This is the best time of year to plant these trees to give them a great start for fruit the following seasons. This includes four new dwarf pear varieties brought to you by PlantNet: SunGold, Sweet Reward, Red Princess and Cool Crisp.

These pears are all improved varieties, meaning easy growing, very fruitful and good disease resistance! For gardeners with tight spots to fill, explore the super dwarf and columnar range.

Columnar apples are upright trees with glorious flower spires in spring followed by gorgeous fruit for eating and cooking in autumn. These apples include Herald, Cumulus and Harmony for fresh eating, and Pom Pink for eating,
cooking and cider making.

Look for the PlantNet logo for quality trees suited to pots, small spaces, and big backyards alike!

For more information

PlantNet

The post Small is Beautiful: Dwarf and Columnar Trees appeared first on Completehome.

Words & photos Jana Homer

Alwyn and Lynda Schuch’s productive patch is on a 580m2 block in Eaton, a north-western suburb of Bunbury in Western Australia.

A construction electrician in South Africa’s gold mines for 27 years, Alwyn first began gardening with his father in North West Province, formerly part of the Transvaal, where the climate is quite similar to Australia’s.

There they grew vegetables, ran free-range chickens and tended an orange orchard, growing fruit for export.

Here in Eaton, he relaxes by reading and researching the Bible, drawing with colour pencils and cooking. Lynda, an accomplished seamstress, spent her working life as a bank officer.

Right now, their focus is on their garden, which comprises 20 metres of raised Colorbond vegie beds where they grow silverbeet, tomato, carrots, spring onions, radishes, capsicum, beetroot, sweet potato, beans, broccoli, pumpkins, celery and white corn as well as a mix of herbs.

There are also several fruit trees — apricots, lemons, custard apples, avocados and pepinos — as well as pineapples and a particularly productive passionfruit vine.

The garden’s real goers are the green and dwarf beans, carrots, silverbeet and white corn. Alwyn claims his corn has grown to the height of the house’s roof gutters — and who are we to argue?

He avoids chemical inputs, insisting the vegies not only grow better without pesticides and herbicides but taste better, too.

By night he’s on bug control, removing pests by hand, the main culprits being slaters and the aphids that attack the fruit trees. There are plenty of earthworms, including some that crawl onto the broccoli and snails that get into the salad greens.

All kitchen and garden waste goes into the compost, to which Alwyn might add cow manure if he thinks it “needs a kick”.

This multipurpose fertiliser goes on the garden every three months where the soils have already been prepared with mushroom compost.

He also soaks banana peels in water for 24 hours and the potassium-laden juice is used to water the chillies.

Improving the plot

It’s a point of pride for Alwyn that he’s managed to turn a small, barren patch into a space where he can grow almost anything. It reminds him of the farm back in South Africa.

Hardly anyone in the neighbourhood has an organic garden like this, he says: “Most gardens around the area are full of pebbles and grass lawns.”

The biggest difficulty was carting in loads of compost. When they moved in, there were four brick garden beds and the space was too narrow. The ground was full of brick and rubble and it had to be flattened, composted and mulched.

It took a lot of hard graft to get the soil up to scratch. Corey from Home Support Bunbury helped work up the soil and still comes regularly to help maintain the gardens.

As far as planting techniques go, Alwyn tends to put in seeds and seedlings in the right season and has made a study of what grows well in the area. He’s found that greens like broccoli do best in winter because there are fewer insects, while in spring and summer he plants bee-attracting vegetables.

Many of the fruit trees, including apples and apricots, have been successfully grown from pips.

He’s even tried hand-pollinating 5 pumpkins by taking the pollen from a male plant to the female plant. Not that there’s any shortage of bees, which flock to the tomatoes and green beans he plants. They especially love the purple passionfruit flowers, he says.

Water is at a premium. The council won’t allow tanks as the water drains off into the nearby creeks where ducks and neighbourhood kids frolic, so the couple stand buckets around the garden to collect water from the roof of the shed.

They’d love to run chooks like Alwyn’s family did back in Africa but they’d have to move to a bigger property.

Curries and pigface

Alwyn loves cooking. A lot of it has to do with his South African and German heritage, in particular the Cape Malay curries he’s famous for.

“Malays brought their expertise to South Africa and their spices were readily available in the stores,” he says. “There is a lot of culinary variety there.”

He also makes maize meal from his white corn, boiling it to a porridge then adding a tomato, onion and chilli relish.

Another South African inspiration is to cut silverbeet and sweet potato leaves into spaghetti-like strips and fry it with onion, garlic, butter, salt and pepper.

The green beans and other excess vegies he cuts up and puts in the deep freeze. Spinach, onion and potatoes are mashed up with butter, salt and pepper.

Any produce that’s left over goes to friends, family and fellow church members. Alwyn also prepares ready-made meals and freezes them for the days when he doesn’t have time to cook.

This year, he made apricot chutney and is even eyeing off the abundant pigface in the garden to see what he can make from it.

And why not? That ground-hugging succulent, known as Hottentot fig where he comes from, has got to be good for something.

Alwyn’s top tips

1. Don’t overwater vegetables.

2. Save your teabags for nitrogen.

3. Keep a compost bin for continuous feeding of plants.

4. Visit the garden regularly to protect vegetables from insects.

5. Don’t give up when seedlings are not successful.

The post Urban Jungle appeared first on Completehome.

PlantNet has a groundbreaking range of dwarf, super dwarf, and columnar fruit trees that are redefining what’s possible in small spaces.

PlantNet offers genuine dwarfing deciduous fruit trees, including apricots, plums, cherries, almonds, peaches, nectarines, and of course apples and pears. This means you’ll enjoy the full flavour and benefits of standard-sized trees, without the sprawling footprint.

But it’s not just size that PlantNet specialises in. New fruiting varieties for the home gardener are always on the horizon with the aim of improving on what’s currently available in Australia. In 2024 PlantNet is excited to introduce three new raspberry varieties to the home gardener that make growing your own raspberries easy!

Meet the R-Ripper Raspberries® – Golden Glitz, the shade-loving golden-leaved beauty; Rocket, the naturally upright variety that needs no stakes or ties; and Razzle, a dwarf variety that packs a punch when it comes to growing berries. Grow all three in containers and produce huge harvests!

For more information

To learn more about PlantNet and its amazing product range, visit the website or on social media (Facebook / Instagram)!

The post Smart gardening: Perfect Dwarf Fruit Trees for Small Spaces appeared first on Completehome.

With so many products for gardeners and solutions on the market, making a decision for your garden and budget can be overwhelming. After searching your local store or the internet, and reading endless reviews, you still might not be convinced about the best approach for your needs. At times like this, wouldn’t it be fabulous if someone could give you some honest advice that you can trust? Enter Aussie Gardener, an Australian-owned online garden shop that is committed to only selling products that actually do what they say they will do. Before adding anything to their range, all products are tested by their team and a select group of customers.

“Buying online always carries an element of risk, so we want our customers to be 100 per cent confident that if they buy it from us, it’s going to be good. We have earned our customers’ trust and plan to keep it,” says Aussie Gardener owner and horticulturist Brian Chapman, who believes in sustainable gardening products that will stand the test of time and make it easier for you to achieve your gardening goals.

As products for gardeners is their specialty, Aussie Gardener stocks some fantastic resources you might not have seen elsewhere to help your garden grow and keep out the pests. They recommend and sell Geofelt Planters, which are perfect for people with small outdoor spaces, or those who want minimum fuss with maximum productivity. Geofelt Planters are made from PET, which is BPA-free and food safe, and lets excess water drain freely but won’t let soil escape, an important consideration for balconies. They have double stitching with UV-stable thread for years of use, and handles on either side. At 55cm wide and 40cm tall, they will support a whole range of vegetables in 100L of potting mix, and are large enough to not dry out quickly but small enough to move if necessary. Plus, the bags fold flat for easy storage when not in use.

If you’ve ever grown a veggie garden, you’ll know that your main competition are the pests waiting to steal your hard work. Aussie Gardener’s Pestfree Covers keep the pests off your veggies without using harmful pesticides. Made of a black PVC frame with a mesh cover that can be placed over your growing crop and lifted off when it’s time to harvest, Pestfree Covers make it incredibly easy to grow organic produce. The black netting allows you to easily see through it and observe your growing veggies, and it’s a lot more stylish and effective than white veggie net on makeshift frames. There are different sizes to suit your needs, including one made to fit the Geofelt Planter. When you’re not using them, you can dismantle the frame for easy storage and can order new netting as required (generally the mesh cover will last about five years).

One of Aussie Gardener’s popular tools is the Power Planter. Perfect for compacted garden beds, solid clay, fibrous roots and stony ground, the Power Planter attachment fits a standard 18v cordless drill and makes digging easy. You can plant bulbs, cultivate garden beds, install irrigation systems, aerate your compost, dig watering holes for trees and do other gardening work in a fraction of the time it would take with a shovel or a gardening fork. One customer says it allowed her to plant over 300 bulbs in less than two hours. This product simply makes gardening quicker, easier and more enjoyable for everyone, no matter your body type or physical strength.

Aussie Gardener stocks a range of other products for gardeners, including those for small irrigation systems; a range of seeds and planter kits; equipment, tools and gadgets; pest deterrents and weed control products; protective gear; composting products; and so much more. Whether you’re a home gardener or a professional gardener or landscaper, you’ll find what you need at Aussie Gardener’s online store. Plus, you’ll also find informative videos on how you can grow veggies in pots and you can sign up to free online classes presented by Brian and his wife Kaylene from their beautiful property in Dural, New South Wales — where they use the same products they sell. Now that’s something you can trust.

For more information, 

Aussie Gardener 

The post Trustworthy products for gardeners appeared first on Completehome.

We all love a beautiful garden. Being in nature helps us relax and unwind, while the action of gardening improves physical health and mental wellbeing. A garden is the perfect space for families to play, not to mention the family pet. You can grow your own vegetables for healthy meals and plant lovely flowers to cut and enjoy in vases indoors. Plus, a private garden is the ideal spot for yoga or meditation. In short, a garden gives back tenfold. The only problem for some of us is keeping it alive. This is where Earthlife steps in.

An Australian-owned company based in Toowoomba in Queensland, Earthlife manufactures a range of microbial mineral-based soil conditioners and fertilisers for gardening, horticulture and agriculture. A business founded on passion for the land and soil, Earthlife is dedicated to bringing simple solutions to market that improve soil quality and help your garden grow. With evidence-based product development, their products will significantly improve water retention and mineral balance in soils for fuss-free garden maintenance, or those that need some tender loving care.

Because Australian soils have a tendency to be depleted of natural minerals and plants need up to 60 different elements to be healthy, adding back nutrients is vital. The other part of the story is that the soil biology — the bacteria, fungi and associated organisms that work symbiotically with plants — are also being lost, yet many gardening products forget this important aspect of soil health.

Earthlife’s extensive research and development program found that, in order to restore the balance, the best and simple gardening solution is to increase the mineral and microbial balance in affected soils, which improves soil structure and water retention, while the best natural plant food and soil conditioner is humates (organic plant matter). The company was able to successfully blend the required minerals, biology and humates into a comprehensive range of products that are so easy to use, you’ll forget you’re gardening.

For the home gardener, there is one product in particular that you’ll want to keep on-hand. Garden Mate is a fast-acting clay breaker with no need to dig it in — just add water. It rapidly breaks the hydrophobic crust, allowing water penetration while also improving the water-holding capacity of the soil. The high levels of silica in the product make it extremely effective at opening up all types of compacted soils, without risk of harm to your plants if you use too much.

Safe for people, pets and your garden, Garden Mate is a 100 per cent natural garden soil and plant conditioner containing over 60 mineral elements including rare earths and plant-available silica, natural rock phosphate, and over 30 beneficial microbe and fungi species. Suitable for organic gardeners, this is a safe and all-natural alternative to gypsum, lime and dolomite, with a lot more bang for your buck.

Improvements can be seen in just two to three weeks after proper application, and for best results it is recommended that the initial application be repeated after four to six weeks, with a lighter application three to four months later. What you will end up with is a softer soil with improved drainage, aeration and nutrient content in a very short period of time. By increasing the mineral content of the soil, it means plants become more robust and better able to withstand future adverse weather events.

Its sister product, Vegie Mate, promotes healthier vegetables and herbs that are more able to withstand adverse conditions, and to resist pests and diseases as well as improve post-harvest shelf life. Suitable for new and existing vegetable gardens, it encourages earthworm activity and discourages nematodes. Like Garden Mate, it is suitable for organic gardens and can be spread over the soil, including existing vegetables, and simply watered into the ground. The product is recommended for use every six to eight weeks for leaf vegetables, or three to four weeks for fruiting vegetables. Earthlife also stocks excellent products dedicated to flowers, fruit trees and lawn.

Visit the Earthlife website to find out more about their incredible products and order some for your garden. Delivery is Australia-wide.

For more information, 

Earthlife 

The post A simple gardening solution that will bring the joy back appeared first on Completehome.

Composting, including worm farming, is one of those activities that everyone on the planet can get involved in. However, for the many people who live in smaller premises such as high-rise apartments or townhouses, the practicalities of composting have traditionally made it difficult.

The wonderful news for people in this situation is that they can now have an indoor composting system, in this case, an indoor worm farm, that is easy to establish and doesn’t create any unpleasant smells when operated correctly. Another brilliant benefit is that it provides beautifully balanced organic fertiliser, which is especially good for potted indoor plants, herbs, ornamental and edible plants. No more money spent on fertiliser. Your kitchen scraps generally contain all the nutrients that plants need in pretty much the perfect proportions since they result from the breakdown of well-fed fruit and vegetable scraps. Everyone wins!

Another exciting thing is that as well as being great for the environment, this revolutionary indoor worm farm, the Tumbleweed Cube®, is an Australian invention, manufactured locally from 100 per cent recycled UV-stabilised plastic, a further reason to get excited about it. It is a fully self-contained system that houses the worms and their castings in a no-mess, no-fuss, attractive black and green unit. It will compost two to three kilos of organic food waste every week, meaning all of the carbon and plant nutrients are kept out of landfill where they eventually become nasty greenhouse gases.

Tumbleweed has a proud history of innovation in the composting field, especially in worm farming, where they have been manufacturing worm farms in Australia for more than 30 years. All that experience in design and production has been used to create this new easy-to-assemble kit that features two large working trays with hinged handles that make them much easier to remove and carry than many other composting systems. These trays are housed inside the main frame, so they are well insulated from temperature fluctuations, which in turn leads to better moisture retention and a very stable environment that means the worms can work 24/7 at their task. Another clever design feature delivers plenty of oxygen for your hard-working worms through constant airflow via perforations in the lid and legs (which are also designed for easy snap-in installation).

The main body that houses the Tumbleweed Cube® boasts a sleek linear appearance and has been designed to minimise crevices or gaps where dust might collect indoors, with elegant black and green colouring. There is also a built-in worm tea bucket that catches the concentrated liquid the worms produce. This liquid is beautifully balanced from a plant nutritional point of view and is also full of beneficial microbes for the worm’s digestive process. Pouring the concentrate into a watering can and diluting it with five litres of water will create the perfect fertiliser for edible, ornamental gardens and indoor plants.

If you are part of a larger household with more than 2-3kg of organic material to process each week, you may want to get a second or third unit so you can alternate between the units. One of the key things to watch out for, especially if you are just starting the worm farming journey, is that you do not overwhelm your worms with too much food. You will know if this happens because you will start to get unpleasant odours that result when things get too moist from overfeeding.

To keep your worms healthy, happy and processing your kitchen scraps as efficiently as possible, it is a great idea to chop them (the kitchen scraps, not the worms of course!) as finely as you can as this makes it much easier for the worms to eat them. If you have a lot of moist scraps such as coffee grounds, tomato offcuts and the like, mix in some drier high-fibre/high-carbon materials such as shredded cardboard or paper. Chopped straw or dried grass clippings are also good for balancing out the moisture and carbon levels in your organic inputs to the Cube®.

As far as maintenance goes, once established, the Cube® can look after itself quite happily for several weeks if you need to go away for holidays or work. Depending on how much and how often you are feeding the Tumbleweed Cube®, you will need to empty the bottom tray every six months or so. This is done by emptying the bottom tray (there is a multitude of videos on YouTube to show you how to do this) and rotating the top tray to the bottom and putting the now empty bottom tray on top. The castings can be added to potting mixes (one volume of worm castings in 10 of potting mix or soil), but don’t worry too much about an exact ratio as the worm castings are very forgiving fertiliser for your plants.

The Tumbleweed Cube® will work for anyone keen to make a difference in helping to create a more sustainable environment, while at the same time producing bucket-loads of free organic fertiliser to nourish your plants.

Tumbleweed products are available from Bunnings or Australia-wide through the Tumbleweed website.

For more information 

Tumbleweed

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Plants grown indoors have multiple benefits, including improving air quality, softening the hard lines of furniture and becoming design features in their own right, as well as bringing emotional and mental health benefits to their owners.

Beginner gardeners may find the thought of caring for their first indoor plant quite daunting, or perhaps previous indoor plants have come and, heartbreakingly, gone. With a few simple tricks, however, beginners can find real success with growing plants inside and, before they know it, create their very own leafy oasis. Here’s how to get started:

Check your light levels: Most indoor plants prefer a brightly lit spot that’s protected from direct sunlight. There are some plants that will tolerate lower levels of light, but a general rule is bright, indirect sunlight. For more dimly lit positions, choose plants like mother-in-law’s tongue, Zanzibar gem, devil’s ivy and cast iron plant. Take note of the light levels that your indoor spaces receive over the course of a day and match the plant’s light needs to those spots.

Assess your available space: Indoor plants come in a dizzying range of sizes, from pint sized zebra cactus and African violets that are perfect for a small shelf to impressively tall fiddle leaf figs that can fill the corner of a room. Before a plant shopping spree, look to see what spaces you’d like to fill with greenery.

Do you have inquisitive pets and children? Some indoor plants can be poisonous if ingested (such as Dieffenbachia spp.) or they may have sap that can cause skin or eye irritation, such as the rubber plant. As a general rule, keep indoor plants out of the reach of pets and children if they’re prone to touching or eating foliage. High shelves and hanging baskets can be a great way to keep indoor plants out of harm’s way.

Proximity to winter heating and summer cooling: Heaters during the depths of winter and breezy summer air conditioning can all affect the health of indoor plants. The air can become dry, which many tropical plants don’t enjoy, resulting in yellow or damaged leaves and poor plant growth. You may need to move sensitive indoor plants into a room away from heaters or air conditioners, check potting mix moisture levels regularly and consider misting the foliage of humidity-loving plants like anthuriums, ferns, syngoniums and calatheas.

Where to buy indoor plants: Garden centres and nurseries are a great place to buy indoor plants, particularly where helpful staff are available to provide guidance on the best indoor plants to choose. At the same time, you can purchase a decorative pot and quality potting mix, so you can pot up your new leafy family member into its brand new home. Choose a pot with good drainage holes that’s slightly larger than the existing pot. For pots without drainage holes, it’s ok to sit a plain plastic pot within the decorative pot. When doing this, it’s important to make sure that water does not collect at the base of the decorative pot, as this can rot the plant’s roots.

Choose a quality potting mix: You’ve spent your hard-earned money on a beautiful indoor plant and an Insta-worthy pot. Don’t skimp on the potting mix! A good-quality potting mix provides the best growing environment for your new plant. If you’ve purchased an orchid, African violet or succulent, look out for specialty potting mixes that have been formulated to suit those plants.

Watering: Over- and under-watering are two of the biggest killers of indoor plants. They’re either watered to death or allowed to dry to a crisp. It’s simple to check the moisture levels of your potted plant by gently digging around in the top few centimetres of the potting mix with your finger. You’ll quickly feel whether it’s dry and dusty or still moist. It’s important to know the moisture level your chosen plant needs. For example, Maidenhair ferns need to be kept consistently moist whereas Mother-in-law’s tongue likes to dry out in between waterings. If you think your watering regime may be a little less than ideal, choose plants that don’t mind drying out or use self-watering pots, which contain a water reservoir in their base which plants can draw on over several days.

You need to feed: People often forget that indoor plants need feeding. The nutrients in potting mix will only feed the plant for a limited time and after that, will need a good dose of fertiliser to supply all the nutrition needed for healthy leaf growth and lots of flowers, for flowering indoor plants like peace lilies, moth orchids, African violets, anthuriums and hoyas. Choose a plant food that’s suitable for the type of indoor plant you’re growing, whether it be a lushy and leafy plant or a flowering beauty.

The best indoor plants for beginner gardeners: There several indoor plants that are particularly hardy and very forgiving, making them perfect for people just starting out on their indoor gardening journey or who may have been serial plant killers in the past. Look for spider plants, Chinese evergreen, jade plant, mother-in-law’s tongue, Zanzibar gem, devil’s ivy and peace lilies. They’re tough but still look fabulous.

To find out more about how to successfully grow indoor plants, the book Yates Top 50 Indoor Plants and how NOT to kill them is a fantastic guide that covers 50 of the most popular indoor plants and how to care for them, plus helpful information on the best plants to grow where.

For more information

Yates Top 50 Indoor Plants and How NOT to Kill Them

The post A beginner’s guide to growing indoor and house plants appeared first on Completehome.

My friend Liz Gower, aka The Jam Lady, who makes lots of jams and preserves to sell at local markets, found she was being asked frequently for melon jam.

It seems melon jam, which is made from a watermelon relative called jam melon, has sentimental appeal to many older Australians. It was popular in the 1930s, 40s and 50s at a time when it and other easy-to-grow crops such as choko and Jerusalem artichoke were often found in backyard veggie patches.

Keen to keep the customers happy, Liz tried to source locally produced jam melons without luck. This summer she plans to grow her own in her Tasmanian garden.

Also called citron melons, jam melons are small and round with striped green skin and white flesh studded with reddish brown seeds. They make a sweet, transparent golden jam that sets easily due to their high pectin content. They are often combined with other fruits such as lemon, orange, passionfruit, pineapple, berries and ginger to produce a more strongly flavoured jam.

Just add sugar

My slightly faded copy of The Presbyterian Cookery Book — an Australian cookbook first published in 1895 but revised in 1950 by a Mrs McCallum — has several detailed recipes for melon jam.

One calls for “21lb citron melon, 21lb sugar, juice of 8 lemons, 3 jars of preserved ginger”. For those without imperial weights and measures at their fingertips, the measurement “lb” represents pounds. There are 2.2 pounds to a kilogram, so this recipe uses lots of sugar and melon produces a huge amount of jam.

The recipe advises dicing the melons and leaving them to stand overnight with 8lb of the sugar. The next day, place a two-shilling piece (the precursor to the 20-cent piece but with a higher silver content) at the bottom of the preserving pan with the juice of the lemons. Top with alternate layers of melon and sugar. Finally, top with pieces of chopped ginger and cook for five hours.

The recipe directs not to stir (the silver coin hopefully stops the mix catching in the pan) and concludes with the directions, “Take off the fire when quite transparent and of a clear golden colour.”

Another jam melon recipe calls for unslaked lime. The lime is mixed with boiling water and then poured off. The chopped melon is soaked overnight in the lime water which is discarded before the melon is cooked until soft for several hours and, with the addition of chopped lemon or oranges, boiled for a further four hours with lots of sugar until it sets.

The message seems to be that it takes a lot of preparation and cooking to make the melon rind and skin soft enough to eat as a jam! A slow cooker may be a better option for modern-day melon jam makers.

Growing jam melon

If you are brave enough to try to make your own melon jam, the ideal time to sow seeds to grow your own is in late spring and early summer when conditions are warm.

Although melons are subtropical in origin (they came into cultivation originally from Africa and are thought to be an ancestor of the watermelon) they can be grown anywhere with a long hot summer.

Jam melons need around 80–100 days from sowing to harvest. In cold or temperate zones, plant in spring after the last frost. If summer is slow to arrive or turns cold early, or there’s a lack of warm sunshine, the melon crop may not reach maturity in cold areas. In subtropical and tropical areas, jam melon seeds are sown between September and February.

Seeds can be sown in situ or raised in punnets or small pots to be planted out as the weather warms. This is a good way to get crops started in areas with the season may be short.

How to grow

Jam melons are part of the large cucurbit family of vegetables that also includes other summer growers such as pumpkins, cucumbers and squash. Like these plants, they have small flowers that are either male or female. Both are needed to produce a crop but it’s the female flowers that produce the fruit.

Seeds can be sown where they are to grow. Sow 50cm apart in rows 1.2–1.5m apart. Like pumpkins, jam melons can also be sown in a mound or a compost heap. Although the vine needs lots of room to spread out, these melons can be grown in raised vegetable gardens and allowed to spread over the sides of the container.

Before sowing seed, dig in compost, fertiliser or well-rotted manure as the vines need to bulk up on lots of nutrients. In areas with lots of summer rain or poorly drained soil, sow jam melons in a mound to improve drainage.

The jam melon has few pests or diseases.

Harvest & storage

Mature melons can weigh up to 5kg but may be a lot smaller. Harvest jam melons when they are heavy and sound “drummy” when tapped.

The stem where the fruit joins the vine is another indication of ripeness. When it begins to whither and comes away cleanly from the fruit, the fruit is ready to harvest.

Undamaged melons have very hard skins and can be stored in a cool place for up to 12 months. The fruit is not eaten raw but is pickled or cooked as jam or pie filling.

Availability

Fresh jam melons are available in summer or early autumn at harvest markets and roadside stalls, especially in warm areas, and seen occasionally at greengrocers. Seeds are available from online specialists including Eden Seeds (edenseeds.com.au), Green Harvest (greenharvest.com.au) and Rangeview Seeds (rangeviewseeds.com.au).

Jam melon label

Common name: Jam melon, fodder melon, citron melon, pie melon

Botanical name:  Citrullus caffer syn. C. lanatus var. citroides

Family: Cucurbitaceae (watermelon or cucumber family)

Aspect & soil: Sun; well-drained soil

Habit: Annual vine

Needs: Long hot summer

Propagation: Seed

Difficulty: Easy

The post All About Jam Melons appeared first on Completehome.

“Some people believe organic flowers aren’t very long lived, but they have great vase life if grown in healthy soils and harvested correctly.”

“People are becoming more aware of organic food and plastic packaging, but they haven’t necessarily extended their concern to imported and chemically grown flowers.”

Are you somebody who loves a bouquet of cut flowers but have some niggling doubts about the provenance of them these days? Do you ever wonder what you’re breathing in when you bury your nose into a bunch of flowers? While cut flowers look the part, they often have no scent and a soulless quality.

In search of the old romance and scent of flowers once again, I discovered a flourishing movement of slow flower growers in the NSW Northern Rivers and went to see what it takes to grow and supply local, organic flowers.

Byron Bay Organic Flower Farm & Byron Bay Flower School

Janelle Johnstone’s family has been farming Weetalabah (“a place of many water springs”) since 1926. It’s now a certified organic farm. The paddock where flowerbeds now flourish was last ploughed using a horse and cart. There’s a greenhouse in the distance, something you associate more with growing in colder climates, not the subtropics of Byron Bay.

Janelle started out as an organic vegetable grower and branched into edible flowers six years ago. She uses the greenhouse for edible flowers, which need to be kept dry for harvesting. It’s also where she grows flower seedlings in the cooler months and it’s a venue for workshops.

“I started growing certified organic cut flowers because nobody was doing it,” she says. Some people believe organic flowers aren’t very long lived, but they have great vase life if grown in healthy soils and harvested correctly.

“Growing for cut flowers is the one time you ideally need to harvest before bees pollinate, otherwise the flowers think they’ve done their job and lose their vitality,” she explains.

Imported flowers are on the increase in Australia, driven by consumer demand for flowers like roses and orchids out of season, much like expecting avocados all year round.

They travel thousands of kilometres and are fumigated with methyl bromide, a nerve poison and potent ozone-depleting pesticide. They’re also dipped in “devitalisation” herbicides such as glyphosate so they can’t be propagated.

“I can tell if flowers have come from an industrial farm, or if they’ve endured a long plane journey and multiple cool rooms. They just look jet-lagged,” she says.

“It’s a question of educating people about local and organic flowers and their benefits, which is why I started the Byron Bay Flower School. My next mission is to educate florists and brides.”

Speaking of brides, the recent UK royal wedding has been a boon for the slow flower movement. Meghan and Harry chose self-taught floral designer Philippa Craddock to do their wedding flowers, which were all seasonal, locally collected and donated to hospices after the big day.

Back on Janelle’s farm, she’s also gearing up to cater for brides, who loom large in flower trends, it appears. Spring and summer look promising with David Austin roses, rows of delphiniums, chocolate Queen Anne’s lace, daffodils, phlox, calendulas, zinnias, long-stem marigolds, cornflowers, sunflowers, larkspurs, nigella, poppies, cosmos, sweetpeas, amaranth and coriander and dill.

Alchemilla

Phoebe East grew up in country Victoria with an innate sense of nature’s rhythms that didn’t accord with her experience working as a florist. Dissatisfied with the industry and its negative impacts, she set out to learn permaculture and growing edible landscapes, then came full circle back to flower growing and floral design.

Her fledging farm near the village of Federal in the hinterland of Byron Bay has been expanding for two-and-a-half years. The flowerbeds are growing and the soil improving under no-dig methods, compost, green manure crops and mulch. Phoebe also plants by moon cycles, optimising the times for planting and nourishing the soil.

“The red soils have had grass on them for a long time and are acidic, so the pH needs to be brought back to neutral for most flowers, except natives,” she explains.

How does she cope with the subtropical climate? “I’m still getting used to the different climate and adapting to new planting schedules. There’s plenty of water here, sometimes too much. I grow in raised beds on terraces, so the water tends to drain away well.

“In summer, the heat and humidity are the challenge. The flowers are fine, but I wither. I work really early in the morning or late in the evening. Picking is done first thing,” she says.

Phoebe is already making a name for herself with her romantic floral designs featuring muted tones. “I’m very much a cottage flower gardener,” she says.

Alchemilla supplies flowers for events and offers weekly subscriptions for delivery to your door. Just don’t ask for peonies out of season for your wedding; you’ll be politely asked to consider other seasonal options, or move the date of your wedding.

Wildwood Flowers

Holly Shiach has a long association with plants and learns through “crazy passions”, which have included vegetables, herbs, seed-saving and tropical fruits. Flowers, it seems, have seduced her with their capacity for wordless communication, symbolism and cultural rituals around giving and receiving.

“I self-educated and read a lot of books about flowers, then went and worked with a florist and on flower farms in North Queensland and Sydney. I knew I wanted to grow my own flowers,” she says.

“There was an enormous gap between what I was seeing in the florist shops, which were limited in variety to the eye of someone with a lifetime as a gardener. I felt there was something missing, so I set out to work in that gap,” she says.

Holly found an unconventional property in the hinterland of Byron Bay, with steep terraces and the perfect aspect and microclimate for growing the flowers she loves.

“I had fantastic success with my first crop of lilies, which is one of my specialties. I find them very beautiful and love their strong sculptural form. The ones I grow smell amazing.

“I also love dahlias, which are my other major crop. They’re outrageous and come in every shade of colour. I lived in Mexico, where dahlias are endemic, so part of my aesthetic was born there,” she says.

“In my floral design work I love strong shapes, forms and colours. I also grow gladioli, many varieties of foliage, seasonal heirlooms and natives.

“As I progress in my green floristry practice, I keep experimenting and finding things out. One older grower told me about using half a potato with holes dug into it with a skewer as a floral frog, instead of floral foam.

“I supply locally for weddings and events and also do deliveries for regular clients and special occasions. It’s a nice balance between being in my garden and being out in the community. I also have a lot of quality control that way,” she explains.

Holly personally delivers flowers in vases, then returns to pick up the vases and spent flowers, which are returned to Wildwood for compost.

Our Little Flower Farm

On returning to the property she initially purchased many years prior, Hannah Robertson found herself in the historic township of Coraki at the confluence of the Richmond and Wilsons rivers, with a strong desire to grow flowers.

“My background is in textile design and clothing production, so the initial desire was to get my hands on colour to play with. Then I learned more about the cut flower industry and discovered there was a community of people growing seasonal flowers,” she says.

A major flood recently washed her precious flowerbeds away and tested her resilience, but she bounced back. She has strong family ties to the area and her children are the sixth generation to live there.

“People are becoming more aware of organic food and plastic packaging, but they haven’t necessarily extended their concern to imported and chemically grown flowers. As soon as they hear about it, it makes sense and a little switch goes on,” she says.

“I grow flowers and wholesale them to other growers, supplementing flowers they might not grow. I wholesale to event designers because I want them to have a sustainable option,” she says.

There will be plenty to choose from this spring and summer with 2000 ranunculus in the ground, as well as dahlias, cosmos and zinnias.

“You can have a pumping micro flower farm on a quarter-acre block, but you also need to distribute the flowers and social media can really help with that.”

Hannah sees a great opportunity for networking and started the Australian Flower Farmers Collective Instagram page and invites other micro flower farmers to send in their information to help promote each other and the movement.

Words & Photography by Jo Immig

The post 4 Organic and Seasonal Flower Farms appeared first on Completehome.

Two acres in idyllic, subtropical Tallebudgera in the Gold Coast hinterland: sounds like paradise, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider the Panozzo family’s block comprises a 600m² orchard, five large edible garden beds and a mix of native and exotic plant species.

As Stacey Panozzo says, “Biodiversity is the key to a successful, productive garden.”

Sometimes, a hobby becomes both a lifestyle and a living. Not only is gardening Stacey’s favourite pastime, it’s her job as well. Even before she became event manager for the very successful Botanical Bazaar Gold Coast Garden Festival, she ran a successful air plant business.

Her interest in gardening was first sparked back in 2007 with the birth of her first child. Now the mother of three girls (Chelsea, 10, Olivia, 9, and Pippa, 2), Stacey feels growing your own food — organically as much as possible — is a no-brainer, given the possible health threats of chemical sprays and overly processed foods.

It’s a great source of pride and satisfaction, says Stacey, “providing food for your own family from your very own garden”. Organic growing also saves money because you’re not using costly chemicals and you don’t have to shell out for store-bought produce.

She adds, “It’s great that the children see where food comes from. It’s denser in nutrients, as fresh as it can possibly be — truly living cell food — and we’ve become far less wasteful as we now understand how much care and effort goes into producing delicious organic produce.”

On husband Rob’s side, by contrast, gardening runs in the family. Thanks to his Italian heritage, he grew up on a fully self-sufficient farm where his family raised pigeons, rabbits, pigs and ducks for the table and had a barter system trading animals and food crops.

For Rob and Stacey, however, their chickens are purely for egg production — they’re much-loved family pets. The Panozzos’ other livestock reside in a Flow Hive, a beehive with a tap on the front to avoid the need to manually rob the inmates.

Trial and error

The Panozzos’ gardens beds are a mix of old recycled bed frames, raised no-dig beds and traditional tilled-soil beds. Stacey says she’s dabbling in hydroponics but is still troubleshooting getting organic nutrients through her systems effectively.

At the moment, starting with fruit trees, they grow tropical apples, pomegranate, mulberry, feijoa, pawpaw, starfruit, pineapple, guavas, loquat, miracle fruit, citrange, Panama berry and tropical peach. Among their natives and bush-tucker plants are Melastoma (or blue tongue), finger limes, native plums, native raspberry and midgen berry.

In the vegetable patch are kale, bok choy, spinach, lettuce, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants and tomatoes, just to name a few, while the herbs are  “almost too many to list”, Stacey says. A partial list would include turmeric, garlic, galangal, basils, mints, rosemary, chives, sage, coriander, lemongrass, chamomile and scented geraniums.

Rob and Stacey admit that setting up their garden involved “a lot of trial and error”. What they wanted to grow in certain places just wouldn’t, while fine-tuning the various water requirements took a bit of time.

Their grey water is drip-fed to the orchard and they have a few rainwater tanks around the garden and house. There’s also a dam that’s become popular with the wildlife, from bandicoots and wallabies to a huge array of birds including hawks, parrots and bush turkeys.

Stacey loves that several species of local birds come to nest each year in exactly the same locations within the garden to raise their families.

There are also insects and snakes galore, plus introduced animals such as foxes and rats. Stacey says they love them all and find they don’t do too much damage. Once again, it’s all about balance and biodiversity — edible crops and fruiting trees married in with the local environment.

As Stacey points out, “If you kill all the caterpillars you won’t have any beautiful butterflies in the garden. It’s all about balance in your garden ecology.”

For the Panozzos, bug watch and pest control are an organic affair. Stacey nets some of the fruit trees and removes the odd pest via pruning and or by hand. The chickens are allowed to free-range, picking off insects as they go.

Other plans of attack are companion planting and pest-repellent plants, such as land cress to discourage the cabbage moth. “We’d rather share a little with nature than blanket-kill everything that may be attacking our plants,” says Stacey.

The closed loop

The Panozzos believe that caring for a garden leads to caring more for nature as a whole. Says Stacey, “That has to include reducing our waste whenever possible and recycling everything.

“All our scraps go into either the compost or worm farm or to the chickens. It’s a closed circle of productivity.”

The chickens do their bit, supplying manure for fertiliser. The Panozzos add compost from their own bins and castings and tea from their worm farm. They top up their fertiliser needs with Earthlife products and extra compost from Red Soil Organics as well as seaweed and biochar.

Keeping the sustainability momentum going, the’ve joined a few local organic gardening groups and Stacey is on the committee of the Gold Coast Organic Growers.

“There’s no better way to learn about growing in your local area than listening and sharing knowledge with like-minded people and what they’ve learnt from their experiences,” says Stacey.

She attends as many local gardening-orientated workshops and educational talks as she can and even started her own event, Botanical Bazaar, aimed at helping others learn more about sustainable living.

She also shares the love by taking excess produce to the local food-swap group. There always seems to be an abundance of lettuce, kale, eggplants, garlic, beetroot and some herbs, though Stacey holds on to any extra magical turmeric, turning it into a paste and freezing it. (See box, Herbal Harvest.)

But it’s Rob who wears the chef’s hat in their household, Stacey freely admits. The Italian in him takes pride in his culinary skills and, when it comes to using backyard produce, his standout dish is fried crumbed eggplant with a cracking tomato and garlic sauce.

There’s so much Stacey enjoys about their garden — the Panama berry in particular, with its dappled shade and its small, red, caramel-flavoured fruit — but there’s one part of the garden that they’re all drawn to.

“It’s a breathtaking, magical spot where you can oversee the entire garden: orchards, garden beds, dam and gum trees,” she sighs. “The joy is that you can also see the ocean in the distance.”

Edible forests to the sea — a perfect nook for reflection.

* You can find Stacey’s gardening event at botanicalbazaar.com.au, on Facebook at Botanical Bazaar and on Instagram at #botanicalbazaar.

Herbal harvest

Rob may be the chef but herbal and citrus remedies are Stacey’s domain:

• Turmeric paste “for everything”
• Lemongrass & mint tea for refreshment
• Chamomile tea for relaxation
• Rosella cordial as a sweet drink
• Citrus peel as fabric softener
• Lemon juice for cleaning hard surfaces
• Honey & lemon for colds

The Panozzos’ top tips

• Let children garden with you so they discover a love of nature, growing plants and keeping animals.
• The old permaculture motto: “Work with nature, not against it.”
• Be patient with insects. There’s usually a balance and if you run around killing everything the garden will soon be out of whack.
• Learn from others. Join local gardening clubs and visit local gardens.
• Try, try and try again.

The post A Self-Sufficient Local Paradise appeared first on Completehome.