Carrot tops

Did you ever put a carrot top in a dish of water as a child?

Next time you have carrots, leave about a cm of the top (crown) and place this in a sauce of water. Keep the water topped up to about a 1cm. The carrot top will regrow green leaves in about 3 to 6 weeks and you can eat these. You’ll be able to cut the leaves several times before the plant will be ‘exhausted’. Add the feathery leaves to salads or use as a garnish. They are full of minerals and taste similar to parsley.

Carrots are a biennial root, which means you could plant the carrot top in some soil and you may be able to grow a second taproot. The carrot may even flower in 6 to 8 weeks.

See also Hunkin’s cool illustration of this carrot experiment.

Plans to increase productivity

I’m determined to increase our yields in the second half of this year and hopefully make colossal leaps closer to our goal of being self sufficient. The most obvious answer to producing more fruit and vegetables is to grow more plants and concentrate on prolific plants.

At the moment we have four vegetable beds and about 20 dwarf fruit trees in pots. We also have several passionfruit vines and a choko. These are mostly all within hosing distance from our water tank. I am considering other creative options to increase our bounty without creating too much more work for ourselves.

I’m considering placing a few edibles in pots in our patio area. We have a few old Styrofoam boxes that would be ideal for lettuce and other cut and come again plants. Perhaps one or two of them could be dedicated to Asian greens.

I’d like to expand our production of starchy vegetables by growing yams and sweet potatoes in planter bags.

There is some space for more plants directly behind our house. We currently only keep our wheelie bins here. I’d love to create an Italian style courtyard in this area with a wood-fired pizza oven. My plans for an herb spiral and a horta plot could complement this area if grown in recycled wine barrels. I’d also like a dedicated space for some perennials.

I could put a second pumpkin plant in this area. It should be far enough away so it doesn’t cross fertilize with any of the other squashes in the vegetable patches.

I’ve avoided putting edibles in the front yard, as we don’t spend much time there and they are likely to be neglected. There are some spaces along the front fence line, which I’d like to fill in with native lilly pillies. I’m a big fan of these low maintenance bushes. They make a neat hedge if you plant them about 30 cm apart (or a forearm-lengths worth). The red berries of all types of lilly pillies are edible, with riberry one of the tastier varieties. The berries are best used to make a jam, relish or sauce.

One project I’m putting off is creating a pond because our fences unfortunately do not keep our neighbours’ cats out. Suitable edibles for a pond include: kang kong, lotus, native ginger, rice, taro, water chestnuts and watercress.

Inside the house we have started to grow sprouts. The downside is that it’s hard to remember to change the water twice a day when we both work full time. I could possibly explore growing other edible plants indoors.

The other gardening plans I have for the rest of this year is to plant in some more companion plants and flowers. I’d also love to create a recycled bench from wooden packing crates. Somewhere I can rest my weary legs after I’ve finished all the other hard work.

More bees please

French royalty uses bees as a symbol of immortality and resurrection.

Recently many bee hives have been infected by colony collapse disorder, which is characterised by a rapid loss of mature bees. It may be caused by varroa mites, insect diseases or pesticides. One of the culprits could be varroa mite and Australia is the only continent that is free of this parasite.

Bees are important for the pollination of over 90 edible plants, so they play an important role in our ecosystems and food production.

Australia has a number of native stingless bees, that we can encourage to live in our backyards by planting the following:

Acacias, Banksia, Cassia (Senna), Emu bush, False sarsaparilla, Fan flower, Flax lillies, Gums, Grevillea, Guinea flower, Hakea, Honey Myrtles, Paperbarks, Paper daisy, Tea tree, and Westringia.

You’ll need a range of different flowering plants to ensure a constant supply of bees throughout the year. Other bee-friendly plants include:

Blue mist, Bergamont, Borage, Californian poppy, Candytuft, Chives, Cosmo, Dog rose, European honeysuckle, Hyssop, Larkspur, Lavender, Lungwort, Nasturtiums, Rosemary, Sage, Sunflower, Thyme, Yarrow and Verbena.

For further information watch the trailer of the upcoming The Vanishing of the bees or check out the Urban Bee Gardens for an extensive bee-friendly list of plants.

Please contact  Bob the Beeman if you need help to rescue and/or relocate any bee hives in the Brisbane area.

Are bees the new canary in the coal mine?

Animal homes

Providing a dedicated home for the animals in your garden will contribute to their health and well-being. Encouraging native wildlife to nest or visit will ensure they return to your garden to play an active role in keeping down pest numbers. Did you know that micro-bats love eating mosquitoes and can catch up to 500 insects per hour?

Here are some alternative and funky animal homes to consider:

Nest boxes

• Garden Express has a fantastic selection of native nest boxes for possums, bats, parrots, owls and gliders (Aust)
• Nestbox Company (Europe)
• Elegant bird tables from Evasolo
• RSPB’s instructions to make a nestbox

Bat boxes

• Green Harvest sells bat boxes made by Hollow Log Homes (Aust)
• A variety of free bat house instructions

Bee hives

• Instructions on how to make a bee house  
• Sugarbag stingless bee hives (Aust)

Chickens

• Bookachook (Aust)
• Chicken Tractor (Aust)
• The ultimate Omlet (UK)

Dogs and cats

• Doggles (see photo above) (USA)
• Kittypod (USA)
• Wowbow (UK)

Bush tucker for backyards

Before we got interested in growing our own food, we planted over a hundred Australian natives around our garden borders. Grevilleas are our favourite, and I’m pretty sure you could fill an entire backyard with all the different varieties.

Last year we attended a session on bush tucker at Kumbartcho by Jan Sked, and realized that if we had chosen a little better we could have added more bush tucker plants in our garden. It’s really important to correctly identify any plant you wish to eat or cook with because many natives have poisonous berries and leaves.

Here are some Australian plants that are edible and suitable for a suburban backyard.

• Bush tomato
• Davidson’s Plum
• Lemon Myrtle
• Midyim
• Native Lime – Desert Lime and Finger Lime
• Native Ginger
• Native Rosella
• Scrub Cherry
• Riberry (Lilly pilly)
• Warrigal Greens – use the light coloured leaves and cook like spinach
• Wild Raspberry

If you are interested in exploring native food cooking, grab a copy of the self-published “Go Native – Wild Food Cookbook” by Jan Sked (email: jansked@powerup.com.au). Here are some of the better cookbooks as recommended by Jan Sked:

• Bush Cooking – Max Bryant
• Bush Food Handbook – Vic Cherikoff and Jennifer Isaacs
• Bush Tucker – Tim Low
• Tukka – Real Australian Food – Jean-Paul Bruneteau

Keeping records

We’ve been keeping a record of our garden in a number of different ways. Records help to keep track of what is working and what doesn’t, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes next year. It also helps to make a note of what is planted where, because it’s easy to forget. I have trouble trying to identify the most common flowers, let alone immature heirloom plants!

I first started recording notes in a week-to-a-spread diary. I liked the idea of dates, but found the space for weekends wasn’t big enough, which is when we spend most our time in the garden. There are specialized diaries for gardeners and they might suit you.

I also started a spreadsheet with a grid of plant common and scientific names, purchased date and where planted. It took a lot of effort to keep it updated and I soon lost interest. I don’t really need to know the name of every native in my garden.

I’ve enjoyed blogging about my garden the most. Illustrating blog posts with photos adds so much more information then I could describe. I also love receiving advice from fellow gardeners. There are a number of blog sites you can join: Blogger, TypePad and WordPress.

I keep a mud-map of our four vegetable patches with what it planted where.

We also tally up our harvest totals in a simple ruled notepad.

There are some gardening software programs and online communities that you could use. MyFolia is free and appears to be a popular.

I’ve found that keeping records is necessary, but keep it simple so you stick with it.

See also Keeping records: photo album and our progress.

Keeping records: plant album

Last year, we visited an open garden that was professionally designed on a tiny inner-city block of land. The garden was framed by a white picket fence and a violet bougainvillea boldly crept over the top veranda of the terraced house.  It would have been hard not to have been impressed by the sheer number and variety of plants squeezed in.

And then I found a pocket photo album filled with colourful plant tags and that’s what caught my eye!

At home I tipped an old shoebox upside down, and out fell my collection of ratty plant labels, tags and markers. I cleaned off all the dirt from the best plant tags and sorted them into similar shapes and brands. It was time to give them a proper home in a plant label album. I also added side notes of where they were planted in the garden. You could also add the date planted and any special notes you want to remember.

Experimenting

I love having a little area in the garden for experimenting with.

When we lived in a second floor unit, I used to peer over the balcony at the elderly lady’s small garden below and bemoan the fact we weren’t on ground level. So one year, I bought some self-watering pots as a birthday present for myself (incidentally, the strawberries are currently growing them). To brighten up our outdoor space I grew some colourful petunias and pink geraniums.

The third pot I used to throw in vegetable scraps and leftover seeds. At one point I was trying to grow an avocado tree, but I ended up accidentally growing a citrus tree from seed! I’ve had the tree for about seven years now and it is currently planted in our backyard. Although it hasn’t fruited yet, I like to think that it’s a lemon tree that is a descendant of my parent’s tree. They planted their tree when they first moved into their house, over 30 years ago now. Apparently citrus trees can take eight to ten years before they fruit, so I’ve got a bit more of a wait until I can confirm what type of citrus it is.

The best bit about experimenting is you that it can be free and you might be pleasantly surprised.

No longer stumped

When we first moved into our house, the biggest eyesore in the backyard was a two metre cubed tree stump. I’m glad the tree was gone because using google maps you could see that it shaded out half of the backyard.  Although I really didn’t like the stump and was keen to get it removed. Big M refused saying it was a waste of money and there were plenty of other things to renovate on the house first. A few people suggested we make it into a feature.

Two years later, the grass has grown back, and lots of natives have been planted around the stump. For a while, the kangaroo grass did a good job of hiding it. Big M has recently decided that it’s a good place to dump all the grass clippings from mowing, and the couch grass is now knee deep in parts. Of course, the lizards love it.

The quickest way to get rid of a stump is to hire a stump grinder. Our stump has a piece of unidentified metal in the centre, so we ruled out this option. Alternatively, you could use the tools in the shed, such as a chainsaw, axe and mattock. This is less expensive, but more labour intensive. Unfortunately, we don’t own any of those tools yet.

I’d almost given up hope, but advice can come in the most unlikeliest of places. Our pest man’s apprentice suggested that we could speed up the process of the stump decomposing  by adding a bag of lime in the centre!

Tree planting and mulching

When planting out a native or a fruit tree into the garden it is helpful to mulch around the root zone to ensure it gets off to a good start. In the initial stages a seedling will have to compete with the weeds and grass for water and nutrients. As the tree matures the roots will be much deeper into the soil and have a better chance of survival. Mulch also helps reduce moisture evaporation from the soil.

Ten years ago it was the fashion to use thick black plastic sheets to keep weeds out. It was very effective, but did not allow good water, air and nutrient penetration so it’s less popular these days. A better alternative is a biodegradable ground cover or weed mat. These are sold as sheets of recycled fabric or paper. You can also buy squares for trees that have pre-cut holes in them. They retain moisture well and keep the weeds out. Add mulch on top to cover and disguise.

Using layers of newspaper and cardboard as weed prevention is a popular permaculture technique. You can also use black plastic or old carpet as a way to kill grass and weeds. (Do not use synthetic carpet or coloured magazine paper as they can leach nasty chemicals into the soil). Cover the area for several weeks, move to a new area and then replace the bare patch with a thick layer of mulch.

You may like to plant a living mulch around the base of your tree. Typically a living mulch is a dense ground cover. Suitable Australian natives include Banksia Roller Coaster, Banksia Pygmy Possum, Creeping Banksia, Creeping Boobialla, Grevillea Poorinda Royal Mantle, Grevillea gaudichauidii, Guinea Flower, Matted Bush Pea and Prostrate Red Grevillea. Any others?