The Organic Home Garden

Autumn is here but not the rain! It is still very dry here in Perth and the Organic Gardener needs to keep on his toes if plants are to keep growing. This week saw a few cooler days and nights and a little moisture on the lawn on a couple of mornings! Heavens above I could almost say it was cool one morning – 12 degrees!

Anyway enough on the weather – can’t change it so have to live with it!

Next Months Crops Go in Now

The cooler days do allow me to get out and get the next set of seedlings in the ground and well established before the predicted 35 degrees on 3-4 days next week. I put in some more cucumber and beetroot as well as some leek.

The board is there for me to tread on when I check the seedlings or remove weeds – it spread my weight and minimises compression and compaction of the soil. It is hard enough for young plants to survive the weather without hard sod for their little baby roots to try to drill through.
A light fluffy soil structure allows better water penetration and access for air.

The last crop of lettuce did not fair too well thanks to the slaters and some seriously hot weather. Of the 12 seedlings I planted maybe 6 are left and likely to make it to the table.

I did a little thinning of the carrots this week and we had a nice feed for dinner last night. The carrots are proving quite successful this year despite the harsh temperatures. This encourages me to set up a few more larger scale carrot rows. They are largely pest free and need little attention other than thinning, feeding and a little water.

We are still getting a few of the last of the summer crops. Cherry toms and capsicum are still growing a little and the egg plant are thriving.

Garden Bed Renovation

I was eyeing off the broccolini patch this morning and thinking that they are past their best now and the cooler weather may be a good chance to dig over the bed and get some fresh manures and compost in there before the rains start.

I will possibly plant spinach, silverbeet and some turnip in the bed next since I cannot follow the broccolini with cauliflowers since they are of the same family of plants (brassicas). I may even sneak in a row of carrots since this bed is quite clean and I should get nice straight roots.

The cucumber may still give a few more fruit so I will wait another week before I start digging the bed over. Not that I really dig the beds much now – I usually top them up with a well mixed load of manures and compost, wetting agents and rock minerals.

The capsicums in that bed are now two years old so they are going for sure – I would be lucky to get another year of fruit from them.
Speaking of fruit here is the last fig for 2010 – I ate it straight after I took this little snap!

A New Toy err Tool

The Organic Gardener finally found time to get out and buy a new lawnmower this week for my landscaping business.

It’s a beauty and has a neat trick – turns grass into a fine mulch that can be pushed back into the lawn as you mow. This puts nutrients back into a lawn and helps keep the nutrients handy for the grass. What I like is that the 4 blades produce a fine cut that I can use in the compost heap. I also run the mower over shrub prunings and trimmings and it turns them into fine mulch as well which I then pick up by putting the catcher on after the mulcher has done it’s job.
The fine clippings are like dynamite in the compost heap and really get things moving a lot quicker.

This is the magic device that turns a regular mower into a mulching genie!

It is designed to fling the cuttings back around and into the blades for a second third or fourth cut!

Here is the back of the mower – normally the catcher is attached here and the cuttings exit!

With the insert in place the clippings go around for another chop before being thrown down into the lawn.

Weird Organic Vegetables

Let me finish this week with a couple of strange vegetables I picked!

Mr Eggplant Head

The Foetal Carrot Baby

One of the outcomes of a successful garden is the production of lots of organic material. This would have once been referred to as garden waste but not any more since it is a valuable resource. Most of the leaves, stems and roots of my vegetables are passed into the compost heap or the worm farm. However, some material is just way to tough or big for either of these.

This being the case you need some mechanism to reuse this material and recapture both the carbon and the precious minerals.

Think about it – if you spend so much time developing healthy rich soil it would be silly to let the remnants of your crop leave in the big green wheelie bin. The leaves and scraps are just as rich in minerals and carbon as the part you ate as food! This is where one of my favourite garden tools comes into it’s own. The Mulcher.

Organic Prunings

You may recall me talking about pruning the Mulberry bush last month. Well the prunings have been sitting around for the last 5 weeks and have lost most of their sap. The leaves have fallen off and rotted down into the garden bed I placed them in and the stalks are just ready for the mulcher..

My mulcher is an electric machine of modest size, just right for a yard like mine. It can handle branches up to 5-6cm which means it just rips through the mulberry canes. It also deals with the many gum tree twigs and other garden prunings that I bring home occasionally from my landscaping jobs. I pile them all up in a big heap so that all the softer green material rots off and feeds the worms in the soil. I regularly stir the pile up to encourage decomposition and drying of the larger material.

Thorough Drying

The reason for the care with the drying is that if there is too much sap in the branches they will gum up the mulcher. I have learned this the hard way. During one of the early uses of the machine I added too much green material and it just clogged up to the point of stopping! I then spent an hour cleaning the sticky mess out of the inside! Not a favourite job!

So I have learned to get it nice and dry and clean of leaves. A large pile will disappear very rapidly if you get this preparation right the first time.

Mulch Away

As you can see the mulcher is quite effective – it produces a nice coarse product that can be used on any garden bed requiring some covering. I can even put this in the compost heap if I so choose.

Today I have used it to mulch a new area of the garden.

This part of the fence blew down last month and required replacing. That has been completed and so I have planted some shrubs I grew from cuttings last summer. All I needed was some mulch to prepare them for the summer and this lot has done the trick.

That was about two wheel barrows full of mulch. Just the right amount for this little bed.

Reduce Reuse Recycle

The mantra of all true greenies. My mulcher has helped me achieve a great outcome –

– the yard is clean of prunings
– I reused a handy, quality resource
– two garden beds have improved their fertility
– I have helped reduce water loss through mulching

That’s all for today I will drag out another favourite tool from the shed next month!