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 hope4joy!

You are so VERY welcome here and I disagree.... there can never be enough rambles on here lol!!!

Brambles no, rambles yes!

Ramble away my dear, to your heart's content! I love hearing about your gardening antics lol and anyone else's too.

I think you'd love to read Peter Andrew's series "Back from the Brink" and "Beyond the Brink"... freaking AMAZING texts on helping to protect our precious Australian landscape. In a COMPLETELY Australian way as only he can.

When you read and absorb his writing, it could give you a complete paradigm shift in the way you view the landscape. He really helps us understand capturing water and holding water in the soil. I'm a total devotee lol.

Back a few pages, Shelll mentioned a free Course she was doing online. I think quite a few places are opening up free online Courses re: nature and gardening.

Oh how sweet to be buying your own place! I hope you let us know about your journey all along the way.

I'm re-creating my garden after a terrible person destroyed it over years.

Then the lantana came in thick and fast.

So it's a slow process for me. Sometimes sad and poignant knowing how it used to be.

But should I get to the bare basic soil... like ever lol.. then it's got patches of "clean slate" here and there to sculpt.

So just like any :fresh start", I'm doing things differently. Still incorporating the loyal natives, fruit and nut trees that survived under all that lantana but hoping for a peaceful place to look at.
Also rebuilding probably only one bath worm farm (I used to have 3)... and I am composting in tyres atm but will use recycled PVC pipe as worm towers to compost in. I've already made the worm towers. I'll also get my seaweed tea up and running soon. The weed tea is working a treat atm.

The chook shed is now a garden shed since foxes moved in to the neighbourhood. So I am looking forward to organising that space for my ease.

Tonight I saw my Isabella Grape vine leafing up again and thought it would be cute to espalier that around my garden shed. Why not lol.

I have to do things as cheaply as possible so if I can propagate plants I already have and from others and get plants for free then that's what I'm doing.

I'm so happy you love gardening too.

EM

[Lillylane]

Hi EM

Thanks for such a warm welcome. I’m super keen to start on some herbs now!

The one herb I actually have already is Rosemary - it’s huge! It’s near our carport so the kids like to pick some as they go past and I find Rosemary leaves in various compartments of the car haha. Thankfully it has a lovely fragrance.

I’m thinking the other herbs I like to eat are:

Thyme, Lemongrass, Basil (love the idea of a Basil forest!), parsley.
I love anything with a lemon flavour too so perhaps lemon balm?

Hi to hope4joy too, I’ve just seen your post and like the sound of lemon myrtle tea 🙂

L.

[ecomama]

Hi Lillylane!

You're most welcome for the welcome lol. I'm very excited to have some new members on our thread and it's SO healing to garden. I wish more people could 'catch the bug' lol.

Oh you know what....
I'm thinking if you're going to bother thinking you may as well think BIG.

So can you ONLY plant in pots?

Have you thought about planting a Lemon Tree in a pot?
I shy away from planting trees in pots but people do!

I have lemon grass growing. I got a clump from somewhere years ago lol and it spreads.... I love it. The long stalk leaves make a wonderful infusion / tea. Yummy!
I was thinking if you could plant it anywhere in a garden space then if you have to leave, you can pull up a clump and take it with you.
It's SUPER EASY to grow in warm climates. Tbh I think I'd have trouble killing it - haven't watered it ever.

Lemon balm would suit a pot very well. Mine is growing in a little nook in the garden and it responds beautifully to a splash of weed tea (nitrogen) now and again. It can grow so much in a week!

Thyme likes it's own space I've come to learn. It copes with some neglect after it's established and it's pretty water efficient. Similar needs to rosemary but likes a bit of a richer soil.

Basil - well yeah it LOVES warm weather. Plant now in a warm spot. Seeds directly onto soil and brushed in. My most successful basil has been in the garden sprinkled between tomato plants - they're great companions.

Parsley - we mow it lol, along with the mint growing instead of lawn! The curly leafed parsley is hardier IME but the flat leafed variety is almost as hardy. You can try growing both and even in same pot.

Anything with alot of green likes a nitrogen feed every 3 weeks in warm weather. You can make a weed tea which is free. That's what we do.

I'm glad your rosemary is loving life and the kids pick it. It's supposed to have calming qualities, so it's great your children touch it and smell it often. I say don't mess with nature, it's telling you where it likes to live so be happy!
I have an accidental cherry tomato growing like a mountain near our garage door!
Pity there aren't more flowers in my garden to attract bees, I think that's it fruiting deficit atm.

I'll have to throw out some marigold seeds to attract the bees. Community gardens give away so much.

EM

[hope4joy]

Hi Em,

Thank you for the warm welcome. I just placed 'Back from the Brink' on hold at my local library. I really like the idea of creating a garden that is ecologically beneficial - especially for insects - as they're so important. When I have a place I'd love to buy a native bee hive - although would need to research more to make sure I could look after them property. I mean those cute stingless ones that people get to help with pollination - there's no honey collection.

And Lillylane I think you'd like the lemon myrtle tea - it is really delicious (if you like herbal teas?) - i put to to three leaves in a big cup and can use them twice. My little tree (<1m tall) is very happy growing a pot - I guess growth is just slower than in the ground.

[ecomama]

Hi wonderful gardeners lol

I have a HUGE tree that's a mystery to all people who've tried to ID it, even supremely confident botanists and even the Botanical Gardens. It was here when I bought the property a few decades ago. It's deciduous so not a native but it attracts thousands of native bees... it's lovely.

Our native bees will help save the world, the world of humans at least.

hope4joy - I've had friends over the years who became apiarists. The first thing they did was to ensure flowering plants in their gardens and different ones that flowered throughout the year, very well, in different seasons. This is to prevent the bee colony becoming exhausted flying long distances to gather pollen.

Planting this alone is a feat in itself. I understand apiarists who care for their bees, inspect the property before handing colonies over to ensure this is the case.

So it's taken my friends 2 -3 years to set their properties up for bees. The plants have to mature. There's been quite a bit of research involved but ALL worth it for all of them.

I'm sure your devotion will suit whomever lives in your garden well. lol.

My uncle has saddened me with his plans for my home. My intended Blueberry patch would be demolished if my uncle has his way.

I don't think I can let him do it. From my observations this place is the best place for blueberries in my garden and I should be able to control the ph levels well as it is confined. Not that I've ever bothered checking things such as ph levels, there are indicators all around as to the balance of nutrients etc in the soils.

There are also microclimates AND different soil balances depending upon what's growing / sun exposure / water availability / animal deposits lol.

I'll try to negotiate with my uncle about another exit from that room where steps ALREADY are.
I don't see the point in demolishing perfectly good work in order to reconstruct what's already there. But that's the Permie in me coming out lol.

EM

[Matchy69]

Native bees are great and they are stingless as well.A property years ago I had they were living in a pepperina tree and I found them to be a great polinator especially on my lychee tree.That mystery tree sounds like something I have growing in my front yard and it is deciduous to and nobody knows what it is.

[ecomama]

Dear Matchy! SO WONDERFUL to have you back on the gardening thread.

So YOU have the same tree too? Wow. Mine has been chopped off the top lots of times (not by me) ....not sure how long it's got left to live, although it looks pretty strong atm. So does yours have leaves shaped like Canadian Maple leaves?

When I've tried to see what all the bee activity is about, the flowers are NOT obvious at all, then you can see these incy wincy tiny little flowers on it lol, but only if you go up REALLY close and hold one in your hand. HUGE tree with the tiniest flowers I've never seen before.
Little yellowish bit of fluff almost.

Is yours like that?

I LOVE the leaves it drops. Great for making leaf moulds. Not that we need any more leaves tbh but those ones break down to great soil.

You are the FIRST person to have ever told me they have one too.
Yay!
I tried for years to have it identified but no one can.

Better go, we have appointments today.

Thankyou for coming back here and I Pray for your recovery all the time.

Best wishes
EM

[hope4joy]

Hi Matchy69 and Em, thank you for the comments on native bees. That is a really good point about needing flowing plants all year round. I recently sold off some of my grevilleas when I realised they have quite a short lifespan and would all flower at a similar time - I'm planning to diversify more - which is a good start to keep the bees happy! We had a native been hive at my uni campus and people wrote signs so people wouldn't harm them and knew they were stingless - they're such beautiful creatures. And very helpful for fruit too! I like the idea of it being a goal to design a garden to have flowers all year round, sounds like a great project to aspire to. I'd love it if black cockatoos moved in too but that is less likely, hardly see many around here. But as a kid we had a big banksia tree in our front yard and the black cockies would come every year without fail to eat the.... flower heads? seeds? I'm not quite sure what they ate off the banksia to be honest! 🙂

[ecomama]

It's a VERY exciting adventure for you to be going on hope4joy.... just lovely!

We have lots of cheeky sulphur crested cockatoos visit our home and chew on my timber balcony railings lol.

The other cockatoos mostly chew on neighbours front lawns but they get rid of grubs so everyone's happy.

We have flocks of black cockatoos visit my work and they are SO LOUD and so beautiful.
I think they love to play. Seems like it.
My work is set in virgin bushland and there are klms of bushland for as far as the eye can see... I'm sure that's where they live.

We also have echidnas visit which is SO cute.

But in my garden not so cute things lol... I've found a few varieties of snakes and a few dead funnel webs. I found a brown snake skin in my lemon grass (talking of lemon grass lol) and it was metres long. Hmmm but I had one slither over my boot for a long time at my friend's farm and that was a test in staying calm - FOR SURE. It was loooooooooooooooong.

Lots of adventures with wildlife to recall but hopefully none to worry about in my garden atm lol.

Btw I brought up more branches to burn today (2 kids helped for about 20 minutes - thanks kids!) and in amongst all the lantana we cut down I think I found another baby lemon tree growing.

Wish I could give it to you Lillylane...

I'll talk to my gardener to make sure that's what it is. I may have to put it in a pot. IDK.
Maybe I could plant it in the intended cabin's backyard?
Pretty tricky decision.

Anyway I think I have to buy a reciprocating saw. I can't do the hand sawing like I've been doing.
The mini chain saw hates me lol. Always bucking up when I need it.

I just have to get more done.

Fire's out now. Done with burning for today.

EM

[ecomama]

Lantana update: lol

Dear God who introduced this to Australia... ughhh.

I had around 600sq metres of the stuff growing this time last year. It was weaving throughout ALL of my fruit trees up to 20m high in the sky. What a mess! There are still some dead lantana stalks hanging precariously up that high lol!

IDK how much is left, maybe 30sq metres?, but my hands are swollen and the scratches on my arms are red and sore from reactions. And I wore gloves and long sleeves.

I couldn't find anything online about the toxicity of burning the cuttings. I have tried to burn it before VERY unsuccessfully. It wasn't dead enough.

When I pile the cuttings up, I can wait a week in hot weather, then crunch it with my feet - kinda like squashing grapes for wine! I have to wear steel capped garden boots up to my shins.
It's THAT spiky.

I have 7 BIG piles of it now in various stages of decomposition. 2 covered in old carpet. I found that spreading ashes from old fires over the piles deters the brush turkeys from scratching the pile apart - yay found a deterrent!

I have 3 large piles dead enough to burn.

Bonfire tomorrow plus last chiminea balcony fire. I dug out a tree stump and it's on the bonfire ready.

It's a freaking MARATHON but I can see the finish line.

Then maintenance which I know will be no mean feat.

My gardener is coming only for a few hours next Wed. Yay! Hopefully the rest of the lantana above ground will go that day.

I'll need my bladed mattock I think it's called to pull out the runners that are as thick as my arm in some places. The bases are sometimes wider than my leg. UGH.
It's a tentacled monster.

My Uncle is bringing his reciprocating saw for cutting more branches ugh, but it needs to be done. It'll be a year before those freshly cut branches are ready for burning.

Meanwhile my green bin is ALWAYS full to overflowing. Every single fortnight.

I might even find my retaining wall down there underneath everything..... I can HOPE!

It's pretty darned exciting to be seeing the end in sight tbh. It's such hard work. The sweat was pouring and dripping off my face again today. Par for the course really lol.

GETTING THERE.

EM