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

This month we have our worm farm going great guns after the first week of rather slow worm action.
These little fellas are starting to really eat their way through our kitchen scraps and producing lovely liquid worm fertiliser to use in my organic garden!

I purchased my farm from Bunnings and it was quite cheap and I bought an extra bag of worms as well to give things a hurry up!

How the Worm Farm Works

The worm farm has easy to follow instructions and sits up on it’s own legs. This keeps it at a very workable height.

We lay a few sheets of newspaper on the top of the worms and fold the pages back to add fresh food scraps every couple of days. We use a 1 litre yoghurt container in the kitchen to place the scraps in and a larger plastic bin for the lemon skins, onion and other harsh scraps that the worms don’t like!

The farm has a tap in the front and this makes draining the fluids from the base very convenient. I collect this once a week and make up a batch of organic liquid fertiliser.

We collect rainwater and overflow water from the air-conditioner and use this in our garden. It is an obvious choice when mixing the worm fertiliser in the watering can.

Here is a mix ready to go and it does wonders in the garden and means I now can cut down on buying fertilisers and also reduce our composting activity.

Composting is too hard for most people.

Now you may think that this is an unusual statement for me the organic gardener to make. No, I am not saying don’t compost your garden and kitchen waste.
It is a clear observation on my part that composting is a skill and one that is usually successful for two main reasons;
you have a brilliant compost tumbler or you have the time and space to set up the heap properly!

Composting is an art and one that the average gardener, with a job and other responsibilities will find difficult to keep up. The amount of material needed to get the heap hot enough is usually more than one family can provide – if you have time then maybe you could get 2-3 neighbours to chip in and then you would have enough green stuff to heat it up! Oh yeah did I mention you need some straw, paper, manures ……etc

The easiest starting point for most families would be to get a worm farm and follow the instructions supplied with your kit. The worms can consume large amounts and will produce beautiful castings and liquid fertiliser within a very short time and with little effort.

Our little guys are now taking most of our green waste from the kitchen and we need to visit the compost heap very little now! (I run a heap in a black compost tub with all the dog droppings and a little straw – it is more anaerobic than aerobic so takes several months to break down. When I have autumn or spring prunings I build a large compost heap with lawn clippings and vege thinnings from the garden and that one usually cooks up a nice brew.)