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]

Dear Mark, your Birds of Paradise sound beautiful! I love them but some people don't, that's ok. I'm yet to decide where to plant some in my back yard BUT I WILL! I want to create an "Indonesian Style" feeling, being born in Asia, this is the most 'relaxing' feeling for me. I have fruit & nut trees. Veggie patches that I might pull down & re-use the sleepers for .... IDK terracing maybe. I intend on planting veg in all spare spaces amongst other plants 😉
Tbh I can't stand buying plants lol. I will, but 99% of what I grow is from free sources. I give plants away ALL the time, plant them at work etc 😉

A friend has AWESOME Birds of P and they are splitting her huge pots open. Many plants I get from the roadside, demolition sites, via social connections.

I LOVE propagating from older trees. I've had success with Figs. Ours grows lovely juicy fruit.

I love what you do Mark, dividing your plants, using a laundry tub! You have gorgeous memories associated with your plants. I have lots of family memories alongside gardening. I should share a study on plants I once read about.... later.

I've seen laundry tubs look SO super trendy as planters, spray painted glossy colours. I prefer patina looks, old, like unearthed treasure. If I ever see laundry tubs free lol... I'm DEFINITELY picking them up. I want to use them to create height behind other plantings in my Indy garden, later....

OMG YES! I had a friend who called our gardens "Spider motels" there were like 15 stories of webs above our heads lol! Love spiders. I name them inside our house! Frank or Francesca. The kids say "Mum Frank is getting too close to the kitchen table" and their friends say Who's Frank? hahaha
For my eldest daughter to leave our home at night, she asks Who's doing spider patrol? Someone has to go out with a long umbrella and circle in front of them down the path like a Knight with a sword lol.
Then the birds moved in and balanced things out. We still need Spider patrol for some people to enter & exit.

The lorikeets came onto my balcony out of the rain today. It's like these personalities know me, cheeky things. "Let's go to Mama's, she'll feed us". I had a big seed bell and put it on the back path so they would leave my balcony and eat noisily together. And they did.
I'm pretty stubborn, I don't 'feed' them until Autumn when the bush, and my garden, is running out of food.

I love your pic of your rose is it? On your name space. I aspire to be more like you 🙂

EM

[Guest_1055]

Hi Em,

I guess it helps to have a little ecosystem going on. Which is what your place sounds like. I am not too fond of Spiders. We had one that seemed to live in the letter box when I was a little girl. It was a huge brown and ugly one. Huntsman maybe?? Our milk was delivered into the letterbox. If it was my turn to get it. Well it was scary business. I would put my hand in there very quick like to grap hold of the plastic milk container. Then pull it out quick like too.

It sounds like there is a lot of happenings at your place too. I like the leaf mulch/compost idea with the picket stakes. Are they the metal looking stakes? Guessing you buy them from bunnings?

And you can have this bird of paradise plant of mine if you would like. Its huge. It is growing right near the front steps. It is very healthy looking.

Mmm yeah about the compost I have with the black ants. I did not put in any cardboard. Did not think too. Just has tons and tons of raw vegetable and fruit scrapes plus old compost that you get in a bag from the garden centre. Maybe it needs more carbon. I will see what I can do there.

I really like lorikeets. So cute that they know you like that.

[Guest_1055]

I too am extremely inspired by you and your garden Mark. You really do seem to like being in it.

I also like the aluminium tag idea and the old laundry tub idea. I am guessing the tub is like a concrete looking one. I have seen one like that with herbs growing happily out of it. I liked the look of it. Not sure if I could buy one up around here though. And they look rather heavy. Maybe at a garage sale or something.

It's awesome how you grow all those vegetables. How do the eggplants grow? Like on vine?

[Matchy69]

Hi Em yes my profile picture is a standard rose with light pink flowers that is growing here.That one gets heaps of flowers and i have made rose petal jam out of them in the past.

I helped my elderly neighbour today in the garden.She had an old bbq and helped her shift it and make it into a planter.She is really into recycling to.She has chook house and is going to put quails in it now for something different.I remember my mother telling me she use to breed them when she was kid on the farm along with her chooks.

I have a fig here i got one good crop on it a couple of years ago.Last season it really struggled in the drought.I love figs and love making fig jam.

I use to make bird houses and bird feeders mostly out of recycled wood and galvanise iron.I use to sell them at the markets and a couple of craft shops along with my jams and a few other things i made.

Happy gardening everyone,

Mark.

[Matchy69]

Hi shelll is grows on a small bush and is a Solanum and related to tomatoes and potatoes,pepino and tobacco.Mine has bern fruiting for about 6 months and is still fruiting.I am just waiting for the frost to kill it.You cant grow them in winter here.

[ecomama]

Hi Shelll

Oh getting milk from a Spidery place as a child, not good for a healthy relationship with them lol. It may have been a Huntsman, yeah. Indigenous women here tell me that visits from a Huntsman is women's energy reminding you of your own and from Ancestors past.

So we think that when we get a visit and thank them 🙂

Ok thanks! I'll take your Birds of Paradise lololol. I understand we can have a love / hate or either feeling towards anything growing in our garden.

Some people have looked at my huge section with weeds growing and said "you need to get rid of THEM".... well actually they're telling me a lot (yeah here we go again lol). Before, only HUGE lantana was growing there. Then I removed it. Then it was bare soil. I liken that to Mother Earth having exposed skin, not good. So when weeds grew I said YAY!!!

Oh I love the job that weeds do! They AERATE the soil with their lovely roots. They attract worms underground. They COVER the earth when nothing else will. They're GREEN so are working for our oxygen, cleaning the air.
And they put the most wonderful things back INTO my soil, enriching it more and more UNTIL the soil is healthy enough to sustain grass.

Believe it or not I like the job Lantana does too. But when it's time to go, it's time to get rid of it. I've probably removed around 400sqm of it now and have the scars to prove it lol! Only about 20sqm left. But unless something else grows there fast, I'll be facing it all over again. Thankyou weeds!

Compost: Yeah I would put wet newspaper torn in strips. But you can pull it all out and layer it in even layers. Anything like veg scraps is all nitrogen. Compost needs a 50/50 balance of carbon and nitrogen. Things that speed up the process can be grown in your garden like Comfrey and Arrowroot. I grow them nearby the composts and rip a bit off and throw it in the layers.
Plus there are hot and cold composts (amongst so many others). So sometimes I think yeah - a hot one this time, usually after Christmas when I have a ham bone/rind. I make 50/50 layers and once I sink the ham bone etc in the centre, I cover it all up with sheets of cardboard and wet it too. Then leave it for about 3 months, not turning.

Hope this makes sense!
EM

[ecomama]

Hi Mark, ROSE PETAL JAM! lol if it doesn't move at your house, you make jam or pickles out of it, YOU ARE AMAZZZZZING lol. Oh and thank you for chiming in on the easy recipe thread! It's "cookin'" lol.

Ahhhh I think wistfully of your garden, the roses look beautiful. So does your rose petal jam taste like Turkish delight?

My daughter actually made a lavender and Earl Grey cake! She used her own lavender :-0
Secretly I was afraid she would poison someone lol but everyone survived.

I know Shelll is keen to grow herbs and I read your talk about eggplants. That made me think of heaps but do you do any companion planting ? I can't plant things without having the companions ready.

Mainly because sometimes we plant things together (or they just pop up and we can see how they react to each other)… and they are NOT friends. I have a prime example with healthy potato plants, popped up from my peelings wrapped in newspaper and buried. Then long lost chilli plants decided to grow there too! Just from me shovelling up dark soil and filling the pot up.

Wow did the Chillis win! I know what you're thinking Mark CHILLI JAM lol, have the lot. It's almost like the chilli USED up all the goodness the potato had and grew like nothing else, it's almost 1m tall! The potato died down ofcourse. I didn't bother digging up the potatoes because I wasn't sure if there had been some type of weird chemical reaction between them as potatoes can become quite toxic. So they are composting in the pot lol.

My PLANNED companions are when I plant out my blueberry bushes (yet to get them, and YES I shall buy them when Green Harvest decides to re-open). I want a fresh start for them. I've been preparing a closed garden bed for the right soil. But I've decided to plant strawberries (culled from Community gardens) and parsley underneath and around them to deter weeds and provide food for nature. These will be eaten by the birds but I'm hoping to intuit a good protection for the blueberry bushes, so we can have most of them.

I've got a long piece of PVC piping & want to drill circular holes along it in gradient sizes, largest at the end, so I can pour rainwater into one end and it waters along to the end. It's a very dry area and kind of under a high eave.

EM

[ecomama]

Hi Shelll and everyone,

Leaf mould
You'll need:
4 metal star pickets - you can get these from Bunnings. Not cheap but can used lifelong.
Chicken wire is best or shade cloth if you have it is great too.
Cable ties.
A lump hammer to hammer the pickets in.

Directions:
Measure length of chicken wire because the pickets need to hammered at the right distances from each other.
IE if you have over 4m of chicken wire then the posts can be 1m apart.
Hammer posts in a square. 1m apart is ideal for maximum composting.
Decide which side of your design will be the "door" - easy access for removing awesome soil at the end.
Attach end of chicken wire to THAT first door post, with cable ties.
Wind chicken to next post and affix with cable ties, then next and so on.
At the handle side of the door side, you can use string or cable ties which will need to be cut at the end.
Put ANY amount of leaves inside this.
If the leaves are VERY dry, then water them a bit between layers. I've never had to do this, but it all depends on what's happening weather wise where you are.
Do not disturb or push down, just keep adding leaves.

We made one where I worked once and it was approx. 7m long and 2m wide lol. It was ENORMOUS!
There were so many leaves from so many varieties of trees and eucalypts too (:-0) which is not usually recommended, but we did it lol.
We cheated a bit and used a metal, boundary fence as one side. But this fence was on the UP side, so any excess moisture from rain drained away down into the mould and away down the hill to the vege beds.
Just leaves, leaves and more leaves for 6 months over Autumn / Winter, nothing else.
Seriously, NONE of thought this was going to work.

Come Spring we opened it up and had lots of workers to shovel out the thick, rich, black soil. So many of us jumped back when we thought there were snakes in the pile but they were WORMS. Much longer than our arms, it was incredible. This had attracted native worms and we were in shock.
But this is what the Australian Bush can do if left undisturbed. Our landscape has never been solely eucalypts until more recently. It's always been diverse.

Happy Moulding lol.

EM

[Choko]

I love gardening too, its gives me so much peace and joy to see things grow . I Had a garden for many years and so loved collecting new plants . A few years ago I moved interstate and currently live in a apartment so limited to things in pots and things that like shade so a bit tricky to find flowering plants that like shade. 😞 Through the last months when I have spent so much time on my own, I've realised just how much a garden means to me.

Sounds like you've got quite a challenge with your garden however what fun and joy you will have getting it right. Although a garden is like a painting never quite finished always to add or to do . Look forward to hearing what your planting and planning.

[ecomama]

Hi Choko! Welcome to the gardening thread, it's great to have you here. Thankyou so much for posting.
It's a real compliment that your 1st is here! Awesome name btw CHOKO! I love chokos.

I hope you get a lot out of the BB forums :-))

I agree, a garden of any size can be SUCH a comfort in stormy times throughout our lives. Then you wake up one day and notice some new green shoots from a plant or a pretty flower, it's LIFE and we are loving that moment. My Nanna lived in a 1 b/room apartment for 20y or so. The tiny balcony was CRAMMED with plants lol, we could only just open the sliding door and LOOK, not step out lol.
At the same time Nanna gardened in all the gardens around the apartment complex!

Now we have more Community Gardens, do you have any nearby Choko?

We have a few nearby and years ago I was really into them. Then fulltime work took over lol.
I think it's awesome that anyone can pick the food anytime. yay.

My garden atm.....so much work ahead. I had my first appt with a Specialist Trauma Psych yesterday and I'm not allowed to do anymore immersion therapy by myself lol. Once she described it to me and how harmful it is to me atm, I'm wondering ummmmmm am I allowed to garden?
ONLY with a gardener with me to kind of co-regulate. He is such a distraction and is a powerhouse but so gently spoken. Loud noise is a big trigger for me BUT I CAN listen to the Screaming Jets and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers loud lol, my plants like that music.

You talked about shade loving plants.... flowering ones ARE hard to find but I got given a full garbage bag of the most unusual Bromeliads recently, I'd never seen these ones before. It's not like they are my FAVOURITE plant in the world, but I can really appreciate what they do. They are almost 'air plants' or epiphytic lol never written that word before, so they don't need much soil. I started putting them in the forks of my trees and they look lovely. They LOVE the shade and turn a nice, deep green there. They FLOWER yay. They multiply. And once my Nanna showed me a FROG in her Bromeliad on her 2nd floor apartment balcony lol. When planted in the ground, they deter weeds and grass growing. So they're winners in my garden now.

Lovely having you Choko, hope you pop in again soon and tell us how you're going.
EM