Good Organic Gardening Issue#10.5 - 2019

For me, one of the best things about summer is the insects. It’s also the worst thing. I dearly love the butterflies, dragonflies, hoverflies, damselflies and bees on our patch of planet Earth — like that beautiful creature opposite, which fluttered around our crepe myrtles last summer — but do we really need the midges and mozzies and March flies? Of course, there are also the critters we hear but don’t see so much: the singing cicadas and the chirping crickets. Are they lovestruck males serenading their prospective lady bugs? Or are they trying to send off carnivorous birds, or making calls of distress? Whatever the reason, their choruses are the soothing sounds of the Aussie summer, especially that wall of sound the cicadas create. Then there are the creepy-crawlies I neither…

Top Enders say the appearance of clouds of carnivorous graphic flutterer dragonflies may herald the end of the wet season. It definitely heralds the end of flocks of other insects. The distinctively marked native dragonflies hunt on the wing in swarms, capturing flying insects in the bristles of their legs, which interlock around their food. These limbs project forward so that the luckless prey can be transferred straight to the mouth while on the fly. When not out grabbing a hot meal, the flutterers sun themselves in the mornings before soaring over water later in the day. The dragonfly’s two pairs of striped wings can beat out of synchronisation, giving it its weightless, fluttering appearance as well as extreme agility. Its exoskeleton has little fibrous chitin, which adds to its buoyancy in…

JO IMMIG Jo is an environmental scientist, photographer and writer. She has worked in the environment movement for decades and is co-ordinator of the National Toxics Network, an organisation dedicated to creating a toxic-free future. She has written many articles for magazines and is the author of two books: Toxic Playground and Safer Solutions. ACIDIFYING OCEANS FUEL CLIMATE CHANGE The sea’s part in producing oxygen and storing carbon is often overlooked. The global ocean plays a greater role than all the forests, contributing between 50 and 85 per cent of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. Tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton are the “lungs” of the ocean; they live near the surface and travel with the currents. Using photosynthesis, they turn carbon in the atmosphere into carbon in their bodies, forming the foundation for…

CHLOE THOMSON A horticulturist, writer and passionate organic gardener, Chloe is co-owner and presenter of the web-based series The Gardenettes and has been a regular presenter on The Garden Gurus. The mother of two little boys, she has a great following of Australian gardeners on her social media profile Bean There Dug That. GARLIC ‘MAMMOTH PURPLE’, ALLIUM SATIVUM The plant: As the name suggests, this garlic is a beast — a beautiful garlicky beast! Each bulb weighs in at 80g plus, which is almost double the size of regular garlic bulbs. But it doesn’t forgo flavour for size: each succulent clove is pungent, with a distinct flavour and a heat scale of around 6/10. Growing: Plant in autumn before the shortest day of the winter solstice but ideally before the end of May. Garlic…

Cannabis, marijuana, weed — call it what you like — is a plant best known as an illegal drug due to a mind-altering chemical contained in some strains, called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). All forms of cannabis have been illegal to grow, use and sell since 1937. However, in Australia, changes to legislation around the growing of some types of cannabis have opened up a valuable horticultural crop that is in demand for its medicinal use. The legal cultivation of medicinal cannabis (also called medical cannabis) in Australia became possible in February 2016 with amendments to the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967. Another form of cannabis, known as hemp, which has no THC compounds, is also being grown as a commercial crop in Australia. Since 2017, hemp seed can be added to foods. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) is…

Despite its South American origins, passionfruit is the topping on the Australian dream. There was a time when it seemed every suburban backyard had a passionfruit vine — right next to the choko and the outside dunny. The succulent yellow pulp seemed to be everywhere. It was the key ingredient of the icing on the humble vanilla slice and was drizzled on ice-cream and fruit salads. Kids went crazy for fizzy Passiona (first manufactured by Spencer Cottee in 1924) and it was passionfruit that gave the iconic pavlova its tang. Contrary to my own childhood musings, the fruit’s name has nothing to do with romantic passion. Its genus name Passiflora or “passion flower” can be traced to the 18th century when missionaries attempting to convert indigenous Brazilians dubbed it “flower of the…