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 Shelll

You can join 'Freecycle', members give away all sorts, you can also ASK for things you need - this international organization was formed to keep usable things out of landfill. All free. I've received so many things, including gardening things; shade cloth, chicken wire, pots, horse and cow manure etc. Food plants also. It's pretty great.

Yes! We do love our gardening lol! It's so grounding lol.

I'm so happy you're enjoying your gardening course, that's awesome!

Oregano is a fantastic plant for Australian gardens, I totally agree! Perfect for novice gardeners because it can grow so easily. Beginning gardeners usually kill plants with kindness lol, over watering, too much fertilizer, soil over rich etc. Oregano is almost a 'set and forget' plant. It's home is in the Mediterranean so it likes warm to hot, dry climates. It loves the sun. I moved mine from a shady area due to overgrown tree branches, to a sunny spot. I was going to turn the pot to get even growth (plants usually grow towards the sun) but as I noticed, it's now spilt over the pot and along the ground lol. So I have it growing across the ground too.

My garden kinda does what it wants to do lol. Yesterday I found a huge vine cherry tomato plant growing all by itself in a very hot spot in my garden - it FRY in Summer there but has chosen Winter to grow and flower so all good.

Rosemary is also from the Mediterranean so likes the same conditions but even drier - like lavender.
I love getting stalks of rosemary and spiking them into a leg of lamb to roast. With garlic lol but that's for another thread!

Peter Cundall's 'Patch from scratch' is an awesome view. What a hero that man is.

EM

[ecomama]

Hi Mark

Could you please share HOW you grow plants from cuttings?

I have my own methods but I would love to know yours!

Be back later. Kids and pet's racket is getting a bit much lol. (Maybe time to sneak into the garden lol).

EM

[Guest_1055]

Oh Mark your mention of your daughter growing a raised veggie garden at school (which is a great idea) reminds me of the school down from me which has a awesome veggie garden. Anyone walking or driving past can see it. May just go and really look at that more.

I would be interested too to know how you take a cutting from a rosemary plant. Guessing it is a hardwood cutting at the moment. Maybe I should prune mine, I have never done it except for snipping some for cooking. I planted it the the pot last year. And yeah gorgeous scent, love it.

[ecomama]

Yes please share your cuttings method Mark and also just FYI my nectarine's leaves are just starting to turn colour today. How's yours going?

EM

[Guest_1055]

Hey Em

It's pretty cute how your oregano grows toward the light. It sounds weird saying that about plants, but that is how I see it.

I was just learning about that actually in this course. There was a scientific name for it. Was it photo something or heli, nope better go over that. But it was like you could plant a plant in a pot. And let's say it gets knocked over. The plant naturally wants the light so the stem will attapt itself and bend in such a way as to head to the light source.

I also love how sunflowers face and track the sun. I would like to plant some of those one day, as they look like such happy plants. And I want to dwell on lovely and happy things.

Ooh love cherry tomatoes.

It's a good idea about the free cycle. I looked it up to see what it was. Maybe you mentioned about it before, mmm I don't know.

[ecomama]

Hi Shelll

Yeah it's SO COOL!

It's called photosynthesis.... photo meaning light and synthesis meaning something like changing things to something else / bringing them together for a better product.

So the sun shines on the green parts of the plant, the leaves USE the sun's rays to convert it into sugars I think.. anyway growth happens lol.

It is super cool watching the oregano spilling over the huge pot and now growing along the soil IN the soil outside the pot. I LOVE eating oregano. I need to put another recipe on the other thread lol.

SUNFLOWERS omg SOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo beautiful lol.

For super cheap seeds and hundreds of them, I buy the sunflower bird seeds from a supermarket.

I live in a semi-tropical climate - switches to Mediterranean also lol.
But I can plant all Spring crops in August no problems.

You need a very sunny spot for happy sunflowers. I've never had to prepare the soil, they can go straight in ANY soil IME. BUT if you have lots of birds around, make sure you bury the seeds well. Sunflowers do deplete the soil so it's best to prep the soil for any different foods you may wish to grow there afterwards.

Sunflowers are SO HAPPY, my favourite part is when they are huge and in bloom and then the cockatoos and lorikeets come and chew the stem through, catch the flower with their feet and carry it in flight to a flat part of the garden to share! They eat it for hours and sometimes days. omg so cute watching them sharing and squabbling a bit then settling down to share again.

Ofcourse you can eat some sunflower seeds yourself. You can Google how to SAVE the seeds for next year too.

They are a great plant to grow for so many reasons.

EM

[Matchy69]

Hi Em growing cuttings very for me.The rosemary were probably semi hardwood and i put them in a soil mixture In a pot.I dip the cutting in cutting powder.I have had success with this method with rosemary.

My profile photo is of my grandmothers green rose.

Happy Gardening everyone.

Mark.

[Matchy69]

Em my nectarine still has it leaves but the colour is just changing.

[ecomama]

OOhhhhhhhhhh that rose is SPECTACULAR Mark! How extra special is that flower?

Okay so your nectarine is catching up lol. Yesterday mine had lost 2/3 of it's leaves completely but in the weirdest way. One whole branch still has most of it's leaves and the other 2 big branches have none. No idea why?
My gardener gave all my fruit trees a huge pruning about 2 months ago, this one included. Don't know if this has anything to do with it.

It's been freezing and quite rainy here lately. How's your weather been?

I've only been sweeping leaves every 2-3 days from the LONG driveway lol. Takes almost 2 hours ugh. It all fills 2-4 11 litre buckets of squashed down leaves.
I put these in the leaf mould I made last weekend and it is melting down before my eyes. I even added compost things from the kitchen and it's still just the same height as last weekend. At this rate I might have to get leaves from the neighbours nature strips - they'd love me for that lol.
I'm thinking to put thin twiggy branches in there now.
Ideally it needs to be 1sq metre, I'll see how I feel lol.

This weekend I was going to make a second leaf mould structure in my back yard with my grandson. There are MANY more leaves in the back yard. Being on quite a steep slope I don't want to barrow the leaves from the back yard up to the front yard. That would drive me crazy lol.

Plus I want the compost mainly for the back yard. The front yard CREATES huge amounts of black soil since the chickens and brush turkeys eat out there and we get leaf litter from the bush nearby washing down in the rains and mostly settling in the front garden.

I take barrows of that to the back yard where the erosion is more of a problem - root exposure. UGH.

After researching how to deal with exposed roots, I'm going to do some experiments in different areas when I get all the materials. If I do the work all at the same time then I'll get better measures of what works best.
Plus we want to video it all in prep for our Vlog.

EM

[ecomama]

Propagating from cuttings:

Matchy has told us how easily he makes new plants out of established ones above.

This is a fantastic free / cheap way to get loads of new plants.

My technique is to get as many pots as I want cuttings for and put soil in each.

Using the end of a pencil, dab into each pot to make a hole or more than one hole in each pot.

When you cut from the established plant, make sure to cut getting some OLD growth and some NEW growth in each one.

Remove all leaves from the cutting that will sit below the soil.

Cut the top off leaving some new growth on and some leaves. Not many. With soft leafed plants like gardenias some recommend cutting each leaf you leave on in half. This promotes root growth.

I dip the soil end of the cutting into honey. About 1-2cm deep.

Poke cutting into soil. Squash soil around it gently.

I always like to prep about 3x more plants than I need. Then put clusters of these pots in 3 different areas of my garden. This way you have a higher chance that the cuttings will like at least one area you chose.

Have fun!

Soon I'm going to my brother's house and taking a garbage full of gardenia cuttings (he has about 100 gardenias). I want to have swathes of gardenias in the front garden.
I LOVE white flowers at dusk as they luminate and create a glow for pathways and look so pretty.
I also LOVE the fragrance of gardenias. Their shiny dark green leaves are gorgeous too.
They grow best in very warm situations in the garden and our front garden gets scorched lol.

Happy gardening everyone!
EM