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

[Matchy69]

Thanks paws for the suggestion of copper for preventing snsils and slugs.You can buy a copper tape that you can wrap around pots.The snails and slugs have a chemical reaction to the copper.You can even try coper pipe in a garden situation.Many ideas to control pest some work and some don't work so well.My chooks have a good feed on my snails and rarely see them now.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

[Katyonthehamsterwheel]

Hi everyone

Thanks for the suggestions. I am stone broke so some suggestions are out, but will try the eggshells 🙂

I've spent the last 2 hours in the garden weeding. I didn't realise I was out there so long as the sun is shining and it's cool but pleasant. My cute pooch was watching me but fell asleep sitting up hahah.

[Learn to Fly]

Hi ecomama,

Thank you for your beautiful posts. You made me smile even just thinking about gardening. Haven’t done it in awhile, though, just not enough time in a day. A pity as a relationship with plants can be as rewarding as with animals. They can be so vulnerable and they will always, always thank you for the love and care you sprinkle on them.

Take care.

[ecomama]

Dear Learn to Fly, thank YOU for your beautiful post lol! How sweet of you to say.
And a belated HUGE WELCOME to the forums.
I'm hearing you about never enough time. Atm I'm time AND energy poor.

I'm on leave for a while now, but I still have to watch my energy levels. So much sickness about ugh.

Mark, omg pneumonia? How horrible! I'm so sorry to hear that. Please stay super warm and nourish your wonderful self. We NEED you here lol.

Katy, you know what they say in Permaculture circles... an over abundance of snails (or spiders) is just an UNDER abundance of birds.
I have to COLLECT snails to feed my chickens lol. We have none BECAUSE of the birds.

Having a bird feeder nearby will help.
DEFINITELY the oven roasted egg shells crushed up works well. As does the beer traps.
Haven't heard of the coffee idea but worth a try. Our local cafe bags up their spent coffee grounds and leaves them outside. I pick them up for my compost.
The more diverse a compost's meals, the better the product. Plus I love the smell - not the taste ugh.

Hey J* and everyone, thankyou for the encouragement. As per, I've just done some light maintenance lately. Today I succumbed and bought a battery powered Leaf Blower lol... watching YouTube videos of ppl using them made me do it. My hands and whole body aches from the work I've been doing just for work and the family.
I've got some long drains with really heavy grates, so blowing the leaves out will be much kinder to my body and my time (hopefully!).
I want to blow the leaves down to the back garden and then the Brush Turkey will have LOTS to scratch up for his ever growing mound! Saves him digging out my garden beds grr. He efficiently scraped off my entire chook's shed roof lol! The mound's about 6 ft high & 12 foot wide now and getting bigger.

I'd LOVE to get my high pressured hose out because all my paved and bricked areas are so grimy! That soft rain all Summer and some more rain periods has made moss grow and just made things grimy. BUT I need to watch my energy levels and make sure to get REALLY good rest when I can this leave time. I have a long haul when I go back to work and need to keep working.

My kids are desperate for my home cooking lol, so lots of boring inside cleaning and nourishing my babies is called for.
I'll still get out in the garden morning & afternoon for my chickens. Have to hold myself back a bit from working too much though.

Happy Gardening everyone!

Love EMxxxx

[ecomama]

Hey Katy

Today I've been thinking about your want to grow some things in your garden on a zero $$ budget.
I've SO been there and did lots of things to get things growing. I wanted to share some of my tips so hopefully you and some other wonderful BB Gardeners can still grow stuff.

Growing plants from SEED is very economical.
Remember to use as LOW nutrient soil to start the seeds off in. Seeds don't need ANY nutrients to begin, in fact too many nutrients can be detrimental to the plant's health overall in the long run.
When your seedlings begin to leaf up, it's then we move them to soil with nutrients or plants them out in richer soil in the garden.

Using our own WEED / SEAWEED TEA / WORM CASTINGS in the soil or worm castings AS the soil is great!
If you want to know how to make WEED / SEAWEED TEA then just ask. I wrote about these before but have no idea which page lol.
Worm castings can be taken from Community Gardens for free. No one minds!
A worm farm can be set up for virtually free (no need or commercial ones at all).

Another way to get free plants is by PROPAGATION.
If you see a nice tree or bush in your area, then propagating is a FREE way to duplicate the plant.
NOW is the perfect time for this process (and Autumn too).
Just prepare by getting some honey, a set of containers with drainage, soil.
Cut the plant including SOME old wood and some new growth.
Dip the cut end in honey and plant in the soil.
If I want 6 plants, I do 12 cuttings.

You can set pairs of plants in their pots in different parts of the garden. This will increase your chances of success.

My friend always cut the leaves in half. She ran a business this way. Mainly she sold Gardenias and Photinias.

Grabbing sidewalk plants when you see the opportunity is GREAT! I've done this so many times over 40 years, I couldn't tell you lol.

I've been brave enough to ASK some gardeners in my neighbourhoods if I could take some cuttings and I've never been turned away. Some ask me to come back in a certain season, but I've had 100% success with this process! hahaha.

Lastly but firstly, I can't promote groups like Community Gardens and Permaculture Groups enough! The SHARING within these groups is nothing short of altruistic. Gorgeous people.
We'll hold your hand as you contact them!

Hopefully you'll be pleasantly delighted you did.

Much love
EMxxxx

[Leonay]

Hi everyone,

I am so glad I have found this post. I spent so much of my career advising people on how to look after their soils and plants. I am now a teacher and part of my role is running a new school garden. I have spent 3 years developing a rock hard clay hill into a native garden and a number of vegie gardens for the students. It has been amazing to see the kids try new things and even their questions that I take for granted. One student this year asked me what this strange fruit was and what to do with it... it was a tomato. Amazing!!!

As it is a public school I have absolutely no budget so I struggle every day. I have spoken with local nurseries and get seedlings very cheap or free that are rank that they want to clear out. I also ensure a few plants each year go to seed. Once the seedlings come up I transplant them to the new beds and I know I have seedlings suited to my climate.

My main pests are aphids and heliothis. Aphids are a pain but with simple soapy water they can be suffocated so I get the students to spray soapy water very regularly over the plants. As I have kids everywhere I can't use chemicals but I do have lots of students. I normally find a little group each lesson to manually find heliothis and collect them and feed them to the chooks. Labour intensive but the disengaged students seem to love it.

I also get kids to cut out butterflies from old milk bottles and I put them on thin wire to blow in the wind amongst the vegies. The theory is that the cabbage white moth is territorial and won't lay eggs in another moth's territory. I am still not sure how effective it is but we do it none the less.

Having worked in agriculture and now in smaller horticultural settings there is so much to learn. The one thing that drives me is... healthy soils leads to healthy plants which leads to healthy animals (and us). Work hard on your soils and the rest will begin to look after itself.

Happy gardening everyone.

[Matchy69]

Hi Leonay welcome to the beyond blue forums and I am glad you found this thread.Sounds like you have some great experience.The school gardens are great and have been envolved in them over the years.Its a wonderful hobby and you never stop learning and finding great ideas to try.Finding ways of controlling pest organically is the way to go today.My research on chemicals that we have used on our crops is frightening for the effects they can have on us.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

[topsy_]

I wish schools had vegie gardens all those years ago when I was there.

I would love to have a vegetable garden but my very best skill is killing any plant I ever have. It’s so frustrating and discouraging.

[Katyonthehamsterwheel]

Hello

Well my peas are still under attack despite putting eggshells around them, but I think most will survive. One looks like it's done for! I do have a lot of visiting birds, despite the presence of the cats, who they seem undeterred by, but perhaps they aren't snail eaters?

Thanks EM for all the tips. I start prac next week and I know there is a community garden near abouts, so I will attempt to be real brave and go check it out. Have you seen/heard of seed libraries - same concept as street libraries. I'd love to have both in future. I think it would be really cool to do trades 🙂

I have masses of succulents and I've been attempting to propagate them. I've had varying degrees of success. I haven't got any going at the moment though as I thought it would be too cold - does anyone know if that's the case? Otherwise I might get some more on the go just for fun 🙂

Happy gardening all. PS: School gardens are awesome. My son (24) always talks about the cool stuff they grew. The other day he asked if I remember the dragon tongue beans they grew. So cool.

[Matchy69]

Katy the snails and slugs that are found in our gardens are introduced pest and the best native birds to eat them are magpies,kookaburras,mudlarks and starlings and it can very to how the numbers are controlled by birds by what other native food source is around for them if that makes sense.

I have had some involvement with seed libraries through garden clubs I have been in from exchanging fruit veggies and natives.I use to have a gardening penfriend who I use to swap seeds with years ago.

And Katy I have been propergating succulents during winter.Very way to propergate.Just make sure they don't get to much water.

Happy gardening,

Mark.