What's a Wicking Bed?

I'm so pleased you asked :)

If you're not from a hot dry climate then you don't need to read this post.

If you are from a hot dry climate then read on and find a very water efficient garden bed design.

Do you remember those pots called water well pots? Same principle applies here:

Water will 'wick' up, via capillary action, from a water reservoir in the base, up through the soil to the plant roots.

A waterwell pot (TM and all that stuff):

Pros:

Can be built in a container, in-ground or above-ground bed (ie suitable for renters as well as home owners).

Drastically reduced evaporation due to not watering on the top of the soil.

Plants have moisture where they need it (at the roots) when they need it.

Very water efficient.

Makes your garden less dependant on you and regular watering. You can go away for a weeks holiday in summer and your plants will still be alive when you come back!

Less fungal issues caused by soil splash and wet leaves (because you wont be top watering)

Cons:

Can only be 300-400mm soil (the water will not wick any higher than this).

If your water reservoir leaks it can be a lot of work to fix it.

Not particularly suited to high rainfall areas.

Not suited to deep rooted plants.

Why?

For us in Perth our summers are very long, very hot and very dry. Our record is about 84 days with no rain but it's still generally over 50 days with no rain. When it does rain the evaporation rate is higher than the rainfall in all of spring, summer and autumn anyway, so the plant still doesn't really get much water when it does rain (ie rainfall only exceeds the evaporation rate for three or four months of the year).

Added to this is those dreadful Bassendean Sands that most of Perth gardeners have in their backyards. The least fertile soil in the world! Lucky us! Water (and nutrients) wash through this stuff (which is not much better than beach sand) so fast plants have to be real quick to get a drink as it flows past them back down into the water table.

There are other factors (such as blisteringly hot easterly winds in summer) but the two listed above are sufficient reasons to be looking for very water efficient methods of gardening.

Where?

I think I first heard about wicking beds at one of the free workshops held at Lockridge Community Garden. I've been attending these monthly for the last two years. Fabulous folk.

I did some web research also, there are some very useful sites and you'll see a variety of ways of making these if you go looking. The originator, Colin Austin of South Aust, is a good place to start - Waterright . Google wicking beds and you'll find heaps.

Colin came up with the idea to ameliorate erratic rainfall in trying to assist Ethiopia with food growing.

How?

Being the sometime sceptic that I can be, I decided to follow the instructions given by Todd Smith at Lockridge Community Garden and built two wicking beds out of polystyrene foam vegie boxes last January to see how they would go during our summer.

I'll show you how they went in the next post ...

Happy gardening everyone!

Backyard Makeover

Before:

After:

Raised sleeper wicking beds for annual vegies. More info re these later.

Potatoes in Tyres

I can't believe how popular the post I made, years ago, on growing potatoes in tyres is.

It is the single most popular page on this blog, and searches for this topic continue to be the reason most ppl end up at my blog. Amazing!

I haven't grown potatoes in tyres myself for quite a while now, but have some organic seed potatoes waiting to be put somewhere. The tyres I used previously are now holding up my worm farm.

Oh! But I've just remembered I do have two other tyres not currently doing anything at all. Well, I had put some green manure crop onto them but it's not too soon to change that!!

Coolo, think I just gave myself a project for the afternoon, particularly as I have a bale of straw sitting out there not doing anything and it *is* potato planting time!

I'm off to plant potatoes in tyres!

Ciao.

Plants for Free!

Oh how I love Freecycle.

Several times at the plant nursery I have looked for watercress so I can grown my own to add to my daily lunch-time salad, but to no avail.

Lo and behold what do I see in my local Freecycle emails on the weekend - someone one suburb away has watercress that's bursting out of it's pot and she'd love to give some away, YIPEE!

A few emails later, a short 5 minute drive and I am the happy owner of some watercress plants.

There are regularly plants advertised in our Freecycle group and I've given some away as well as received the grass tree. Maybe there are free plants waiting on Freecycle for you too? (Freecycle is for more than just plants BTW!) Go to the website now and join the group nearest you (there are groups all over the world)

Thankyou Freecycle!!

I didn't even get my nails dirty with this plant as it is floating in my pond.

I Wish we Had Smello-Net!

I really do wish you could smell what I bought today, cos I have something yummy!

Brown Boronia is a West Australian native that is very, very fragrant. People walk around the city selling bunches of it when it's in flower and you can smell them from miles away. A beautiful sweet aroma. They cleverly had some right at the front door of the Better Pets and Gardens shop I went to today - to buy cat food.

The aroma is just magnificent and I could smell it as soon as I got out of the car. Their selling ploy worked very well on me - came out with two boronia plants as well as two tomatoes, a capsicum, a punnet of bok choi on top of the cat food!

Boronia is sold as an aromatic oil for burning in oil burners.

I've tried to grow one of these before but it carked it pretty quickly, hopefully I will have more success this time. Here are the two I bought today:


The one on the left is the standard Boronia Megastigma, the one on the right is called 'Heaven Scent' which is, the label informs me, and improved version of the first.

The second plant has more compact bushier growth as you can see in the pic. The flowers are smaller but seem almost as heavily scented as the standard plant.

The flowers are quite profuse and are dark brown/purple on the outside and either yellow or, in this case, lime green inside. Here's a close up of the flowers both inside and outside:


The plant is native to the south-west of my state so I think my previous problem has been heat and dryness. I have a spot in my current native garden that I think may be OK for this plant. So I'll put it in the ground in a few weeks and see what happens.

Vegie Pot Update
I took pity on the mostly-dead snow peas today and gave them a burial befitting a .. well, umm a dead vegie plant :) :


All of the lettuce I had originally planted were still there, so I just added a few more to fill in the complete circle around the inside of the pot. In the middle I planted a tomato.

I bought a single tomoto plant in a pot instead of a punnet of seedlings even though it's a more expensive option.

I dislike buying a punnet of them and either throwing half the plants in the bin or just being absolutely overwhelmed by fruit if I'm silly enough to plant them all. They also take up far too much room if I plant 8 tomato plants. (What family could ever need 8 tomato plants?? hmm maybe an Italian family). I haven't had much luck with transplanting out ones I grown from seed either, so I'm better off buying an individual plant.

Trendy Tomato
The tomato I bought today is calld 'Pink' (after the singer maybe???) and is supposed to be a heavy cropper, so I probably should feed it more than I usually do. I'm generally pretty slack with fertilising, preferring only to do it during soil preparation. I gave it some Thrive (TM and all that) liquid fertiliser when I planted it today. Might go mark it on the calendar so I remember to feed it again in a few weeks.

Anyway, here's how the pot looks now, hopefully I haven't planted the tomato too soon as it's not really spring yet. I am a bit concerned for the lettuce once the weather warms up, but hopefully they'll all be eaten before it gets too hot for them :


Yum- I see summer salads on the menu, and right outside the back door!

The other tomato (a 'trailing' one meant for hanging pots, but I don't have any hanging pots) is in a separate pot with the rest of the left over lettuce plants, and in yet another pot is the yellow capsicum/mild chilli that I bought.

All in all there was quite a bit of dirt under my nails today!

Next time I'll show you my worm farm. 'Til then happy gardening everyone!

Vegies in Small Spaces

Ever increasingly people have less room for gardens. With the explosion of the 'house behind' phenomenon across my city many people have only a small paved area for their outdoor table and chairs and that's the extent of their garden.

Inner city living has also become very popular with a large number of (mostly younger) people living in apartments in the CBD or very close to it. At best they get a balcony where they can have some plants.

Viva Le Pot!
No, no, not *that* kind of pot! You can still grow some vegies to munch on even with severely restricted space.

Whilst I have a large backyard I still grow things in pots - vegies included!

For the last few months I have been growing snow peas and lettuce in a large pot on my back patio:
It's looking rather sad at the moment as we had a storm a couple of weeks ago and the snow pea plants broke off in the wind. However up until that point it was going very well and still has peas and flowers that will turn into peas (if the plant stays alive long enough!):


None of these snow peas made it into the kitchen - this is the kind of thing I plant so I can go out in the garden, grab a handful of peas straight off the plant and straight into my mouth; talk about fresh food!

This is the reason why I chose to put these into a pot - so it was close to the back door of my house. When coming home from work, or going back inside after doing some work in the yard, I can just grab a few peas and enjoy their deliciously sweet crunchiness :).

To support the pea plants I simply put three tomato stakes (for international visitors these are 1 inch square hardwood stakes about 8 feet long) into the pot equal distance around the rim and tied them together with garden string. The string keeping the stakes together also act as somewhere for the plants tendrils to take hold and grab onto for extra support.

There were between 6 - 8 pea plants in this pot. Here's a pic from a different angle so you can see the supports:

Down amongst the bottom of the pea plants there are some lettuce. These are now not doing so well as the pea plants grew so well the lettuce were a bit starved of light. Here's one of them - yes it's a purple lettuce (apologies for the out of focus pic - still working on the close up feature of the camera):

So there you go, even if you only have room for one pot then you have room to grown some vegies. About 6 hours of sunlight per day, some water and, if you must, some fertiliser and you'll be munching your own fresh produce in no time :)

'Til next time, happy gardening everyone :)

Vegie Patch Update

Winter is a pretty boring time in the vegie patch as far as I'm concerned.

Despite this I do have a few things growing, most of which are experiments .. ie things I've never grown before.

My vegie patch is raised from ground level and made of old railway sleepers. Here's how it's looking at the moment - tomatoes in front, brussel sprouts at the back, potatoes to the left rear and then there are some items in tyres (yes I still have the tyres from the potatoes in tyres experiment!):



Below are the potatoes. They haven't been up for long but seem to be doing very well.



This is some of the leeks (amongst flat leaf parsley). I've never grown these before. They seem to be taking a long time to thicken up.


This curious creature is Kale, also something I've not previously grown. Its neighbours were munched very early on by pale greyish looking bugs. This one (in a separate tyre) didn't get munched. I just love how dark the leaves are.

And here we have the brussel sprouts, again something I've not grown before. These took simply ages to start growing the sprouts - which come from where the leaf stalks meet the main stalk.


Here's a closer shot of the sprouts - and the pale grey bugs that are now devouring them These seem to be the same bugs that ate most of the Kale when it was at the seedling stage. I'm guessing both plants are brassica family so no doubt are attractive to the same bugs.


I may pick one of the sprouts this weekend, mostly out of curiosity. They've taken so long to grow I'm sure they will be overly strong - but you never know!

I have also grown bok choi, lettuce and some of the sweetest snow peas over the last couple of months. The weather is too cold now for these. It's really too cold for the tomatoes - they have set fruit but there's not enough sunshine to ripen them.

So although winter is generally a fairly quiet time in my vegie patch I have tried a few things this year just to see how they go. If nothing else I can dig them in at the end and provide some good nutrients for the next crops!

Happy gardening everyone.

Replenishing The Vege Patch

Now that the weather has cooled down I can get back out into the garden, and oh boy, does it ever need some attention - the vege patch particularly.

Today I ripped out the tomatoes, lettuce, celery and about three hours of weeds.

My bad - the weeds had flowered and I could see their seeds scattered all over the ground :( means there are going to be a lot more weeds coming back :( My own fault, I didn't keep them under control.

Tomorrow I will dig the area over and plant the pea seedlings and bean seeds I bought today.

I have good results from beans in the past, so I'm looking forward to them.

With the peas I generally find they get powdery mildew (or whatever the equivalent for peas is) pretty quickly, so I'll try get them to grow and fruit fast.

I just love picking fresh peas and beans and eating them fresh off the plants, can't wait!

Very Pleased

Very pleased I am that I forced myself out in the weird afternoon weather and planted:
2 types of lettuce
1 type of cucumber
1 type of squash (yellow)
1 capsicum plant

All after having tilled over the soil and added blood & bone and NPK blue.

Why so pleased? Cos tonight we were blessed with rain :) Glad I didn't leave it until tomorrow.

Tomorrow is get the lawn beetle day!

How to Kill the Weeds?

It's an absolute corker of a Spring day today!!

I have to work out how to get rid of the weeds in the vege patch.

The problem is the bird netting that I put on the ground to stop the cats from using the patch as their toilet - it stops me from being able to dig/pull/scratch out the weeds that have now grown.

I think I'll try spraying them, but will have to block off the vege plants to do so, otherwise they'll cark it too.

Or maybe I'll just take the netting off as the plants are now established, meaning that the cat digging will not be the problem it was at the start.

Missed Some Things..

Azaleas - all flowered reasonably well except one plant,didn't have even one.

Dietes - are in about their fifth blooms, they're great! Seed heads have formed so I'll be eagerly awating to harvest them.

Was a Good Girl today and made fruit fly bait for the nectarine tree and also took off a bucketful of immature fruit.

Camelia - finished, was happy with the flowers.

Gardenias - are looking slightly pale, so I've fertilised them. No sign of buds :(

Cape Gooseberry - cut off the older canes a few weeks ago, there was already lots of fresh new canes and they continue to grow weel; they already have flowers and fruit.

Hippeastrum - I have two flowers! Didn't expect any this year due to having disturbed and pulled babies off the bulbs.

It's forecast to rain for the rest of my holiday week so I probably wont get any more gardening in.

Biiiig Day in The Garden

I have lavished such attention on my lawn today that I'm sure it will die of fright.

Involving about 5 hours of work on the front lawn I:
* aerated it by hand, with a garden fork (I do not have a small lawn, and fully expect my arms to drop off when I get out of bed tomorrow morning)
* pulled out the worst of the flat weeds - there were lots of them
* raked up said flat weeds
* mowed the lawn
* fertilised
* turned on the sprinlers to find one not working, about an hour later and much swearing and cursing (well not really, I'm not the swearing type) they were all working
* watered the lawn for 20 minutes.

Now if the silly thing doesn't grow well after that then I'm about to give up!!

In other garden news:
Mango - is starting to flower. Gave it some NPK Blue in honour of the flowers.

Peach - is flowering, but seems to be only on a spike growing from the base of the tree. I'm not sure whether it's below the graft or above ... will wait and see what eventuates.

Nectarine - is in fruit .. may spend some time tomorrow taking off some of the fruit and maybe make a fruit fly trap.

Hyacinths - tallest flowers I've ever had on them. Not as many flowers on the spikes as I thought there would be though.

Freesias - flowered and finished.

Vege patch - seems to be doing fine, however weeds are starting to grown and with the bird netting (to stop the cats digging) makes it impossible to weed . The Pak Choi seeds have sprouted but no sign of any corn.

Avocado - flowering.

I love City Farmers!

A common cry throughout Australia for the last few years I guess.

Having planted the vege patch last week with rain forecast for Wednesday night the rain never really happened, so I watered it Saturday morning - of course it rained Saturday night and today! Ah well, it's all still alive and growing and that's all that really matters.

Snail pellets were definately a good idea and I gave them some Dynamic Lifter type fertiliser today (hopefully to be watered in tonight by more rain).

BUT my vege patch has a problem - of the feline kind. 5 cats live at the abode behind mine (I'm on a corner) and two days after planting the patch they had started using it as their latrine :(. So on Friday night I dropped by City Farmes to get something to deter them.

Picked out a powder that is mixed in a watering can, was $12-something. Then the man at the counter suggested an alternative - bird netting. At $3.00 a metre and 4 metres wide, I only really needed one metre ... you just lay it on the ground, cut out holes for your plants and hey presto, el-cheapo solution less offensive than a chemical solution! Supposedly when the cats now start to scratch on the ground they will feel the netting and not keep digging.

Is yet to be seen if it actually works as I only put it down today - and with the rain I'm not sure how much the cats will be around the next few days... but we will see.

It impresses the heck out of me when a person who works for the store suggests something that is going to mean me spending a lot LESS in their shop than I was otherwise going to .. mind you I am pretty much a regular and known by name by many of the staff in there, so maybe that has something to do with it, either way I was impressed.

Spring is Coming Down Under!

10 days to go until it's Spring, and we had a great taste today of what is to come.

Inspired by the great weather I've had a busy day; I'm sure I'll be paying for it with aches and pains tomorrow!

I dug over three garden beds and planted:
*celery seedlings - I don't think I've ever tried to grow this before, will have to start buying milk in cartons for the blanching process.
*cherry tomatoes (seedlings)- always have good success with these.
*roma tomatoes (seedlings) - tried them for the first time a few years ago and were more successful than standard type tomatoes, so here's hoping.
*sweet corn (seed) - have never had a lot of success with these, usually end up with small stunted ears, but I had some seeds in the shed so thought I may as well put them in.
*pak choi (seed) - have done alright with these in the past from seedlings, don't know how they will go from seed.
*lettuce (seedlings) - don't usually have much success with these either, but I'm persisting!

Thought about putting in some vine type vege/fruit as well - watermelon, squash, cucumber and zucchini, but didn't. Think I want to put them in an area by themselves where they wont get top watered, so will have to do some retic before I plant them. Am going to put these on the opposite side of the paving to the entertaining area garden ... where they might one day be a pond, but wont be for a long time yet, so I can play with the area for now with temporary plants like veges.

Speaking of retic I'll have to give it a whirl sometime soon and see how muny sprinklers need cleaning/replacing.

Garden Update ...

Camelia - second lot of flowers out, still more to come.

Azaleas - Charity (lightest pink, behind the big tree) flowering well, Snowflake flowering too but not as well.

Dietes iriodes - some have set seed!! They will definately be harvested and sown.

Gardenias - no flowers nor sighting of buds :(

Clivia - mamma certainly flowered. The flower stalk is short but it's a great flash or orange in the garden.

Lioriope Mascari - the ones in the ground looked very sad, dead ends on the blades but most had a bunch of new growth coming from the middle so I gave them all a fairly severe hair cut. Some have put out babies.

Sweet Pea - as well as the red and white flowers I got the palest mauve, a deep purple and a deep red too. Am pleased with how they went, might do that again next year (tepee in a pot).

Babiana in pots growing vigorously but no sign of flowers, may need to fertilise differently.

Potatoes in tyres harvested - a goodly crop this time.

Beans - all pulled out of the ground, they never recovered from whatever hit them.

Still finding bindii in the lawn, not so bad since getting out there gets me out of the house and into the beautiful warm sun.

Nectarine is heavily in blossom, will have to be better at pulling fruit off this year so another branch doesn't break off. Wasn't sure how it would go this year considering the heavy prune I gave it.

Leucospernum - putting on some flowers. Again, wasn't sure whether it would as I pruned it last year. As the pruning didn't kill it I'll do it again, further back this time, once the flowers have finished.

King Protea - don't like it's shape at all, will try to take cuttings and see if I can grow a new one.

Pruned the mini standard roses, think I need to put them into the sun.

Might have to go to Waldecks and finally spend my gift voucher tomorrow!

Long Time No Post...

The first camelia flower opened today. The plant has had buds ever since I bought it (back in January I think). They (the buds) went quite brownish on the outside and I thought they were going to die, but today I am rewarded with a flower, and the others will surely open now too.

The dietes iriodies are on their second lot of flowers :) ... so two lots of white flowers at the moment.

The gardenias are looking a little pale (the leaves), but so was someone elses I saw yesterday so perhaps it's just the time of year. I think it's a little early to be fertilising them just yet.

Some of the azaleas have a few buds. The plants in the sun are looking a little stunted and pale, the ones in the shade have lovely dark green leaves.

The mamma clivia seems to be about to have a flower, it has made two more babies since I planted it in the ground. It's first baby seems to be doing ok, but too small for flowering yet I think.

The hydrangeas are covered over by philodendron leaves so I can't get a good look at them except to be able to see they are still alive.

The liriope seed I bought from Queensland finally, after many months and almost giving up hope, broke ground and there are about 11 plants - not bad for $10.00 instead of $8 per plant at the nursery. They are growing very slowly.

The dietes seeds given to me by the lady across the road have germinated well, but are also growing slwly, again I think it's just because of the time of year.

Pruned the roses last weekend.

Gardenias in the front garden, and native violet doing well.

Sweet peas grew well and are currently flowering - red and white flowers so far.

Something bad happened to the beans, they were growing well but now most of the leaves are brown and dying - maybe overspray from the glyphosate I used on the weeds in that area.

Yellow day lilly up the back divided, and babies in pots flowering.

White irises from out the front divided and growing well in pots. Plan to sell these and the day lillies at the Salvos carpark meet one day.

No idea what has come up in the pot in which I thought I planted the native frangipani seed given by the lady across the road; she says it doesn't look like native franigipani.

Jonquils almost finished, didn't get any daffodils, but maybe they are just later.

Plenty of hyacinths coming up under the avocado tree.

Poppies coming up everywhere.

Finally a sucessful planting of mixed flower seeds in the very front garden (aka the problem spot with weird soil). Cosmos flowering there, lots of other plants have come up there but no idea what they are and can't remember what was in the packet - but there are many plants, ie not just weeds.

Bindii growing in the lawn.

Rocket in the rear herb garden growing slowly but looks ok.

Growing Potatoes in Tyres

I'd read/heard about this lots of times and finally gave it a go.

You need:

• About 10 sheets of newspaper
• 2-3 tyres
• Seed potatoes, or ones from the pantry
• Straw (about $5.00 for a bale)
• It started when I had to have a tyre on the car replaced - wondering whether they would give me some tyres for free, and they did! So head on down to your local tyre place if you don't have any laying around.
  
  Instructions:
  
  
  • Place the newspaper on the ground, use quite a lot of sheets to stop the weeds coming through
  
  
  • Position one tyre on the newspaper
  
  
  • Put a small amount of compost in the bottom, add fertiliser if you like
  
  
  • Place potato on compost
  
  
  • Cover with straw to the top of the tyre
  
  
  • As the potato grown up through the straw add another tyre and more straw
  
  
  • When the plant flowers and then dies, kick over the tyre and reap what you have sown!

28 March 2004

My first attempt wasn't very sucessful, one plant poked its head up throught he straw so I piled on more straw never to see the plant again :(

I've started this again, this time using seed potatoes and layers of potting mix and straw. Let's see how this attempt turns out.

8 April 2004

5 weeks later and there's no movement at the station in the newest tyre. I put some Dynamic Lifter on the top (pelletised Chook Poo for those that don't know - smelly stuff!)

Sometime Early June

One plant poked its head up, and a few weeks later another, growing very slowly - I think because this tyre receives less sun than the first one I tried.

17 July 2004
A third plant poked up its head a few weeks ago and is growing faster than the first two (pictured above). You can't tell from the pic below but there is a fourth one that has only just started to make its way through the straw. Been wondering whether to try putting more straw on, then read on a web site to wait until the plants are 30 - 40cm tall before doing so, so more waiting.

1 August 2004
Decided to put more straw and another tyre on. Gardening Australia on Friday night they put the straw on quite loosely, I've been fairly cramming it down. So put straw on more loosely and ensures a fair amount of the tops of the plants are above straw level. The fourth plant that poked its head through the straw didn't do anything, so I doubt now that I'll see that one again. So, loosely placed straw, and some more Dynamic Lifter for good measure - let's see how that goes.

14 August 2004
Tyre number one is progressing very well, the plants seem unchecked by the addition of the extra straw. The plant in tyre number two is also looking good. The light is a bit weird in the pics as it's early morning.

22 August 2004
Both tyres are progressing. They've grown quite a lot since I took these pics - only problem is I haven't any more tyres! Time for a trip to the tyre shop for some more freebies methinks!

October 2004 - Harvest Time!
Wow that took a long time, methinks I planted them way too early, or late, or something!
For the effort I didn't get as many potatoes as I thought I would get, but get some potatoes I did:

Prologue
The ground where the tyre had been was very enriched and yummy, unlike the surrounding sand.

I didn't harvest one of the tyres and the potatoes it had grown also shooted (shot?) and grew, and then I harvested. They were smallish, but yummy none-the-less.

Nothing like home-grown produce; give it a go!

Preparing

..for the long weekend, well kinda.

Lawn
Have put on raincheck a petrol mower, little electric one just can't cut it anymore

Roses
Bought two standard minature roses last night, one apricot one red. Hope to get them planted this weekend.

Avocado
Heaps of flowers coming

Mango
Also flowering

Tomatoes
Have my first actual tomatoes, some plants doing better than others, some in flower others not.

Pak Choi
The bugs seem to be leaving them alone now and growing well.