Gloves will tear us apart

June 10, 2012 at 12:54 pm (Container gardens, Featured plants, Gardening - Basics)
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I try to propagate my own plants as much as I can. It’s usually cheaper than buying plants and it’s endlessly fascinating to watch the plants develop from seed or cuttings, or watch a grafted bud shoot away in the spring.

But for whatever reason, it’s not always possible, and we do sometimes have to buy plants, even if only to give ourselves some paterial to propagate from. To be accurate, buying seeds is buying plants anyway, just in their most compact and easily stored form!

French Sorrel in a pot: but there’s more than one plant in here.

I bought some herbs from a stall at a garden show some time ago, but I looked for pots that had multiple plants in them, so I got better value. You can see from the photos,the pot of French Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) I bought has more than a single plant in it,  leaves are emerging from more than one point.

French Sorrel divided showing numerous individual plants

I tipped out the pot and split the contents in half just by pulling them apart. I did break a few leaves, but that doesn’t really matter, they can be fed to the worms or thrown in a salad, depending on your preference. The important part is the individual stems, and as long as the roots are intact, the leaves will grow back.

Sorrel plants divided up

It’s a good idea when transplanting nursery grown or potted plants to remove all the potting mix from the roots, it forces the plant to grow roots into the surrounding soil and seek out nutrients and water, rather than staying in the comfortable surrounds of the potting mix with it’s ready supply of food, air and water. In this case I had to remove the potting mix to separate out the individual little plants.

Newly potted sorrel x17

There were more than 20 individual plants in the original pot I bought, but some were tiny, so I put them in the same container, and ended up with 17 pots of Sorrel from my initial purchase.

Sorrel is a perennial herb, which means it will naturally divide and continue to grow year after year. If clumps get too big, I can dig them up and divide them, and after a couple of weeks, I can plant these out in a row, or just share them around. It is quite happy in a container, too, just divide again when it gets too big. Sorrel is used all over the world as a fresh or cooked green, and has a delicious, slightly sour flavour. It is much used in French provincial cooking. Why not give it a try!

While you’re out there, see what joy division can give you. Look for plants with multiple stems emerging from the pot, especially herbaceous perennials like Sorrel, Globe Artichoke, Mint, Lovage and so many more. You are unlikely to harm the plant, just make sure each new section has roots and shoots or buds, and they will come good. Have fun!

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I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden

November 18, 2011 at 2:06 pm (Container gardens, Gardening - Basics, Pests and problems)
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The following post is adapted from a workshop given at the Green Renters Expo in association with the City of Yarra, May 17th, 2011

I was challenged by my friends at Green Renters to put together a short talk about food gardening for people with limited access to an established garden. Trying to squeeze in as much as possible into such a short presentation (I really only had about half an hour) was pretty difficult, so I had to pare down the volumes of information about growing plants to the bare bones. This is what i came up with.

Gardening without a garden

Getting by with what you’ve got

Not everyone has a garden, and in the past, only the extremely wealthy could afford lavish gardens. Landed gentry had teams of gardeners on their estates tending to exotic plants collected from all around the world. As the middle class grew, smaller versions of these elaborate status symbols replaced the purely utilitarian vegie plots and orchards in suburban private gardens, and even in government owned properties. Status is fine, if you actually can afford it as the old fashioned lords could: they had their own productive land as well as the extensive show gardens. The average person does not have that luxury. In some cases, a patch of soil is not even available for any kind of garden.

The front yard of a nearby neighbour, every year it's full of vegies.

So, where can we put a garden? As one version of things goes, before all else: Let there be light! A successful, productive garden needs at least 6 hours a day of direct sunlight. There are plants that can grow in less light, but as our focus is on food for people, the less light there is, the fewer meals you will get from the space. Light is essential for plant growth, plants take energy fromsunlight and convert it into chemical energy which we can eat. The light should be preferably in the morning, as the afternoon sun is generally hotter, and will tend to stress the plants a bit more, but in the end, any light is good, as long as there’s enough of it.

If a garden bed already exists, choose it to start with. It’s easier to dig out old plants you dan’t want, and replace them than start a whole new garden. Sometimes, anyway. There are problems, especially with established woody plants, which can cause problems, but in most cases, an existing garden is a good place to begin. The next best place is a lawn area. Lawns require a lot of sun, so a healthy patch is a good indication that there is enough light and water to grow most other plants, including food!

But what if there’s no soil at all? Any open space can be used as a growing area. In the inner cities, large areas have been paved, conreted or covered with hard surfacing like asphalt to reduce maintenance. These places are perfect, if they get enough sun, we just have to consider options for growing in containers, which I will come back to. In actual fact, the ground may not be the only place to put containers, and anywhere there is close-to-level space, such as balconies, roof tops, or even stairways can be considered, taking safety and access into account, of course.

Containers don't have to be "plant pots"

Another thing to consider is access to water. Is there a tap nearby the area you are going to use? It makes it so much easier to keep things going if you aren’t having to lug heavy watering cans up and down stairs or hoist them on to roofs to alleviate the thirst of your garden, and they are thirsty. In summer you may have to water every other day, in containers, maybe every day. There are automated ways of doing this, but a hose and trigger spray nozzle are the easiest.

There are other advantages of inner city gardens such as a potential lack of frost, due to being off the ground, or surrounding bricks and paving keeping things war at night. There are also often lower populations of weeds and pests, due to the absence of other gardens nearby for them to migrate from.

What can you grow? Anything you like, really, the number of plants that can be grown are limited by climate, but in any location, there are hundreds of species of plant that can be grown productively. the first thing to consider is what do you like to eat? There’s not much point growing things that you don’t like, it takes just as much work to grow them, but you don’t get anything out of it. Everything is seasonal, too. Some things will grow all year, but most plants have an optimum time of year in a particular area. This usually means they are in season when they are also cheapest in the shops, so find unusual or expensive things, or things that don’t transport well for starters. Soft fruits, fresh herbs, tomatoes and salad vegies are my first thoughts, but it’s really up to you.

You can grow whatever you want in your space

So how can we grow a garden without garden beds? The first option is raised beds. These can work on lawns, if you don’t want to dig them up, but they can work on concrete or other paved surfaces, they behave just like large containers. Basically, you build a wall around the area you want to use, and fill it with “soil”, but I will come back to this. Of course you can use plant pots, or any other kind of container, polystyrene fruit boxes are easily obtained, usually for nothing, from local grocers, or markets (if you can find one). But really, you can use anything as a container, with a few important provisions.

Firstly, it has to hold “soil”, and I keep using scare quotes, because bringing in actual soil from somewhere else is expensive, and basically unsustainable in most cases, but we can work around that. Cheap potting mix is a good option. Supermarkets and big variety stores have potting mix for less than $5/25 litres. The one thing to note is the Australian Standrad logo. There are two standards for potting mix, Regular, which does not have to contain any fertiliser, and Premium, which contains enough for a few months. The standard means you are sure the mix contains no toxic chemicals, retains water and nutrients, drains okay, allows air down to the plant roots: all the things you need from a potting mix. The container itself must also have holes at the bottom to allow water to drain away, or roots become waterlogged.

Logo for the Australian standard (regular grade) potting mix. Premium grade is the same in red.

You need to fill up the container almost to the top, but not quite, as there needs to be some space, a “reservoir” for water to collect so it can filter into the potting mix. Don’t squash it down too much, either, it will settle when it’s watered in., and too much pressure will squash out all the air spaces in the mix, and suffocate your plants.

But where do we get our plants? If you’re buying plants, seeds are the cheapest way to do it. You’ll get more plants than you know what to do with from most packets of seeds. It’s best to buy things that are “open pollinated” if you can find them, which means you will be able to save this year’s seeds again for next year. But there are plenty of other ways to get plants. Division is one way, there are a lot of plants, like Mint and Oregano, and Thyme, where you can just dig a little bit of the plant from an existing one, and plant it where you want it to grow. A bit more complicated it taking cuttings, where you cut a small stem from an established plant, strip most of the lower leaves off and stick it in some potting mix. Eventually, if the cuttings are kept moist, and out of direct sun in a warm spot, like the top of the fridge, new roots will grow from the base, and you can plant the cuttings out. Rosemary and Sage work well this way.

Not too little, not too much, this Apple seedling finds things just right. Maybe I'll call it Goldilocks.

Fertiliser = Plant Food. Plants produce their own energy, but they need certain elements to build the machinery to do it. These come from the nutrients found in fertilisers. The most important are Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium, or “NPK” in their chemical symbols. These can be found in both synthetic chemical fertilisers, or in organic fertilisers. Chemical fertilisers are easy to apply in small amounts to deliver large doses of appropriate nutrients, while organic fertilisers, mostly animal manures, require much larger quantities to be applied for the same result. For this reason, along with the issue of odour, some people choose to use chemical fertilisers. It’s a personal decision, really, it makes little difference to the plants, though organic fertilisers increase soil organic matter and microbial activity, which is a good thing, while chemical fertilisers are much easier to overdose on and produce undesirable effects.

Pests and Diseases are often the cause of much discouragement. Grubs and slugs and bugs can eat away plants literally overnight, but there are simple solutions. Firstly, the best defence is healthy plants, healthy plants seem to be attacked less by pest and disease, so keep them growing strong. Growing many different plants together, mixed up rather than in neat rows, seems to confuse any critters looking for a free feed. Lastly, there are plenty of low toxicity sprays that will knock back the baddies. Just remember they will also knock out any beneficial bugs as well, like ladybugs and hoverflies.

Grow as many different plants as you can in the space you've got, it helps confuse the pests, keep out weeds, and produce more food!

Weeds take up empty space in the garden. If you have weeds, it means you could have more plants you like. Pulling weeds makes more weeds! By ripping them out, you are bringing more weed seeds to the surface, and allowing more sunlight to warm the soil, and more water to germinate more seeds. Mulch reduces weeding and watering, by shielding the soil from the sun, evaporation is reduced, so more water stays in the soil for plant roots. Organic mulches provide some nutrients as they break down, but very woody mulches can use up some nitrogen if you are not careful. Any mulch is better than nothing, even stones or plastic could help stop weeds and hang on to water.

Many plants produce more when harvested, like beans, peas, salad greens, even broccoli, so keep picking! Keep sowing seeds, too, on a regular basis, so plants can be replaced when they are slowing down. Most of all, keep trying, take notes so you can look back on what works and what doesn’t, and don’t get discouraged. No one is good at something the first time they try. Remember learning to cook?

The golden garden rules

  • Light
  • Water
  • Healthy roots = healthy shoots
  • Mulch
  • Plant what you like
  • Keep planting
  • Keep picking
  • Learn from mistakes
  • Have fun!

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Green-age wasteland

May 19, 2011 at 11:09 am (Container gardens, Featured plants, Fruit trees, Gardening - Basics, Seed Saving)
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A lot of people probably don’t realise, or at least don’t stop to consider, that when they buy fresh fruit and vegetables, they are often buying the means to generate more fresh fruit and vegetables. Every time you spit out pips of any fruit you eat, you are probably throwing away the means to grow whatever fruit is your fancy. Of course, most commercial fruit comes from carefully selected varieties, nursery propagated by grafting a well known variety on to disease resistant rootstock to grow in a large plantation which will produce uniform fruit of consistent quality under well known conditions at a predictable time of year. Any seed grown from such fruit will not be exactly the same, due to the wonders of sexual reproduction, and resulting natural genetic recombination. But then, why does that matter?

If you want a well known variety of fruit, and you can grow it in your garden, chances are it will be cheapest in the shops when your tree is laden with fruit. That’s how the market works. But if you have a tree in your garden that has different fruit to any other tree in the world, which is quite conceivable, then nobody else will have it for sale. Sure, it won’t be much different; after all, if you save a seed from an orchard grown fruit which was surrounded by genetically identical trees when it flowered, the gene pool is  small to begin with. But every now and then, random recombination combined with natural variation means something new and unusual will spring forth. It may have a different flavour, or colour, or more disease resistance, or better nutritional content, or prettier flowers, or larger fruit, or any other possible variation. The world renowned Granny Smith apple, for example, came from a seedling out of a compost heap in country New South Wales. And if you do get something worth spreading around, you obviously have the right to immortalise yourself, though I don’t think Maria Anne Smith referred to herself as “Granny”.

Some sorely neglected Citrus seedlings. You know how mechanics' cars are always falling apart?

Some fruit produce seeds that are poly-embryonic, meaning they are capable of growing more than one plant from each seed. In the case of Citrus species, one of the embryos is asexual, meaning it’s a clone of the parent plant, along with one or two “normal” embryos. I used to peel the seed coat off citrus pips and stick them in my mum’s indoor plants. They usually grew, but I never took it further than germinating them as a kid. There’s no way of knowing which of the seedlings is the clone, obviously, until they fruit, or you have a genetics lab handy. And seedling trees take longer to fruit than grafted, nursery propagated fruit trees, possibly up to seven years, as compared to two or three. But seedlings are free, and if after a few years waiting the fruit turns out to be not to your liking, you can always graft on something you do like. Even commercial trees have this done as consumer tastes change.

Sprouting Garlic cloves, ready for planting (pic courtesy of shonky photo, inc.)

Okay, so fruits are all good, but what about vegetables? In some cases, they are fruit anyway. Tomato, Pumpkin, Melon, Capsicum and Chilli seeds are easy to identify for example, and Eggplant too, though the seeds are a little harder to extract. But often we actually buy whole or almost whole plants. The onion family is the best example of this. Onion and garlic bulbs are basically dormant plants. Each individual clove of garlic is capable of producing a whole bulb of garlic if you stick it back in the ground. Just look for clove that are already starting to push out a leaf, and bury them pointy end up, just below the soil surface. Onions will regrow if planted, though not as deeply, and they usually just flower, which gives you a seed supply at least. Onions that have divided into separate bulbs may be able to become multiplier onions, this is where Shallots originally came from.

Look ma! Growing Garlic!

Leeks are also a whole plant, though they are usually trimmed of excess leaves and roots before they arrive at the market. But you can use the leek as normal in the kitchen, and then replant just the base, which will re-grow. Again, you may only end up with a flowering stalk, but they do look attractive, like pink pom-poms, and again, you will be able to collect plenty of seeds. Pretty much anything that comes with a root attached, for example bunched herbs, can be replanted and grown again, though the shock of harvest and transport may mean they simply flower quickly and produce seeds. But you may get some foliage, which is what you want from herbs, and at the very least you will get seeds.

Three leeks and a celery. Not pictured: Ted Danson

Whole bunches of celery can also be a source of planting material. I usually pull off the large outside stalks of celery until the pale, tiny leave in the centre are all that’s left attached to the base of the plant. That base can be planted either in the garden or in a pot, and will grow new leaves and roots, which may either be harvested, or left to produce seed for next year.

The pale, sickly looking celery heart. This was indeed a dark day for flash-free photography. Happily, the celery made a miraculous recovery (see above)

These are just a few examples of how your grocery basket can be a way of filling up your food garden as well as your fridge. If something looks like it will grow, give it a try, you never know your luck. I am currently eyeing a pineapple top in my compost bin. I will get back to you…

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Shameless self promotion post #1: Burnley Open Day

July 15, 2010 at 3:35 pm (Shameless Self Promotion)
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Some of you may know that I am a lecturer in horticulture at the Burnley College campus of the University of Melbourne. Well, this Sunday you can come and see where I am lucky enough to have an office. The whole campus is open to the public between 10am and 3pm. If you have just started a garden, or you’re thinking about starting one, come and see what it could look like if it was looked after for over a hundred and fifty years. Even if you have never thought about studying horticulture, the gardens here are one of the best kept secrets in Melbourne. They are only fifteen years younger than the Royal Botanic Gardens in South Yarra, and are the home of Australia’s oldest Horticulture college.

Of course, the history of the heritage listed gardens aren’t all that will be on show. As part of the Melbourne School of Land and Environment, the campus is also home to a huge range of research projects looking at the future of horticulture, especially in urban environments. There is active on-site research on green roofs, where plants are grown on roof tops to reduce energy consumption and help carbon sequestration, as well as other urban sustainability issues, such as grey/black water recycling for urban vegetation. There is also work on the role of ex-situ (meaning off-site) conservation of native species, and restoration of native Australian vegetation.

The heritage listed Burnley Gardens

Anyway, I could crap on for ages about what’s going on, but instead I will copy and paste from the official printed material so you can see what other things will be happening. Read this, it’s quicker than going to their website and downloading a pdf that says the same thing.

Delivered in partnership by the University of Melbourne’s School of Land and Environment (MSLE) and Friends of Burnley Gardens (FOBG), horticultural experts will present you with free lectures and paid workshops, kids activities, forums and seminars on leading sustainable gardening practice, including pruning, pest and disease control, watering and fertilisers, and setting up a veggie plot. There will be tours taking you back in time through the
lush and historic gardens, and University course advice for budding horticulturists.

I’ll be the first to admit, if I never read the phrase “budding horticulturalist” again, that will be fine with me. And don’t be put off if you don’t want to listen to people talk about any of those topics, the gardens are beautiful, and the cafe makes great coffee. The Plant Science labs and nursery will also be open for the more technically minded to see what goes on behind the scenes, too. Anyway, I just though some of you might like to know, and you can come and say “Hi” to me, if you can figure out who I am.

Full program for the day can be found here. Sorry about the pdf.

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You may not have a greenhouse, but is a fridge too far?

June 30, 2010 at 11:03 am (Gardening - Basics, Planting calendar)
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Before people came along, plants were able to grow, flower and produce seeds that would drop on the ground. They evolved mechanisms to stop them germinating at bad times of year when growing conditions were poor. They developed germination inhibitors, chemical and physical, in order that they wouldn’t begin growing before winter, for example, when the plants may have perished from the cold and wasted their chance at prolonging their genes.

We grow plants for our own reasons, most importantly to eat them, and we have figured out ways around plants’ natural safety catches. The most obvious is temperature, and commercial nurseries have climate-controlled, heated greenhouses in which to germinate seeds out of season. They usually have automated watering systems, and also cooling or venting systems to keep the temperature range stable as weather warms through the spring and summer. All this equipment costs money, and contributes at least a little bit to the price of seedlings at the nursery, thought the biggest cost is still labour.

Your fridge can do more for you than keep things cold.

But one of the best places I have found for germinating seeds already exists in most peoples’ homes. It’s the top of the fridge. Refrigerators remove heat from food and expel it from the chamber, usually out the back of the machine. That means a constant supply of unused heat rising up and going to waste, usually. Sowing seeds in a small pot or punnet and putting them on top of the fridge will usually guarantee germination in about a week, as long as they are kept moist. Being in the kitchen means you are likely to see them every day and remember to water them, too. Once the seedlings emerge, they will need light, so stick them on a window sill, preferably north facing, and keep watering them. If you can protect them outside, even with a sheet of glass or an old window, you can move them out as they get larger, and even re-pot them to get them nice and big for planting in spring.

As I’ve said before, don’t rush into planting them in the garden before the soil has warmed up. It will most likely result in disappointment due to late frosts or cold snaps, and the young plants will grow very slowly until the ground is warmed up enough for their roots to function properly. But starting seeds early at least gives us something to focus on while the weather outside continues to be less than enticing. So if the only thing you’ve grown with your fridge is bacterial slime and mould, try something a bit more uplifting, and get some tomatoes going now. Check the Garden Doctor planting lists for things to start “under glass” by which I mean not outdoors or unprotected. The top of the fridge will also work to help cuttings strike roots, but that’s for another day. The July planting list will be up tomorrow!

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Sowing your wild oats: Success with Seeds (for beginners)

September 25, 2009 at 10:57 am (1)
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“Park’s Success with Seeds” by Anne Reilly was first published by the US based Park’s Seed company in 1978. My copy dates from then, and has the grooviest psychedelic and seedy dust jacket imaginable as a result. The book itself is still available, a new edition by Karen Park Jennings can be delivered to your home by ordering on their website. And it is well worth doing so, even though much of the contained information is available in online form at the same place.

Cover of the original 1978 edition

Cover of the original 1978 edition

The book itself is a primer for growing plants from seed. For those with no experience whatsoever, it runs through the general basics of seed propagation, setting up, germinating, growing on seedlings, as well as some general background on gardening and botanical naming of plants. Some of the information, (mostly plant names), is out of date in this edition, but it’s easily searched in other books which will list the synonyms of those plants which have had name changes in recent years.

But the most useful aspect of the book is as a visual reference guide to individual plants. The majority of the book consists of page after page of plant descriptions for both ornamental and edible plants (and some weeds), including a photograph of the mature plant, or some detail, such as flowers or seed pods, to allow for easy identification. And most useful and unusual, it has photographs of germinating seedling of every species described. This is absolutely fantastic for the novice propagator, especially if things are sown direct into the ground, as there is no chance of pulling out your crops by mistake, thinking they are weeds. A simple look at the book will help you pick out your corn seedlings from grassy weeds, and your beetroot from dock.

Sample page from the book

Sample page from the book

Details of optimum propagation conditions, including temperatures (though they are listed in farenheit) and cultural conditions in the garden are included in each description. Basically, this is one of the most useful gardening books I have ever bought, and would not give up my copy for quids. Well worth laying your hands on a copy, or at least having a peek at their online version if you are in doubt about it’s value.

Five green thumbs up.

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