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

[ecomama]

Hi Mark

You are also inspiring me to enjoy my garden more so thank you 🙂

Today I'm just going to enjoy looking out to my back garden from time to time. My faraway tree has lost so many more leaves and it's looking more bony now. I started cooking a beef brisket early. I need to do inside work.

I said that to myself yesterday and did do inside work but my washing machine flooded the laundry and hallway, so that turned me OFF. I went into the front garden and cut already lopped branches to fit in my green bin. There's a whole tree to dispose of. SO much more of the trees out the front need to be cut back in compliance with the electricity company - 1.5m away from all lines. Sighhhh only did this a year ago. Much more this year. I'm trying to not get depressed over it all and remember that a tree lopper is coming soon. I'll do what I can.

In saying that I have 5 crepe myrtles. 3 I planted and 2 in the back yard already here. I got them so they could heavily shade our home in Summer and drop their leaves for sun in Winter. I didn't think they were much more than that besides beautiful UNTIL a Wildlife lady helped us with a little ring-tailed possum left under them on a very hot day. She told me that they only eat blossoms, oh that made me so happy that they eat those flowers. I feel better for keeping them and the work involved. I care deeply about our native animals.

I can see the oranges on my tree ripening and that's a cheery sight. It's very dry down there. Since removing the lantana, the soil is bare and exposed. A wicked (lol) jasmine vine is constantly creeping over from next door which drives us crazy but the neighbours are almost 100yo and I don't bother them with anything. I just give them eggs and food from my garden or our Church food pantry.

The rain has been very welcome! My front water tank is about 2/5 full now which is awesome. Our back yard water tank is probably full. Many things have been stolen and destroyed in past years. The hose and connections for that tank were. So that's going on my Bunnings list! I don't have a pump for any tanks but with a sloping garden, gravity works well. The orange tree will get more tank water after I get connections 🙂 For now it gets the slimy green overflow from my frog pond lol which is our "inside out boat". The water is on the INSIDE and the frogs came back.

I'm looking forward to 10 days time when I can get out there more.

🙂 EM

[Quercus]

Thanks EM for the warm welcome,

I love Mark's idea of using cans for plant labels! We have no idea which apples are which now since the k9s ate all the labels. I'll have to try it.

Heck yes about never ending maintenance. 5 acres is a lot of work but it also teaches you to just pick one task at a time. Weeding is a pain right now. The builders brought in Cape weed on the trucks and it's a constant battle. It makes me laugh that Miss 5 and Mr 6 know which are weed seedlings. Hearing them grumble about 'bloody Cape weed' I realise how much kids pay attention and copy.

We have lots of fruit trees. I like to plan long term gardening. One day we'll have plenty to share with the community. The hardest part is getting them through the first two summers here in rural WA. Do you have any water saving ideas?

Anyway I'm off to brave the storm and go to work. Fingers crossed we get the 50ml BOM predicted. Tanks are so low.

Happy gardening all ❤

[geoff]

Hi EM, a good thread topic.

I was once someone who adored gardening for so many years, before I was married and during it, mostly from my wife's design, which there was never any disagreement, roses we loved and have a few palms and fig trees in the house.

My love for doing it stopped when I had a vehicle accident and depression controlled my daily lifestyle.

Now that my mental health has been good for years, physically I'm unable to do any gardening.

I only wish I could.

Geoff.

[Matchy69]

Hi Em and everyone else here.Geoff I am sorry to here you cant do any gardening these days because of you accident.I know their will be a day when i can't do it anymore.I try to get the kids help when i can.

Quercus it really is important to have a water wise garden in some parts of Australia.I am on tank water here and was just about out of water to the rains came in the beginning of the year for us here after months of drought.I use plenty of mulch in my garden and i do recycle my grey water to but cant use that on the vegies.Planting things that dont need a lot of water helps to.

I managed to get outside and do a little bit of gardening as it wasn't as cold here today.I removed all the old water melon vines and started preparing that bed for planting.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

[Guest_1055]

Hello

I like pottering around in my garden. Though I don't have much of one at the moment.

There is a long garden beside the driveway. I just call it the driveway garden. It has a row of small trees growing evenly spaced. Then underneath there is a row of plants bording the wire fence. These plants of tiny purple flowers on thin strappy leaves, they grow in clumps. They look beautiful when out in flower.

On the other side of the driveway is a passionfruit vine growing along the other wire fence.

In the front garden, plants do not seem to grow well there. Except a bird of paradise plant. Which I do not like growing there. Its quite messy. I want to fix all this garden up. But don't quite now where to start.

I do not think the soil is good around here. I have started a compost heap and been composting for a few months now. Turning it. But there are so many black ants in it. I was hoping to improve the soil by adding compost to the existing front garden.

Anyway I do like flowers, home grown vegetables and herbs and want to learn best how to grow them where I live.

So I have just started a free course. A sciencey garden type course.

Today I was learning about how to identify plants. By first looking at their flowers (if they have any). Came across a word that said umbell. Well I never heard of that. But found out is like an arrangement of the flower on a plant that looks a bit like an umbrella. I think parsley was an example. I need to double check that.

Then looking at the leaves, like the shape of the leaf, how it is arranged on the stem, whether it has a scent.

Then looking at the shape of the whole plant. Like is it a tree, shrub, vine, ground cover?

Then look at the bark.

Anyway it was all quite interesting.

Next I will be looking into the most common plant families.

Hopefully learning a bit more about gardening and plants I can improve what I have here.

I really do want my own vegetable garden.

[ecomama]

Dear Nat, 'bloody cape weed' lololol TOO CUTE papa bear.
My children spent so much of their childhood's in the garden. Once when a teacher of theirs was walking with them, she said "Oh and this is a magnolia children" and proudly pranced ahead.. one of my children piped up and said " no it's a Gardenia" lol. Ooops. He was 4yo at the time, time for a lesson on tact.

Hellooooooooo to W.A.! I love Mark's can idea for labels too! I love getting great tips from other gardeners. We use old CDs for labels. Pity about your dogs' appetites :-0

ABC Gardening Australia's presenter Josh Byrnes lives in W.A. and he has vast organic growing / gardening experience for those climates. You can see past info online and he has some books too.

But I cannot recommend the series of "Back from the brink" books by Peter Andrews highly enough. I had total paradigm shifts in the way I viewed any landscapes after reading his series. He writes for the Australian landscape and mentions WA a lot. He has so many unconventional ways to hold water in the landscape on any properties, no matter what size. His Australian Story was beautiful. Proof that what he did worked through long droughts on a farm. Green grass on his side. Dead grass over his boundary fences. I believe he had less water available to him as well.

In the past (before destruction here) I put every Peter Andrews practice into place. I actually had friends who learnt directly from Mr Andrews, then developed many philanthropic and paid services. They came to my property and saw what I did. I wanted their advice on next steps. They were blown away lol. The most effort was in the careful observation of my landscape over seasons and weather patterns; flow of water, entrapment of water, capturing and HOLDING fertility on the soil. I don't use bought stuff much. I don't use any chemical fertilisers. The "labour' was the least intensive I've ever done for maximum return.

I'm a water scrooge lol. I seldom if ever water my garden. One neighbor came up and said "You must have TOTALLY different soil to our land. We can't grow anything in this drought". I said "Look, same mountain, same soil. It's what I DID to save this soil that is the key". They were 2 doors down in an urban neighbourhood. Everything was the same, except what I did.

We grew SO MANY foods and were stunned by the amount of produce we got year after year.

:-)) EM

[ecomama]

Geoff! My building GURU! Welcome over here. Thankyou for all your advice on the Building thread. Your advice is awesome.

I'm sorry to hear about your accident. That's horrible.

I want to ask, but only answer if you're comfortable.

Would you be able to garden in a raised bed? I have helped establish gardens for people with disabilities.

The Men's Shed (here) is invaluable in assisting with all sorts of construction of gardens for anyone with MH issues and / or physical disabilities. So far they've provided these services for free here. Ours also constructed worm farms in old baths. They are high enough for little bending. Accessible for wheelchairs. Men join these awesome groups for so many reasons. I don't think anyone need give a reason. But it's lovely to see the joy in their faces from giving.

I donate our old bikes, broken lawnmowers and other stuff to them and they fix them and give them to people who need them. I love this group. We are so blessed having them. Ours gets good sponsorship, so that helps a lot. Keeps the tea and coffee flowing too.

Not sure if you've considered getting an upright plastic greenhouse? They come in all sizes and I've grown food in ours on our balcony.

Many blessings Geoff. I hope there's a way to access this past time for you.

EM

[ecomama]

Dear Shelll, a warm welcome to you! I reckon we're going to have LOTS of fun with your garden lol.

Your garden sounds sweet. That online Course sounds amazing! Thank you for sharing your learnings! I'm sure we'd all welcome more of these interesting facts.

I bet you'd love looking into Biodynamic Gardening after that one. It's FASCINATING.

I got a Scholarship to complete a Permaculture Design Certificate years ago. Wow. Love all things Permie lol.

One key thing to your gardening success (besides a never give up attitude) is OBSERVATION.
Look at how water runs on / off your property - we can talk about that later.
Feel how hot / cold / humid / dry each potential growing area is and WHEN. These are your microclimates. Success is exponentially increased if you observe and peg them in your head or start a notebook on each area.

The microclimates in my garden are so diverse, that I can grow tropical plants in some areas and extreme cold loving plants in others. This took me a LONG time to work out lol. Hopefully your discovery journey is shortened by chiming in here and posing questions to the rest of the green thumbed brains trust lol.

Your Birds of Paradise are telling you a lot where they are.... depending upon whether they look vibrant and happy or light green, not multiplying and sick looking. How are they looking? Please observe before ripping anything out lol.

I'm so impressed you've started a compost heap HIGH FIVE lol. And you've done that first, that's incredible.
Black ants? They're telling you something also.
Little black ants like eating sugar, white bread, cakes, that kind of stuff.

Composting (there are SO many ways)… If you're doing the layering of carbon (paper, leaves, wet cardboard) and nitrogen (green waste, foods and other stuff lol) then these layers could be about 5-10cm deep. Wet each layer of carbon as you lay it. This may help. You may have "too much" sweet stuff in there but this may be easily balanced out by carbon.

I heard one gardener say to another one at a Permie meeting... "You don't have an over population of snails, you have an UNDER population of birds!"

It's kind of an ADDING formula instead DETRACTING … including from your energy expenditure, the hard work of taking things out then losing the lot.

Chooks are the best but having a bird feeder right near where you want insects eaten can work well. Have a think of what you want to plant there later. It might be EATEN by those same birds lol. Herbs soon.

EM

[Matchy69]

Hi Em and everyone else on here.Talking about Bird of Paradise plant brings back memories of my mums garden as she had one near the back door.It was allways in flower and just kept clumping out.When i moved in here there was one growing here in an old concrete laundry tub in the backyard so i planted it in the ground and it is growing and flowering now.It is such a great plant to grow in dry conditions as it never gets water and only gets watered from mother nature.I used the old laundry tub to grow cuttings in and have Geranium cuttings in it at the moment.

Birds and spiders are mother natures pest control.I leave all my spider webs up and think they are playing a part in my garden.I try not to harm living nature of i can help it.

Hsppy gardening,

Mark.

[geoff]

Hi Mark, my Mum loved her gardening and had a 'green thumb', anything she put into the garden just as a stem would grow, didn't matter what it was.

She also had a Bird of Paradise which she fed with banana skins, and the raised garden bed, is that something you were indicating in the Home Improvement, and you can have a raised garden bed for flowers, my wife (ex) loved them.

Will continue later on.

Geoff.