|
Tip 1: Plant close together
Most Australian gardeners (or Southern USA gardeners) plant too far apart. This is a relic from another culture. In English
gardens you had to grab every available ray of sun. Our gardens need more shelter. Lots of leaf cover means the soil is insulated
from heat and cold, and the plants get more protection against frost. If one plant dwarfs another, the small one will grow
to size after you've picked it's neighbour.
Don't plant in neat rows, with neat paths in between. This is bad for the soil, and good for pests, as that way, they can
see what they're eating. Plant everything together, and tread warily in between.
Grow upwards, have as many trellises as you can imagine. Six metres of climbing
beans, crops as much as five or seven metres on the ground. I have climbing tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, melons passion
fruit and vines. If you can find a climbing varitety of a plant, use it in preference to a dwarf one. I tried the bush bean,
believe me it's not worth it. I had a quarter of crop compared to the climbing beans.
Also, forget about the good
old CROP ROTATION. As long as you plant lots of nitrogen fixers, like beans, peas, lupins etc, the whole garden will get the
benefit as they decay back into the ground. Anyway, if your garden is varied, it's unlikley to suffer the consequences that
come with planting the same crop in the same spot year, after year.
As soon as you pull something out, put something
back in again. If you have nothing to plant put in quick growing radish seeds.
ALWAYS plant as soon as you harvest,
or "bandicoot".
STORING VEGGIES AND FRUIT
Vegetables
Don't keep Veggies near Fruit, the fruits ethylene will make them rot faster. Keep most of the vegetables
in a rack in a dark, airy cupboard. They are new commercial bags that will keep fruit an vegetables for month without chilling,
the bags release the ethylene as it forms. Look for them in the supermarkets.
Potatoes keep best if they are cold (not frozen- frozen spuds rot) in a dark and dyr place. When spuds
get damp they rot too, when they are exposed to the light, they turn green - and poisonous and start to sprout. One old fashioned
mode of storing spuds was to hill them in dry sand.
Fruit
All Fruit needs to be kept cool and dry, in an airy spot. Fruit produces the ripening
agent ethylene and fruit ripens faster when the ethylene can't escape. Old fashioned methods of wrapping fruit in paper, or
buriying them in sand or bran were really designed to soak up ethylene as well as to keep the fruit cool, dark and dry.
Most commercial fruit is waxed. Waxed fruit rots from the inside out. Organically grown, unwaxed ruit
just shrivels and shirvels and shirvels. After a few month it looks awful unless it's been in cool store, but the taste is
often even better, and sweeter, than when the fruit was almost fresh. Straight from the tree, though, fruit is unbeatable
it still tastes of sunlight and wind.
|
|
Gardening Tips
What to do in autumn
Roughly dig vacant beds (if you have any) lime if needed and sow nutrigen crops for digging in later. Well-sized brassica
seedling must be planted out in cool districts to succeed now. Sow broad beand, Chinese cabbage, spinach, turnip, winter lettuce
and, in warm areas, brassicas. Spring oinion seed can be sown thickly, leeks go in as well developed seedlings. Make liquid
manure for dribbling around leafy vegetables. Watch out for caterpillars on young brassicas. Apply lime to beds which will
be used for onions or peas later on. Cut asparagus ferns to the ground as they fade
|
