Mushroom Compost

Yesterday I had my first experience with mushroom compost. At the moment, I hope it will be my last.

I purchased a 25 litre bag from a store that shall remain nameless. The pallet must have been sitting in the rain at some stage, an the water had got through the air holes in the bag. The result was a stinking anerobic decomposition which looked like grey slime.

I will grant that that was only half the bag doing that, but the smell was rancid. I scooped about 4 handfulls out of the good part to mix into the soon to be Zuchini bed and the rest got mixed into the pile of grass. Hopefully it will do some good in there to get the composting going.

Give it a couple of months, to let me lick my wounds and clear out my nostrils and I may have another go.

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How’s this for cool, there is a 6 year old named Megan who has her own garden blog.
She has been posting recently about strawberries and peas. She doesn’t use a spell checker, but if you read it phonetically you will get the gist of it.
If you’ve got 5 minutes, make sure you drop in and give her some support!
http://megansgarden.com/

I’ve just been put onto the web app Twitter by a friend of mine.
You can keep track of what’s going on in the widget on the right hand side, or you can follow me on Twitter.com

You’ll also notice that I’ve put the About Me bar on the side, along with some Site Stat’s.

While we’re in the mood for clicking, Sign up for updates for this blog!

With the rising cost of fuel and food, many Australians are going back to growing a vegetable garden in their back yard to help reduce their household expenditure.

Horticulturalist and Assistant Retail Manager of Eden Gardens has recorded that over the past year the sales of fruit and vegetable seedlings has risen 50% on the previous year, while sales of regular garden plants had stayed stable, indicating that more families are growing their own to save some money.

Most people have come to the realisation that the world oil price is staying high, and rather than sacrifice good quality vegetables people have turned towards growing vegetable gardens to ease the financial burden that increased fuel costs and drought have brought.

The Diggers Club, a group who grow and sell organic heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds formed in 1978, marketing manager Lisa Remato says that in an area of 10 square metres you can grow enough vegetables for one person.

A lot of keen home gardeners have known this for years, I have only began to branch out into growing fruit in the past 8 months with a passionfruit vine (I’ve had many a lemon tree!). My biggest challenge has been moving to a new climate which has very hot summers that burn off alot of my vegetable crops.

The Diggers Club are offering health-care card holders (lower income families) a package of seeds for $19.40 which should be able to grow over two tonnes of food! 350kg of pumpkins, 1025kg of tomatoes, 619kg of cucumbers, 9kg of peas, 200 heads of brocoli, 100 bunches of silverbeet, 8kg of beans, 700 lettuces, 1200 carrots, 300 parsnips and 300 onions!

That’s a lot of food, and when compared to buying it at the supermarket it’s really cheap if you’re up for a little work each week.

The biggest problem that the world faces is that there is a generation of people out there who have no idea how to grow vegetables. It is great to say that people could grow two tonnes of food, but it’s the knowing how to do the job that counts.

I’ll leave you all on a modified anecdote

Give a person a basket of vegetables and he will eat for a day, teach a person how to grow vegetables and he will eat for a lifetime.

Share your gardening knowledge with everyone, and you will both be rewarded.

Today I lashed out and purchased a new camera!

It’s a nice Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR Twin lens kit with Image Stabilising.

Tomorrow I’ll get out into the garden and take some photos for you all!

I just visited The Home Garden blog and found this great post about recycling old pieces of trees.

They have created some very simple but attractive designs using nothing more than a tree branch and a chainsaw.

Check it out at The Home Garden

I would love to create some items like this in my garden, but fear that the wood would attract a termites nest, bringing them closer to my home. I guess I’ll have to move further south where they are not as much of an issue.

Tags: garden, wood, recycle, furniture

After having 13 comments, many of them questions, on the post How To Grow Passionfruit, I thought I would follow up with some answers.

When is the passionfruit ready for
picking? Do I wait until it turns from green to purple and wrinkled, or
do I pick it green? thank you

The
fruit will quickly turn from green to deep purple (or yellow) when ripe
and then fall to the ground within a few days. They can either be
picked when they change color or gathered from the ground each day. To
store passion fruit, wash and dry them gently and place them in bags.
They should last 2 to 3 weeks. The fruit is sweetest when slightly
shriveled. Both the fruit and the juice freeze well

Can I grow a Yellow Passion fruit from the fruit seeds that I will bring
from Peru? and I wonder if the rainy weather of Washington State would
help or not?

I wouldn’t be bringing in seeds from another country as they could contain
deseases that could cause the local passionfruit vines to die.

Growing Passionfruit from seed can be done. but is not the best way
to go. If you have a hybrid variety it will not grow the hybird variety
from the seed, also if you do not live in a true tropical area your
root stock will not be resistant to Fusarium wilt. Grafted plants
generaly will not get Fusarium wilt.

I might give this a try this year. I’ve been going big on growing my own
food for about a year now and this year am also adding blackcurrents
and mushrooms to the produce I already grow at home. I figure that my
garden is closer than the supermarket so I’m saving time as well as
money and getting better food.

I am living in South Africa in the Northern Cape (Kalahari) which is semi
arid. We have very hot summers and cold winters with frost. Will they
grow in our region and how can I protect them in winter?

How often must they be watered in summer and during winter?

Passionfruit love hot summers as long as they have plenty of water, but they do not like frosty conditions. Maybe you could create a protective cover for you vine over the winter months

Passionfruit love lots of water in both summer and winter, and since they are such gross feeders they love lots of nutrients as well.

Hi I have grown a magnificent 6 m trellissed granadilla.It bares large
flowers and then drops the flowers one by one never reaching the fruit
stage. The plant is now 6 years old and to date has never given a
single fruit.

Is there a solution to this problem or is this just a rogue plant that looks fabulous.

Kevin

Kevin, I think that it may be a potassium deficiency. Purchase a packet of Sulphate of Potash and mix it up at double the rate on the packet. Pour it allover the root zone and water in well. Then mix up a half strength batch and pout it on the leaves with a watering can. Potassium is the nutrient that encourages strong flowering and fruiting, while nitrogen is used to produce lots of leaves. You can use Potash on any of your plants to improve the growth of their flowers.

I heard it is possible to grow passion fruit in Chicago–is that strictly
inside or….Also loved the “banana” passionfruit I ate in New Zealand as
a child-any news on obtaining those plants?

Hi, I’m not from America so I am not very familiar with the climate. In short passionfruit do not like frost or snow. So if it snows in Chicago then you may need to grow your vine indoors if there is plenty of light provided.

i have a case of passion woodiness how is it controlled

• magnesium deficiency

• nitrogen deficiency on sandy soils
• ‘winter yellows’. This is brought on by cold weather, windy conditions, low humidity or a combination of these.

I have had a passionfruit vine growing over my clothes hoist in the
backyard for many years, it is an unusual passionfruit that was given
to me, on the top of the passionfruit there is a stub that is attached
to the passionfruit and it has quite a soft outer casing.

It could be either the Alata or a Granadilla I am not too sure but the
problem is that it does not get any passionfruits on it, it gets the
flowers and then they drop off without going to fruit.

Do you know what can be wrong with the passionfruit vine.

The passionfruit is even more than the Panama Passionfruts

Regards

Sandy

Sandy, Maybe you have a boron and Potassium deficiency. Add some Sulphate of Potash to your plant as well as some Borax. Be careful with the borax, one teaspoon in 10 litres of water is plenty for a start. You can add two good sized handfuls of Sulphate of Potash to the soil around your vine and water in well.

hi, i live in fresno, california is it possible to grow passion fruit as
its very hot and very cold climate. also, does anyone know where i can
buy a passion fruit tree? thanks much

Tags: passionfruit, fruit, gardening

While shopping at Kmart (Australian for Walmart) I found these great new pots made from bamboo stems, rice husks and straw.

They come in a range of great colours and are 100% biodegradable. For a 100mm pot they only cost $3 each. Quite stylish for growing herbs in.

While they are slightly more expensive than PVC pots of similar sizes I think that having a pot that is going to return to the earth rather than sit around for the next hundred years when it gets broken is a great way to go.

From their website I have found the following:

Lifespan outdoors with a plant - 1 year
Indoor with a plant - 3 years
Indoor without plant - 10 years

Benefits
- Solid, lightweight and waterproof
- Allows plant roots to breathe
- Great in greenhouse conditions

You can find more information at their website http://www.biopots.com

Tags: gardening, pots

At the moment I subscribe to around 15 RSS Feeds from other blogs.

Reading these blogs gives me ideas for my own garden, as well as providing me with some ideas to post about.

Here they are in no particular order…

Tiny Farm Blog

My Tiny Plot

Scarecrow’s Garden

Fluffius Muppetus

Veggie Gardening Tips

Garden Desk

Her Gardening Blog

The Herb Gardener

Glenns Garden

Mr Brown Thumb

Smell Like Dirt

All the Dirt on Gardening

Backyard Gardening Blog

Adventures in my Urban Garden

This Garden is Illegal

I highly recommend that you should subscribe to any or all of these blogs!
You can also subscribe to my blog HERE.

I’ve recently found a new Auction website for Australian’s.
Under normal circumstances I don’t refer sites like this to my readers, but I can’t help but show you the great selection of seeds that are on offer in the Home and Garden section. At the time of writing there are over 4000 items in the Plants, Seeds and Bulbs section.

I like the range, and the prices are cheaper than the ‘other’ auction site.



Yes this is an affiliate link, but I will only get paid (a whole $2) if you sign up and buy something or sell something.
If you feel that I am not worthy of the referral, then type www.oztion.com.au into your browser and enjoy the range

Tags: auction, seeds, gardening