Written by Prior to the group meeting, we held a very short committee meeting. Items discussed:
- We will be having a seed and plant stall at both the Gympie Sustainable Festival (June) and the Off Grid Expo (August). If you would like to help us by planting and raising some seedlings, we will have a get together working bee on the 17/4/24.
- We are discussing a visit to Tom Kendell’s (Permeco) farm in May, details to be worked out.
- Annual General Meeting will be in August.
The group meeting was interesting as usual, with a common problem of grass/weed growth and wet conditions…..ahh, but what’s better, too wet or too dry???
Lucy (me) has been busy planting onion, tomato and brassica seedlings. I also picked up a second hand flow form to enable me to correctly stir biodynamic preps. We have some BD500 which we dug up last year to spray out. It’s now time to bury cow horns again, which we’ll be doing in the next few weeks – leave a comment if you are interested in knowing more.
Regula is a regular moon planting gardener, but has been having limited success of late. Anyone else planting by the moon and having germination problems? She’s also having a problem with sweet potatoes (I do too!). Serge uses sawdust, which helps, as does treating sweet potato like an annual crop – planting fresh slips each year and harvesting once or twice a year. Regula is also enjoying her recent acquisition of an electric mower – guilt free mowing when you can charge it up on your solar panels.
Willem has been injury prone recently, so is finding things a bit slow going. He’s planted lemon grass alongside his asparagus to enable chop and drop mulching. He’s also been eating his dragon fruit flowers as a vegetable – slice open and put in salt water, boil and then BBQ. Interesting…… Also, propagating dragon fruit, which is pretty easy to do (cut/break off sections, allow them to dry off and then put in the ground) and planting alongside his Eucalyptus Grandis in his syntropic garden.
Liz has been really enjoying her garden after attending an Elisabeth Fekona workshop – growing cassavas and pumpkins amongst other things.
Naomi has had trouble with the citrus sucking moth (me too!) Fortunately for her, not all her citrus have been affected. Ants are also pretty bad and the suggestion was to use DE (diatomaceous earth) to deter them. It works by breaking the skin/shell of the insect and then they die.
Melinda has many pumpkins and rosellas, which are not flowering yet. Her suggestion (or was it Darren’s?) for sweet potatoes, was to plant them in mounds.
Wendy brought along many jars of dried and ground Salad Mallow. Read about how good it is for youhere (It’s also called E gyptian Spinach): https://gympiepermaculture.com.au/docs/salad-mallow/ Wendy is also spraying out a fertiliser made up of worm castings, duck poo and seasol. She also suggested that you try cooking and eating your yakon leaves (if you’re short of greens). She also had plenty of sweet potato slips to share – orange and purple.
Damien once again came along with plenty of good questions.
- Avocadoes – seedlings or grafted? A seedling will take 5-7 years to fruit but will be stronger. Serge suggested to put the seed in the ground, mark with a bamboo stake and cover with a tin (with ends cut out) to prevent vermin eating them. They will take off when conditions are right. The problem with grafted trees is that if the roots are disturbed too much they will die.
- Planting bananas – when and how? Anytime. Plant deep to encourage a strong plant. The syntropic method is to plant the butt only and plant it very deep (30cm). I’ll try to upload a video some time.
- Okra – possible to use as a chop and drop? Maybe not as it will prevent it from continuing to fruit.
- Couch grass – how to stop it? Move house!
- Dam overflow – what to plant? Possible ideas – vetiver grass, rhodes grass, kiku.
- Fruit Fly netting – where to buy? Netpro https://www.netprocanopies.com/
Serge has found a lot of the seeds in stock are out of date, and is changing the recording of the seeds to show a best before date to save any confusion. We need to be saving our own seeds and we’ll try to have a workshop in coming months.
Narayana has had her property for a year now and it’s amazing the changes in this time. She’s had lots of chillies and have had some surprises. They will cross polinate, so need to be careful with hot and mild ones growing too close. Geraniums have died – too wet. Lots of arrowroot so wants to make flour. If anyone wants to learn how to do it and help out, please contact her or comment below. Lani has a recipe for a chocolate cake, so I’ll try and get it and post it online. Narayana has a plant called the Lemon Sherbert Plant – does anyone know much about it and about it’s edibility?
George has plenty of moths and lots of frogs. He also has elderberry trees for sale if anyone wants any – please contact him or leave a comment. If making elderflower cordial or champagne, you need to pick them as soon as they flower for the most flavour. Berries need to be cooked for at least 3/4 of an hour when making preserves.
Renee’s suggestion to Damien was to enjoy his okra when they are small – 5cm seems to be a good size. She’d like to grow some sacred lotus on their now full dam…..or maybe just create a wetland.
Lani finds it hard to find the time to come to the meetings, so she made sure we enjoyed her joining us by telling us a “kind of” funny story about her resident frog – you had to be there…..
Just a reminder to those reading this blog post….anyone can read the blog, but you need to be logged in to read the forum posts or any of the files, so if you’re not a member, please register online.
Thanks to those that joined us the other night. It really is good to come together as a community and share food, plants and information. That’s permaculture! Also, if you’re reading this and have any comments to share about the topics mentioned, please do. The more we share, the more we learn.
