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How to improve flowering & fruit setA recent snippet on GardenDrum got me to thinking about flowering and fruit set. Working in a nursery, I often see gardeners who are successfully promoting vegetative growth, but whose plants don’t flower or, if they do, don’t set fruit. Continue reading
Soil nutrient balance & poultry wasteAs growers up and down the land strive for the soil nutrient balance, be it on a small or large scale, it seems a new product that has all the answers arrives every week. As the world seeks food production equality on a planet of shrinking space and greater demand, along with the public mindset to conserve what it is chewing up, the words sustainability and organic are rarely far from our thoughts. With many simply feeling we will continue to pay a huge price in using synthetic fertilisers, the drive for the ultimate organic fertiliser continues. Continue reading
Garden dietThroughout history, we human beings have adopted an amazing variety of diets, for an amazing variety of reasons. We comprise omnivores, vegetarians, Continue reading
Fire and the Australian bushAustralians know instinctively that the bush is adapted to burning. We see those tough, leathery-leafed eucalypts burned back to the stump and then a few weeks later there’s a Continue reading
Compost teas – do they work?A couple of nights ago I had a discussion with a friend of mine who was extolling the virtues of using compost teas on the garden. Applications of said tea included soil drenching and foliar applications, the latter supposedly playing a role in disease treatment and prevention. It sounds great, I know, but do compost teas have any efficacy on plant health at all? Are the claims made by their proponents, who have included Australia’s premier horticultural TV program, Gardening Australia, true? Continue reading
A can of wormsMy sister – who is a very good gardener, much better than I am – peered into my compost bin. It was full of rotting vegetable peelings and dried leaves and a bit of newspaper and sawdust & all that other stuff that you are meant to put in compost. But the four black inside walls were slimy and dripping and they were encrusted with wriggling pink worms of all shapes and sizes. Some of them separate, some all knotted together. Continue reading