Good Organic Gardening Issue #13.1 - 2022

While putting this issue together, we noticed a theme emerging: water. It’s a particularly Australian obsession that doesn’t hit home until you move to a rural location where you rely on rainfall to keep your tanks and dams topped up. It’s especially true if there are kids in the house. Ever tried to regulate a teenager’s shower time? And every so often your water levels get so dangerously low you buy a truckload of the stuff — whereupon, even before the departing tanker gets to the end of the drive, the heavens open and down it comes. Of all the continents, only Antarctica receives less rainfall than we do. Neither is it shared equally here: Darwin gets around 1700mm a year while Adelaide goes thirsty on less than a third of that. Even…

Common name: Australian tiger dragonfly Scientific name: Ictinogomphus australis Of the more than 320 species of dragonflies in Australia, there are few as striking as this tiger-striped beauty. It’s widely distributed and can be found in a long arc from Broome in the northwest right across the Top End and as far south as East Gippsland in Victoria. At around 7cm in length with an impressive 10cm wingspan, the tiger is also Australia’s largest clubtail dragonfly, so it’s easy to spot wherever there’s still or slow-flowing freshwater. At the same time, it’s hard to keep your eye on this aerial acrobat, which can hover, swoop and fly backwards and forwards, cupping its legs to trap small insects such as mosquitoes in mid-air. And that’s not all: it uses motion camouflage, constantly adjusting its position…

DOWN-UNDER MILLIPEDE LIVES UP TO ITS NAME Until the recent accidental discovery of Eumillipes persephone — an Australian species with up to 1306 legs — no millipede had ever been found with more than 750 legs, so none could be considered a true millipede. The “new” millipede’s generic name comes from the Greek eu- (“true”) and the Latin words mille (“thousand”) and pes (“foot”). Its specific name references the Greek goddess Persephone, queen of the underworld. A team of scientists found four members of the new species in goldfields drill holes in Western Australia as deep as 60m underground. The millipedes have short legs and long, thread-like bodies around 0.95mm wide and 95.7mm long, consisting of as many as 330 segments. Their eyeless heads are cone-shaped with antennae and a beak. CSIRO Research Scientist Dr…

FLORELIE FLOWERS DAHLIAS Lorelie Merton is the flower farmer behind Florelie Seasonal Flowers, a small-scale specialty cut-flower farm in Bungaree, near Ballarat, Victoria. As well as selling bunches of beautiful flowers to florists in her region, she also breeds dahlias and sells dahlia tubers. This year, she plans to release a stunning pink/yellow, yet-to-be-named dahlia. For this and plenty more colourful dahlias, make sure you’re on her email list to get first access to them when available as they sell out quickly. Florelie, florelie.com.au DIETES ‘WHITE TIGER’ PBR, DIETES IRIDIODIES The plant: This striking dietes ticks all the boxes as an ultimate landscaping plant, with ornamental foliage year-round in a striking green and cream variegation, plus white iris-like flowers with yellow throat markings that will spot display throughout the year. Thriving in those hard-to-plant…

Not many people set out to cultivate nettles — but if you have an unplanned crop, don’t just discard it as an annoying weed. Nettles are useful plants that tend to grow in good soil but they need to be treated with respect. The slightest brush with a nettle leaves a burning, stinging pain that can often last for many hours and is inflicted on bare skin by the myriad tiny “hairs” on the stem and leaves. Take a very close look at the hairs (use a hand lens) and they prove to be hollow needles designed to inject chemicals, including histamines, into the skin. A prolonged encounter with a nettle patch can lead to a severe and very painful rash that will need treatment with antihistamines. A severe reaction with breathing problems…

If you want a long-lived clever plant with an even longer and revered history, the yew — a European woodland tree associated with places of worship — is for you. Yew trees are commonly found in old cemeteries and churchyards in Europe and are also associated with some churchyards in Australia. In Europe, the trees often predate the church, indicating that the land has probably held some sort of religious significance for many centuries. Some of the oldest yew trees known are found in the UK where there are specimens that date back more than 2000 years. (Once a yew tree reaches its 900th birthday, it’s honoured with the title “ancient”.) MODERN VALUE All parts of the yew are poisonous — its generic name Taxus is from the same root as “toxic” — but that…