Homemade wind shields

Gardening can turn into an expensive hobby, and since the fruits (and vegetables!) of your labour take a while to mature and be harvested, it makes sense not to spend excessively if you don't have to. Wind shields are something you could spend hundreds on...be it in the form of portable green houses, temporary wind shields or building an entire green house! I went for a simpler, cheaper option that was also available on the Sunday night that our strong winds hit...cling film and garden stakes!

The suffering seedling were my snow peas and cucumbers (sadly the cucumbers then succumbed to the over-watering from the rain that the strong winds brought with them). I simply snapped the garden stakes into thirds, stuck them into the ground about 30cm apart so that I could then tape on cling film creating a wind shield. The bonus is that it still lets the sun through to the seedlings too if your sun is very directional (mine is when it gets to my peas, they are against a west facing wall). It has worked well and the one pictured, although not the prettiest thing, has been in place for a couple of months now and, as you can see, the peas have grown up healthy and strong...they were only 5cm tall and very flimsy when they went out.

As a side note, they always say just to give peas (even these dwarf versions) garden stakes to climb up. I found that, with just the stakes, mine were still reaching out in all the wrong directions and climbing up each other (then weighing each other down and falling over!), so I just grabbed a piece of mesh I had left from building the cat run and strung this up between the posts....they are now happily climbing their way up that instead of falling over :-)

I found a ladybird larva!

I spent forever trying to source ladybirds in Australia to help beat the aphids...I failed so started trying to lure them in...then the week I find a supplier the aphids miraculously disappear! There's still a couple around but the infestation is nowhere to be seen. However, there's obviously enough to have kept that one and only ladybird I saw happy, as I just found a ladybird larva on the underside of one of the potato plant leaves...they are TINY! About 1.5mm long and only the width of a strand of hair, but if you look closely they are just like the bug that is pictured here...quite cute really when you know what they are going to grow up into :-) Anyway, it's now storming out there so hopefully he/she stays safe and happy in those leaves. Not much else to report, but it's good to have some happy news to counteract the "morbid posts about killing things" that my sister has been complaining about ;-)

thanks to http://augsburgcollege.info/home/biology/photoofmonth/ladybird.html for the image

What if you have no flower beds at all?

I've just realised that, for most courtyard gardeners, there are no flower beds at all, just concrete. So, which of the plants I'm growing can be grown in pots? All of them!

Beetroot take hardly any space, as can be seen from the picture above, and carrots, onions, tomatoes, anything can be grown in a pot as long as you remember to water it and feed it enough (especially true for tomatoes - you'll need about 30litres of organic potting mix per plant and to feed about once a fortnight at least). The general rule of thumb is that any plant needs the same amount of root space as the size of the plant's foliage that you see above the ground...in an ideal world. Of course, if you can't provide, then just don't forget to water and feed well, though you still may struggle a bit with things like watermelons :-)

The companion plants can all be planted together in pots too, especially the marigold/basil/garlic/tomato gang.

If you are truly pushed for space, don't forget hanging baskets too.
This is a nice website about growing potted tomato plants in a tight space...growing them upside down from holes cut in the bottom of buckets!...http://oldfashionedliving.com/tomato2.html

Building a ladybird house

So, marigolds and aphids will attract ladybirds and give them a food source, but how to get them to stay? If there is a nice shelter for them to nest in relatively near the aphid source, then they will set up home and stay. The best way to provide this is to build a ladybird house...it's really simple. The whole thing only needs to measure about 15 x 19 x 25cm and can be built out of cheap pine and stained to make it weather proof (or left bare and just replaced each year when it weathers), or made of any cypress to prevent other bugs detsroying it if you have termites etc around. I used 2cm thick pine and these were my measurements:

1 piece 19x15cm (top of the house)
1 piece 15x11cm (base of the house)
3 pieces 15x25cm (sides and back - position so back board sits in between the 2 side pieces the base plate sits INSIDE all 3 whereas the top plate sits ON all 3)
1 piece 14.5x21cm (front door of the house)

All you do is drill and screw it together ( or nail it if you prefer). I fitted the back plate in between the 2 sides, then the top onto all of these 3 pieces. I then fixed the base plate in the bottom. You only screw the front door in at the top of it, leaving a 1cm gap at top and bottom for the ladybirds to enter and exit by. The only thing you need to do that's at all tricky is drill the holes in the side pieces that the screws are going to go through into the front door BIGGER than the diameter of the screws. The drill holes in the front door panel should fit thr screws snuggly. This will allow the front door to swing open, allowing you to flip it up to clean out the house, put in fresh bedding / water etc.

This is the original design I saw that I modified to make simpler (it suited the wood scraps I had in the garage):

thanks to http://habitat.ms11.net/bee/beneficial.htm

Purchase 1" x 6" x (whatever you desire: Must be at least 3') wood piece. (actual size for 1"x6" is 3/4"x51/2") Cut all pieces one at a time to allow for kerf. Edge top and sand all pieces. Use washers in front to allow pivoting for twigs, lady bugs, and cleaning. (may have to be screwed shut later) Paint or seal with exterior paint. Decorate with your choice of décor (Lady Bugs preferred). Attach to pole and place into garden area. The lady bug house should be 1-2 feet from ground. (Avoid rain damage)

Birds are unlikely to get into the lady bug house. The space between the base and the front should only be 3/4" and the space between the top and the front should only be 1".

What to put in it?
Bedding: just some compost / organic potting mix at the bottom, +/- some straw or (best) fix some babmoo sticks round the edges of the inside, positioned so the ladybirds can get inside the bamboo to nest inside it.
Lure / food: you can buy ladybird lure pheremone solution but if you have the right plants in your courtyard they'll probably come anyway. But to keep them in your new little house it's good to provide a water source (SHALLOW, about the depth of half a ladybird), a little bit of sponge soaked in sugar water as food and also some aphids if you have some leaves with some on available.

Where to put it?
In a sheltered warm area (not facing straight into the wind and not in full sun all day) and near the aphids.
Do not hide it in the foliage too much or they won't find it.
Ladybirds like to nest about 30-60cm off the ground so place it at about this level if possible. You can attach it to a post or, like I did, nail a couple of picture hooks on the back then hook it on a trellis. My aphids are mainly on my potatoes and passionfruit so I placed it right near both of these.

When to put it out:
It's best placed out in spring time as, if put out at any other time of year, you're likely to get spiders and other bugs moving in before the ladybirds find it.

To decorate or not to decorate?
Ladybirds like yellow and white so you could paint it yellow and white to help attract them. Mine is just stained to protect form the weather then very poorly decorated with some yellow plastic flowers tacked on with upholstery pins..I was having a 'use whatever I have available in the house' day when I made it :-)

Sourcing ladybirds in Australia?
Once it's out, just wait for ladybirds...it took 5 days after planting my marigolds and building my house that I found my first ever one in my garden (yey!) BUT I have at last (after loads of searching, quizzing Bunnings staff and hassling biological services customer services people!) found a company that will post you ladybirds! They are delivered to your door, cost about AU$30, and come as eggs on a ribbon that you hang in the little house near the food source. The company is called IPM technologies. This is their link: http://www.ipmtechnologies.com.au/Beneficials.htm

The other options you have as aphid predators that can be mail ordered in Australia are:
Aphidius wasps (lay their eggs in aphids so they then hatch out and burst and kill the aphid - harsh!)...available from www.biologicalservices.com.au
Brown lacewings - also available from IPM technologies.

Companion planting

Companion planting is all about planting things near each other either to encourage better growth/flavour, to repel insects or to attract beneficial insects. There are millions of options out there but in a tiny basic veggie garden these are the ones I've found useful:

Plant marigolds and cordiander near any plants that attract aphids as they will attract ladybirds, the main natural predator of aphids. Sweet alyssum and dill are also meant to be a good one for this but I've not got any yet. My marigolds and coriander have only been out there for about 5 days now and I found my first ladybird yesterday!

Mint, basil, garlic and onions are all pungent and will all repel aphids to an extent and so are useful planted near stone fruit, potatoes, tomatoes and passionfruit in particular.

Basil grown within 2 feet of tomato plants will enhance the flavour of the fruit from those plants.

Because of this, a good tomato bed should include scattered basil, marigolds and garlic.

When it comes to first designing the layout of your veggie garden, this chart is useful as there are some plants that 'like' each other and others that 'hate' each other...

Companion Planting Chart for Vegetables

Vegetable	Really likes to be with…	Really dislikes to be with…
Asparagus	Basil, Tomato, Nasturtium, Parsley	Onion, garlic, potato
Beans	Carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, marigold	Chives, leek, garlic
Broad Beans	Brassicas, carrot, celery, corn, lettuce, potato	Fennel
Beets	Brassicas, lettuce, onion, sage	Bean (pole)
Broccoli	Celery, chamomile, dill, rosemary	Oregano, Strawberry
Brussel Sprouts	Potato, Thyme	Strawberry
Cabbage	Beetroot, potato, oregano, sage	Strawberry, tomato
Carrot	Bush beans, pole beans, lettuce, onion, pea, radish, tomato	Chives, dill, parsnip, radish
Cauliflower	Beans, celery, oregano	Nasturtium, peas, potato, strawberry, tomato
Celery	Cabbage, leek, onion, spinach, tomato	Parsnip, potato
Corn	Bean, cucumber, melon, pea, pumpkin, potato, radish	Tomato
Cucumber	Bean, celery, lettuce, pea, radish	Cauliflower, potato, basil
Eggplant	Bean, capsicum, potato, spinach
Leek	Carrot, celery, strawberry
Lettuce	Carrots, radishes, strawberry	Beans, beetroot, parsley
Melon	Corn, radish	Potato
Onion	Bean sprout, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, strawberry tomato	Bean, pea
Pea	Beans, Carrot, corn, cucumber, radish	Onion family
Potato	Bean, corn, cabbage, pea, eggplant	Cucumber, pumpkin, squash, sunflower
Pumpkin	Corn	Potato
Spinach	Celery, cauliflower, eggplant
Tomato	Asparagus, celery, carrot, parsley, marigold	Corn, fennel, potato
Zucchini	Nasturtium

Thanks to http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com for this info.

Organic pest control

Alrighty, there are a million different versions out there on the internet, but these are the ones that I've modified and stuck with and they seem to work well and not damage the plants. Some are really aimed at control not eradication as I want to keep some bugs around to attract the other beneficial ones.

1. Aphids - crush about 6 cloves of garlic and a hot chili together. Mix this with about 100ml water. Let sit overnight or longer. Strain and keep the 'juice'. This is kept separately and can be kept for up to 6 months and still be useful. Add a tablespoon of this liquid to 500ml water, a table spoon of mineral oil and a few flakes/a single drop of natural soap. Mix well and spray onto BOTH sides of leaves daily for 3-4 days and then as needed (usually about weekly). Some aphids are resistant even to this mix in which case use a stronger soap mix, leave it on the leaves for 45mins before RINSING off (else will damage leaves), then use a garlic/chili spray to deter other aphids. Basically, the soap and oil are contact killers, the garlic and chili are deterrents.
Be aware that some plants are sensitive to soaps - the damage will take about 2 days to appear on leaves so best to test a small patch first if possible.
Another little trick is yellow dishes with soapy (literally a drop of washing up liquid) water in them. The aphids see yellow as a healthy flower and just drown themselves in the dish. be sure to change the water daily and obviously after any rain. This will also trap flies too if they are a nuisance in your yard. Easy.
If it's a small infestation, you can also pick the aphids off. Easily done if you sit with a dish of soapy water and just dip a finger in it each time you see an aphid then touch the aphid - they just stick right to your fingertip! Be sure to check under every leaf, and if you're late on into their attack then check inside every curled leaf too (they damage the leaves so the leaves wrap around and give them a cosy hiding place).
Encourage aphid predators (mainly ladybirds and lacewings here, though hover wasps sometimes make an appearance too). I'll post about this soon.
Also make sure you control any ants around the area (see below) as they actually farm the aphids so if the ants remain the aphids will be a persistent problem.

2. Slugs and snails - there is an organic and eco-/pet-friendly control pellet which is iron EDTA based which you can scatter around if you have huge problems, but I've found a few beer traps work well (you can also use milk, sugar/yeast mixes and other things too but beer works well and is easy).
Bury pots in the ground among the crop that is being targeted by the slugs and snails (usually lettuce). The pots should be about 5cm deep and 5cm diameter. Dig the holes to put the pots in so that the rim of the pot sits about 5mm above the ground (this just makes it easier to lift them out to clean them as needed). Fill at least 3/4 with beer (some say the more expensive the more lure it has to the snails but mine don't seem fussy), and wait. They'll need cleaning out and the beer refreshing every other day. Mine caught a few slugs (and sadly a couple of earthworms) the first week they were out but nothing since and the snails seem to have just gone away which is brilliant. They do have a plant just on the other side of the fence which they love and I've decided to let them keep so maybe they're just happy there.

3. Ants - these need controlling to help control aphids, plus they can do some damage to seedlings too. I reckon these are the easiest thing to control int the garden - cinnamon is the answer, they hate it. Just either scatter ground cinnamon around their nests or shove a cinnamon stick down into their nests, and they're gone!

4. Butterfly / moth caterpillars - these were news to me but this week they have just appeared everywhere...mainly on all my stone fruit trees and the butterfly ones are tying all my carrot seedling leaves into little silken cocoons around themselves! Clever, but annoying, as if left they'll just move on down to the carrot and eat that when they hatch. The moth caterpillars are the ones on the fruit trees, are tiny (about 2mm long) and black with yellow stripes and found eating leaves and buds. You can use the same garlic/chili/soap/oil mix as detailed above against these guys, but I have decided to try an organic caterpillar-specific spray I read about...it's made by Yates and the active ingredient is Dipel (BT) which is a bacteria that, once ingested by the caterpillars, kills them. It's a powder you mix up to 5-10 litres of spray and apply to both sides of the leaves. Takes about 3-4days to work so I'll be garlic spraying in the mean time but at least won't deter or kill any other bugs (I'm very keen on this just now as am still hoping for some ladybirds to move in!)

So, I'll see how it's all looking in the morning, but these tiny bugs are so minuscule they really can sneak up on you! I though all my baby plums were so healthy until this morning when I found the tiny caterpillars happily munching their way through at least 50% of them! Damn organic gardening ;-) but it's all trial and error and seems to be getting easier the more I find out.

Growing potatoes in a plastic dustbin

It all started with me realising how many bags of red potatoes we go through between the 2 of us in our house, they are a brilliant thing to have in the pantry. I'm vegetarian so a well-stocked veggie garden was a sensible idea for me :-) So, tiny space, but I want to grow potatoes.... I found you can grow them in bags, but that's a little tricky, but plastic dustbins work well...

1. Get a 60-90 litre black bin (only about $10 from bunnings)

2. Drill 10mm holes in the base and a few on the sides about 10cm up from the bottom...potatoes need well draining soil or they just rot.

3. Buy some seed potatoes from your local nursery - sprouted potatoes from your pantry will not do as well as they have been treated to minimise sprouting.

Now, a lot of sites and books say you need to chit seed potatoes (sit them out in egg trays to sprout until they have 15cm shoots on them) before planting them, but I'm not patient at all and found a few sites that said that wasn't necessary, so I didn't bother :-) Other sites also say you need to cut the potatoes so there's only one or 2 eyes on each piece you plant and let them dry out before planting them...again, not necessary.

4. Fill the bin about with about 10cm good quality organic potting mix with some potato fertlilizer mixed through it. Place only about 4 or 5 seed potatoes onto this base then cover with 10-15cm of potting mix & fertilizer. Do not firm down, potatoes like loose soil to grow in.

5. Water and make sure the bin is draining well.

6. Place in a sunny spot. Keep soil damp but not wet.

7. Wait...about 3-4 weeks...

8. When shoots start appearing on the surface, let them grow to about 5cm then cover them up to the top (so the leaves just poke through the surface) with a mix of 50:50 compost:mulch.

9. Repeat this process until the bin is full to the top.

It's that easy, and once the shoots sprout through the first layer it only takes about a fortnight for them to reach the top of the bin!

You could stop at the first layer, but then would only get one clutch of potatoes at that level. By adding more layers of soil, you trick the plant into thinking it needs to send off more offshoots and hence produce more clutches of potatoes..you'll get about 10 times the amount of potatoes form each plant this way! (Well, that's the theory...mine aren't ready for harvest just yet but I'll let you know how they go!)

So, you can start rummaging around gently for new potatoes after a couple of months, or wait until the plants die back to brown leaves (a few months later) and then harvest the full main crop.

My potato bin, as you can see, is full to brimming and now my challenge is to keep those plants, that have worked so hard to get this far, healthy...the aphids have moved in! So there's a yellow dish of soapy water in the middle, a ladybird house right next door and some lures for them too (some marigolds growing next to them and basil and coriander growing nearby). I am still having to control the aphids with home made spray and picking them off each day but they only swarmed in this week so there's no ladybirds yet...if anyone knows where I can buy some in Australia I'd LOVE to know! :-)