 months to grow, you harvest it and it’s gone forever. With lovage you just pull off a stem or three for your soup, casserole or even salad. You can use the stem as well as the pretty leaves and seeds.

Lovage can grow quite tall - up to 2 metres, so it’s best along a fence or the back of a border. It is also quite happy growing in partial shade. It prefers fertile soil and not to dry out, but is quite hardy.

In summer it will produce small, yellow flowers and then seed. You can also use the seed in cooking, replacing celery seed.

Lovage is also an excellent companion plant. It’s one of those fantastic plants that improves the health of other plants living close by. It is also used medicinally as a tea.

So you see it really is an amazing plant….  and very easy to grow. All in all, a great herb to add to your collection.

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Herbs on September 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

This is a follow-up on how my broad (fava) beans are doing, original post here.

We get some frost here in the Barossa Valley - but not all that many. Broad beans seem to suffer a little with the frost. The top growth wilts over and it can look pretty bad first thing in the morning (notice the grass is white and crunchy).

But the great news is that most times broad beans will warm up during the day and recover, kind of like nothing happened. This photo below was taken about a week after the photo above and you can see that they’re growing vigorously, with lots of flowers…  so we’ll have lots of broad beans this season.     :-)  Yum!

They’ll grow about another half again in height, so I’ll need to add another string line for support a bit higher up, otherwise they’ll bend over with the weight of the growing beans.

They’re pretty easy to grow too, so great if you’re still learning about organic gardening. Just prepare the soil by adding some organic fertiliser like complete D or blood and bone and lightly fork or rake it into the soil. Add your bean seeds ( I always save mine from the previous year) to moist soil, spaced evenly, don’t water for a least a couple of days.

All you have to do then is wait. Yes, I know it’s not easy waiting for seeds to poke through, but broad beans are almost guarenteed to come up for you in about two weeks, depending on the weather.

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: vegetables on September 9th, 2008 | No Comments »

If you want more plants for your organic garden, then propagating from your own plants or other people’s plants can quickly increase how many plants you have.

There are a few different ways to propagate plants. Dividing them is probably the easiest way to create more plants, but not all plants can be divided. For instance, rosemary and lavender are both plants that don’t divide. But you can take cuttings to make exact copies of the parent plant. Below is a picture of cuttings I took a few weeks ago.

From the left I have lavenders, then rosemary, several different sages and on the right is a gorgeous variegated lavender.

I usually fit about 100 cuttings in this small cutting tray. Most of the time the tray has a plastic lid on it (with ventilation holes) to keep the atmosphere moist.

You need to take your cuttings at the right time for the best chance of success. I choose semi-hard wood cuttings. That is new growth that has hardened up a little. This way they won’t wilt in the tray when they’re put in.

Make your cuttings about 10cm (4inches) long, making the cut just below a node. Trim off the lower one third of the foliage. Trim any larger leaves and if the cutting is a bit soft, just nip out the tip too.

Dip the base in rooting hormone powder, make a space in your cutting mix and gently place the cutting into your cutting soil mix.

This description is quite basic, but gives you an idea how to get started. I gently water in my cuttings, place them on a heated pad (not absolutely necessary) and put them under fluro lights. In about four to six weeks - depending on what plants I’m propagating - there are very healthy roots and the cuttings are ready to be potted into small pots.

This is just one way to really increase plants for your organic garden. You could also try your hand at raising seeds.

Good luck,

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Uncategorized on September 6th, 2008 | No Comments »

Now that spring is here and the sun is daring to warm our earth here in South Australia, it’s time to start tidying up my organic garden so I can make a fresh start for the new growing season.

We haven’t seen much of the sun of late, but the past few days have been gorgeous and sunny. Cool…  but sunny  

Hubby’s had the mower out and the whipper-snipper, making way for a new, largish vegetable plot. I’ve pruned back our long (20meter) currant vine. We’ll get stuck into it more over the next few days too.

It really is the perfect time for getting right into cleaning up your yard. It’s still quite cool, so you don’t have to work up much of a sweat. But it’s sunny at the same time!

If you’re a newbie to organic garden and want to get started this spring, pick up a copy of my “Organic Food Gardening Beginner’s Manual“. It will give you all the basics and much, much more.

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Uncategorized on September 3rd, 2008 | No Comments »

We’re so lucky here in South Australia, with our temperate climate…  hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. It means we can grow quite a variety of fruits and vegetables and always have something ready to eat from the organic garden.

Here’s a photo from a couple of days ago of my organic garden. It’s got a few weeds, but you get the idea.

We’ll have to wait a while yet for the leeks, caulis and cabbage, but the broccoli is ready to start harvesting. Our broad beans (behind Brassicas) are just starting to flower. We’re still eating lettuce, spring onions, peas, parlsey, silverbeet, spinach, radish, beetroot leaves and carrots. We’d have more to choose from if I had more garden beds (our soil is like beach sand!) to grow in.

I’ve also got a few veggies and a great variety of herbs growing in our poly tunnel. And now we’re gearing up to plant a vast amount of variety to feed both our own family and have surplus to sell at the Barossa Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning.

Happy Organic Gardening, Healthy Living…

Filed under: Uncategorized, vegetables on August 30th, 2008 | No Comments »

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 »