Banana Box Salad

I’ve just been reading the Plannet Veggie Garden Blog and found a great post about growing Salads in a Banana box.

The cost of this little beauty really puts my Herb Garden for under $40 to shame… a whole $8 they say will set you up for a heap of fresh lettuce.

I especially like the fact that you can start one every week for 4 to 5 weeks, and you’ll never run out of fresh lettuce at your house.

You could also start planting other plants such as dwarf beans, zuchini or tomatoes in boxes like this!

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Having a Degree in Applied Science, you can understand

that I am quite interested in experimenting with different ideas and seeing what results they yield.

After reading What to plant in September on Aussie Organic Gardening I’ve decided to experiment with Moon Gardening.

Hypothesis: To test if Dwarf Beans planted in the Last Quarter phase perform any differently to those planted in the New Moon phase.

Moon Planting sounds a little like mumbo jumbo, but I’m willing to start to work by it for a while to see if I get any better results. If anything, the cyclic nature of it will keep me on my toes and planting new things regularly.

For some further info, check out Traditional Moon Planting.

I’ve just bought a Mother of Herbs plant, Coleus Amboinicus.

It was just sitting in the nursery, looking different (almost like a Pelargonium) and smelling so sweet.

Mother of Herbs, Coleus Amboinicus is a prolific spreading plant with large soft fleshy aromatic leaves. Used to flavour soups, salads, casseroles and many other dishes. It smells slightly like oragano.

It is said that when made into a tea (chop up a leaf and put in boiling water) it can be used to releave the symptoms of bronchitis, asthma, coughs, viral conditions, to relieve indigestion and stomach cramps, convulsions, and as a liver tonic.

It is also said that the tea will help you sleep and is a cure for insomnia.

This plant has many names: Queen of Herbs, Five in One Herb, Five Seasons Herb, Allherb, Country Borage, Indian Borage, Five Spice Herb, Chinese Three in One, Broad Leafed Thyme, Spanish Thyme, Spanish Sage, Puerto Rican Oregano.

The Five Spice herb is relatively hardy and will grow in most conditions. It does not like frost or cooler climates, but can be potted and grown in sheltered areas or indoors in the cooler parts of the year.

The directions on the tag say to plant in full sun or semi shade, water well, prune often and it’s an ideal hanging basket plant.

Propegation is by cuttings or root division. It sprawls, so prune regularly.

I saw this today on Cyber Rain.

Quite amusing. Share with your friends.

Water and lack thereof is a huge talking point in this day and age of “Climate Change”. By changing your watering technique you can improve your watering effectiveness, save you time and save some money in water bills.

Over the past couple of months we’ve been adding to our new large garden bed. We’ve put in plants such as Passionfruit, a lemon tree, Moses in the cradle, honeysuckles, ponytail tree, marigolds, vinca, lavender etc. All of these plants have different water requirements, but to help preserve what goes on, it has all been mulched with hay, and some parts have been covered with horse manure to help the hay break down into a nice rich topsoil / compost / mulch.

I’ve been using my standard watering sprinkler which puts out a whopping 990 liters per hour over a large area. It takes 4 moves of the sprinkler to get the whole area covered, and it is easy to forget to move it, and some areas get neglected from time to time.

Working with small scale irrigation systems is quite easy, even for the first timer who has no experience. Your basic setup requires a few key materials and a little common sense.

For our setup I bought fifty meters of 13mm hose, two T pieces, a hose adapter, a filter (to stop the drippers blocking) with pressure reducer (keeps it at 100 bar), and some drippers.

Overall it only took 30 minutes to install. The first step was to lay the hose out in the desired pattern, cut and fit joiners where required. Next attach the hose and fill with water, take the hole making tool and start installing the drippers.

Each of my drippers run at 4 litres per hour, I used these on the larger plants such as the lemon tree, passionfruit vine and other larger dedicated plants.

To make placement easier, I used some smaller 4mm flexible hose to attch to the main 13mm hose. This allows me to move them around the base of the tree as required.

Over my anuals (which will be replaced with perennials when the current perennials grow to be a bit bigger) I used a small rotating sprinkler head. Using upright raisers to get them above the mulch, they spin around distributing water over a larger area. The exact water usage from these is unknown at the moment, but should they begin putting out too much water, I can easily add taps to their raisers and they can be turned off.

The best part of creating your own drip irrigation system is that it can be modified at any time for little cost, once the initial financial outlay has been done.

By completing this job, my household water consumption should drop significantly thus reducing my water bill. Along with the installation of the low water toilet bowl and dual flush cistern in the bathroom, I’m taking the first step top making my house even greener.

For more information on DIY Watering systems you can visit:

• DIY Network
• Irrigation Tutorials
• Gardening Australia

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I planted out a tray of Green Mignonette lettuce about 2 weeks ago, I tried to do the right thing and separate them all out and plant them in rows. Having run out of room to spread them out, with the left over plants I simply slid them out of their tray into a spot in the garden.
Since then they have both been given the same water and nutrients, yet the separated ones have grown far slower.

I think *and hope* that when it comes to picking time, the separated lettuces have performed better than their sardine like cousins who are squished in together.

I’m not sure if I’ve spoken about my veggie patch before? If not, then here is a quick rundown for you all.
It’s about 3m x 10m and is fenced off from the rest of the yard by a 4ft fence. When we moved in it was overgrown with weeds (thistles in particular), so after a lot of pulling and cleaning I found that the soil there was less than average and very sandy.

Having all good intentions of making loads of compost, I started dumping the lawn clippings into a heap at one end. This has now turned into a huge pile of grass clippings (not compost). Today I spread it all out and have began watering it and will add some horse manure to it and stir it up a little to kill the little weed seeds that are living in there.

So now it’s onto the contents. I’ve got 6 cabbages that have began to head up nicely. There are three tomato’s, some very small spring onions, some Pak Choy, lettuces, a couple of Chinese broccoli and one pumpkin.

Over the summer time there will be a shade house erected to protect them all from the 40+ degree (Celsius) days.

Underneath the straw (kinda hard to see) is about 15 dwarf snap beans, more spring onions, spinach, coriander, lettuce and some baby carrots.

After planting my new lemon tree last week, I set out to find how to fertilise it and get it to grow to it’s best potential.

There is plenty of info out there for lemon & citrus trees, but nothing as complete or concise as that at Aussie Organic Gardening.

The blog post is so good, I’m not even going to paraphrase any of it.

If you have a citrus tree, check their blog out. I’ve also added the blog to my RSS reader to keep getting their updates.

In short, Espalier is the name given to a technique of growing trees into a two dimensional flat plane by grafting, pruning and training.

The espalier technique was developed in Europe in the 16th century to help temperate climate fruit grow in cooler climates, by growing them flat against a sunny wall. Gardening Australia has a great Fact Sheet on Espalier.

Any shrub or bush can be espaliered, but popular species include:

• Olives
• Citrus (orange, lime, lemon)
• Camellias
• Gardenia

You might be surprised, but growing a tree in an espalier fashion is easy to do at home.

Finding the location and setting up is the most challenging part. The tree will need to be grown on some kind of sturdy trellis. If you choose a wall, simply attach some horizontal tensioned wires about 30cm apart, they are going to have to take some weight so ensure they are well secured.
Some kind of clips will be required to hold the branches being trained to the wires, soft spongy plastic ties can be bought at your garden center.

Before you plant your tree, look at it from all angles. It is best to plant it with the most horizontal branches to line up with the wall. The other unwanted branches can be pruned back to keep the tree flat.

It is going to take some care and time to keep your tree under control, especially during the growing season so keep your secateurs handy.

There are a number of different styles of espalier you can try.

Palmette Verrier

Six Grid

Tripler Vertical U Shape

The Fan

Belgian Fence

Another trip to the nursery on the weekend saw us come home with a swag of new plants, one of them being a lemon tree.
After choosing a nice looking specimen the lady at the nursery asked what it’s primary use was.

My fiance was not impressed when I told her that all I wanted was a lemon tree to pee on. (Peter Cundall recommends it!)

After working out that we would be using the lemons for cooking, the variety I had chosen (Meyer) was not the ideal variety as it does not set very well (in cheesecake etc).
I ended up with a Eureka lemon, which is very similar to the old Lisbon variety with fewer thorns. Here are some more differences between the lemon varieties.

After digging a large hole (about 1.5 times as deep as the roots and 5 times the diameter) and mixing in some dolomite to sweeten the soil, the tree was in the ground. The nursery lady said not to touch the roots as lemon’s do not like that.

A good water and a bit of sunshine later the lemon tree is looking fantastic. All I need to do is wait for the lemons to make some lemon cordial!