Good Organic Gardening Issue#8.4 - 2017

this issue

When you’re the only gardener in the household, it can be either a blessed refuge or a rather lonely business — or, sometimes, a mix of both. As a group, family or couple activity, though, the physical effort and the joys of discovery and productiveness are shared, along with ideas and information. A common love of growing things can make people connect when they otherwise might not. This issue we have three stories of group gardening. One is a lush Queensland community garden that welcomes members and non-members alike. Another is a Permablitz group where members pitch in for a full day and blitz one member’s patch after developing a design for it. The third is a not-for-profit farm designed to engage people with physical, intellectual and psychological disabilities and train…

the grapevine

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 toxicfree future. She has written many articles for magazines and is the author of two books: Toxic Playground and Safer Solutions. JOIN THE ZERO WASTE REVOLUTION In our age of hyper-consumerism Earth’s resources are being gobbled up at an unprecedented rate. All these manufactured products have to end up somewhere. Some get reused and recycled, but most are landfilled or incinerated. Single-use plastic items are a serious threat and are polluting the oceans and being feed to mega incinerators that pollute the atmosphere. What’s the answer? Nature doesn’t waste — everything gets recycled. We need to mimic nature and tweak design…

what’s hot right now

MELISSA KING Melissa is a horticulturist, TV presenter and writer. She has been a regular on Gardening Australia, Melbourne Weekender, Garden Angels and The Circle. She currently appears on The Garden Gurus and has launched an online show, The Gardenettes. She has written for top magazines and newspapers and is author of the book, Garden Feast. BIDENS ‘CAMPFIRE’ The plant: Bidens ‘Campfire’ gives the garden a warm glow with masses of burnt-orange daisy-like flowers and soft fern-like foliage. It’s a new form selected for bigger blooms, compact habit and a long flowering period with an abundance of blooms from summer right through to autumn. It’s a low-growing plant, to around 20cm tall, so it makes a dramatic statement in pots and hanging baskets. Growing: ‘Campfire’ does best in full sun or light shade and…

sweet treat

‘Lemonade’ lemon label Common name: Lemonade lemon Botanical name: Citrus ‘Lemonade’ Family: Rutaceae Aspect and soil: Sunny, sheltered; well-drained soil Best climate: Temperate to tropical Habit: Small tree Propagation: Grafted plants Difficulty: Easy A lemon that’s not sour but tastes like a soft drink might sound too good to be true, but there is a variety that tastes so much like a lemon-flavoured drink that it’s called the ‘Lemonade’ lemon. It appeared on the market in Australia in 1988 and is now grown in Australia, NZ and the US. Citrus grower and nurseryman Robbie Engall came across the unusual citrus when it was sent to him by a home gardener. Robbie’s son, Mark, who took over the family business after his father’s death, recalls that the gardener thought he was growing a lime but when the fruit appeared it was…

natural alternative

Stevia label Common name: Stevia, sweet herb Botanical name: Stevia rebaudiana Family: Asteraceae (daisy family) Aspect and soil: Sunny; welldrained soil Best climate: Temperate to tropical Habit: Herbaceous perennial herb Propagation: Seed, cuttings, potted plants Difficulty: Easy If you look along the rows of alternative sweeteners in the supermarket, one product jumps out from all the others. The odd one out is derived from a plant. The plant is stevia, a leafy herb that is intensely sweet. A picture of its pretty green serrated leaf is usually displayed on the container to reinforce that it’s not an artificial sweetener but a natural one. Stevia isn’t just to be found packaged in the supermarket. The living plant can grow in your garden. Its sweet flavour comes from a compound in the leaf called rebaudioside (labeled as rebiana or rebaudioside A in…

beaut beets

BEETROOT CAN BE GROWN ALL YEAR ROUND IN MOST CLIMATES BUT IS BEST PLANTED IN WINTER OR SPRING. Beetroot label Common name: Beetroot, table beet Botanical name: Beta vulgaris Family: Chenopodiaceae (spinach family) Requires: Sun, well-drained soil free of lumps Best climate: All Habit: Annual Propagation: Seed, seedling Difficulty: Easy to moderate In November 2008, when the president-elect confessed to Associated Press that he was in the habit of avoiding what Americans call table beets, it touched off a controversy among US foodies and launched headlines like “Obama’s Red Scare”. More than one commentator recalled George Bush Sr’s similar attack on broccoli and suggested Mr Obama “would recoil at one of the starters on quite possibly three-quarters of the ‘new American’ menus around Manhattan”. It’s hard to imagine such a brouhaha in Australia, where beetroot has enjoyed almost folkloric status for the…