Who else likes gardening?

[ecomama]

Hi everyone

I hope you're staying well today.

Who else likes gardening? I would love to connect with people here who are happy to share their gardening adventures.

For me I know that gardening helped heal my soul during tough times. I hope it will again.
Then with other things going on, it became a jungle.
I'm part way into rediscovering it again and doing A LOT of hard yakka atm, when I am motivated.

I have new dreams and ideas to put into the many bare places, as I remove thickets of lantana etc. This will all be on a tight budget and I'm ok with that.

I want to create a peaceful place where I can be.
I would like to grow food again (tell 'er she's dreamin' atm lol).
I would like to re-establish my worm farms and compost heaps.
Autumn is such a beautiful time of the year in the garden.

I'm 'alone' in my gardening journey and would love to share and hear about other's gardening antics. Hopefully we can troubleshoot any issues in our gardens and talk about any healing we're feeling too. There's a lot of knowledge we can share. I hope this thread can brighten your day!

Love Ecomama

Please

[bluenight]

Hi ecomama

You know I think it's a blessing from god that you enjoy gardening and that it helps you. I use to love gardening and I would often spend time working on my parents garden when I was growing up. I don't live in a house at the moment so I haven't worked in the garden for a while.

There's a few wild vegetable and fruit trees/shrubs not far from where I live which I've been picking from for the last couple of months. If I did have a garden, I would plant vegetables and fruits. There are some fruit/veggie plants that grow very easily and they produce quite a lot of fruit/veggies.

Worm farms are pretty easy to start, I think you can buy the bins which store them from bunnings. And the good thing about worm farms is that leftover vegetables or fruit don't have to go to waste.

Yeh, I just like being out in the garden, it's very relaxing, I hope you get started again soon!

[ecomama]

Hi bluenight!

Thankyou for joining the thread. Indeed it's a blessing from God that I love gardening, so much more of a blessing when shared.

That's great that you can get wild growing foods nearby. What are they? I'm asking because if they grow well with neglect, then they are great to grow lol.

My eldest daughter spoke to me of some highly nutritious food plants we would usually call weeds. She uprooted some from her friend's garden and planted them in her own! My daughter is into bush foods too, she knows a lot about them.

I love composting and worm farming. I feed our chickens the scraps first. Whatever they can't eat plus other stuff goes into them. Atm I only have stacked tyres for composting and one "worm tower".

Soon I will choose 2 'hidden' places in my garden for repurposed old baths to set up as worm farms. I know how to do this but I have to collect the materials first. That's more a springtime job because I have many trees to prune.

Have you got a Community Garden nearby? The participation element is missing atm, due to covid, but the foods growing are free for everyone.

When things are less restricted, a Community Garden is a wonderful place for more reasons.

EM

[Matchy69]

Hi ecomama i like gardening to.I have been gardening since i was a kid.My mum use to have a vegie garden in the back corner that i use to allways be in.

I love to grow my own fruit and vegies and have a nice vegie garden with lots of different vegies in it.Today i planted some spring onions in it.I have cabbages,cauliflowers,carrots,silver beet,radishes,swedes and just finished harvesting my watermelons and lettuce snd still have a few egg plants on and have a sweet potato growing mad.

I have a few citrus trees and am just starting to pick mandarines,bush lemons and tangelos.I have a few other fruit trees like mullberry and bananas,loquat,apple and fig.I like to make my own jam and marmalade out of my fruit.I have a herb garden as well.

I have a few different roses and am starting to make another rose garden and plant a few more.I have a green rose that was grown on my grandparents farm as my grandmother was a real collector of rare plants.I will be planting a few annuals as well.I have plenty of different things growing in my garden.I love getting into the garden and into the fresh air.

Take care,

Mark.

[ecomama]

Mark, your garden sounds delightful! A real hive of activity. You must enjoy growing so many beautiful things. And eating them too!

We have some of the same plants growing so snap lol. Mine are the ones that have 'survived' through years of neglect. Honestly the most that's growing atm is lantana lol but I'm getting there.

I also have a mulberry, bananas, a bush lemon growing from a graft of my kaffir lime tree (I'm keeping both lol). My nectarine and peach tree feed the fruit bats, we never get there fast enough. I have a macadamia that I need to begin to prune, it'll be HUGE.

I love my orange tree and am surprised it's still going. I also have a Tahitian lime as a "family tree tree", a nod to our heritage. It's going well too.

I'm so intrigued by your grandmother's GREEN rose, wow. A green one? Do you know it's name? I'm really bad at growing roses. You're showing your green thumb here lol.

I have Cape Gooseberries growing which are so beautiful to see. Their little fruit, like tomatoes, grow inside a paper lantern. You pop the lantern and there's the berry. These are great in place of tomatoes for a super easy tomato-like fruit to grow.

I'm preparing a blueberry patch in a shut off section of my garden. This will help me control the ph levels in the soils. I never check ph but my hydrangeas nearby tells me 😉
I didn't know what herbs to grow as companions to my blueberries but I think I'll settle for parsley. Parsley grows like a weed in my garden, so it should cope with the ph.

Do you use any particular fertilisers in your food garden?
I'm still envious of your rose prowess lol, maybe I can learn from you how to grow them? or just not kill them with kindness IDK.

EM

[Matchy69]

Hi em thats yes we do have some of the same fruit trees growing and also have a few more some that you mentioned like nectarine.Mine would be about two years old and got a couple of fruit of it last season.Yes the flying foxes,birds fruit fly love that one.

My grandmthers green rose is grown from a cutting that my mum had grown from the original one on the farm.I am not of its proper name i will have to look it up for you.Its not a a spectacular flower but it holds sendimental value for me as my mum and grandmother were so proud of it.

I use 3 things in my vegie garden.I dig in lots of horse manure and compost and I put in dynamic lifter.My crops grow amazing in it.When i plant seedlings i usually water them with a liquid fertilizer like seasol.

I have grown cape gooseberries in the past and make jam out of them.It is one of my favourite jams.

Some of the herbs i grow are parsley,mint,rosemary,lavender,pineapple sage and a few others.The garden has a beautiful fragerance.

I have not had much sucess with blueberries in the ground.Probably didnt have the right soil or ph.I have grown one in a pot and have had it fruiting ok.I will be interested to see how yours grows.

Take care,

Mark

[ecomama]

Hi Mark

Your family heirloom green rose sounds so special to you, it also must bring back happy memories? Do you use dynamic lifter on your roses?

Great to hear you compost, it's a wonderful use for 'waste' lol. I don't compost as much as I used to, but I probably won't again, which I'm fine with. I just need ways to do it so I can manage it, without feeling guilty lol.

Chickens eat a lot of waste and I can't imagine a time I won't have my girls. 🙂 My girls have the run of the gardens atm. I don't think they'll like being shut out of some areas in the future so I can grow more veg etc. But I'll grow some things in patches so they can scratch around there.

How do start your cabbages and caulis? I have never had any success with these AT ALL.

I am getting so eager to begin growing more veg but it's not possible atm, firstly I have no areas ready, free of lantana, old bananas etc & I have ALOT of tree trimming to do, and I mean A LOT. Secondly I'm a bit too busy atm.

Soon I'm on leave from work and hopefully I can afford to only go back for 3 days when I return in a few months. 3 days will give me more time in the garden for the set up. I found a gardener I am happy with and he 'gets' what I'm working towards, so again hopefully I can afford to employ him! lol. We garden together and talk about gardening and it's lovely having this 'time out' focussing on nice things.

I started cutting tree trimming yesterday into 1 metre lengths for a Council Green Waste pick up. I decided to use long lengths of jasmine as twine to make the bundles. Our neighbours jasmine has invaded, but since they are elderly, I won't bring up how annoying that is lol. Using jasmine will save heaps of money on twine!

🙂
EM

[Matchy69]

Hi em its a lovely sunny day here i have been doing some work outside on my new garden.

The green rose is very special to me brings back memories of my childhood and of my hrandmother.I use specific rose fertilizer on my roses.I will fertilize them in probably july.

I have four chickens as well as egg layers and pest control.I use the chook poo around my fruit trees.My chickens are in the backyard and i have my vegie garden in the front so chickens cant get in there and wreck it.

I usually buy my cabbages and caulis ect in punnets.When i plant them i give them liquid fertilizer for a few days.I use cabbage dust on them to keep the cabbage moth at bay or the grubs will get into them and eat them.

Take care,

Mark.

[bluenight]

I really wasn't expecting others on this post to have the gardens described above. I really like fruit and veggies and I think it would be awesome to have the plants you both have. A macadamia tree, I don't know how long they would last if that was my tree, I am avoiding nuts at the moment because once I start eating them I go overboard and eat too much sometimes. And Mark has eggplants, watermelon, mandarins and tangelos. I have to look up the green rose, never seen one of those.

If I had either of your gardens, I wouldn't need to shop very often seriously.

Out of interest, does having a particular vegetable plant mean you probably won't need to buy that vegetable for that season? I know with lemons, mandarins and oranges, they will last all season if you have a fairly mature tree. My grandma has oranges, best oranges I have tried.

ecomama I go for bushwalks, today I came across a huge banana plant hidden away but they're cooking bananas and I was told they don't taste great but I think the person who told me that didn't realise that you are supposed to cook them as they look like lady finger bananas lol

There is a community garden not to far away but I believe it's full and you must put your name down on a waiting list

[Matchy69]

Hi bluenight yes it is great to grow your own produce.I try to be self sufficent as much as possible.Their are crops you can get a good season out of like silverbeet that i usually get 12 months out of before i replace them.My egg plants i have been harvesting for 6 months and i am still picking them until the frost kills them.Beans you get a good continous crop out of them and peas in winter.Strawberries to you continously pick to.

When i lived in the city there was a community garden just up the road from me.It was amazing and had all sorts of vegies and fruit trees.Was great visiting.Where i use to live there was a lot of native fruit trees growing along the creek like sandpaper figs,burdekin plum and native mullberry.I use to pick the figs and plums and make jam out of them.

Take care,

Mark.