Gardening Australia episode 1 2022: Costa Georgiadis goes along to a plant swap, Millie Ross finds a picture-perfect productive garden, Sophie Thomson shows how to maximise garden space, and Tino Carnevale tackles some timely orchard tasks.
Inspiring, entertaining and full of practical advice, join Costa Georgiadis and the team as they unearth gardening ideas, meet avid gardeners and look at some of the most inspiring gardens from across the country.
Gardening Australia episode 1 2022
Living Library
Costa has discovered a plant-swapping scheme and calls in with a crate full of cuttings to see how it works. Costa of course had to bring some goodies from his garden – an armful of succulent and dracaena cuttings – and he stopped to find out how the library works and help Kelly with the latest ‘loans’. Kelly has been running the plant library outside her house for two years. She started by putting out a few spare cuttings and they were so popular with neighbours that she developed her own plant library
Neighbours are welcome to take cuttings from her front garden and visitors include those who have never grown a plant before, to experts who can’t resist propagating and have spare plants to donate. “I’ve always thought gardens were for sharing and that plants that grow from cuttings are begging to be propagated. If something doesn’t cost you anything, why not share,” she says.
Kelly’s favourite plants are those that are easy for beginners to grow, such as salvias. She has a stunning Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ that she says flowers nearly all year round and takes easily from cuttings.
Up at the top of her steep block is the propagation station, a sunny area where she propagates her seeds – warmed by a rock shelf that retains the sun’s heat. The dracaena that Costa has brought is easily propagated – you simply cut off a piece and put it in some sandy mix, keep moist until the roots make the cutting feel solid in the pot. Other plants are simply stuck in a bottle of water until about 2cm of roots develop. Kelly has fuchsia cuttings that are ready to be potted up and these are added to the tray to go down to the library.
FAQs – Dying Maidenhair Fern | ‘Watering-in’ | Handling poultry
Gardening Australia presenters answer commonly asked gardening questions.
Summer Orchard Jobs – Gardening Australia episode 1 2022
Tino works through some essential tasks to keep fruit trees powering along through the warm weather. A constant job throughout the growing season – collecting dead, damaged and diseased windfall fruit on the ground and picking off any mummified fruit still on the tree. The dry, shrivelled fruit often carries disease that will spread to future harvests if left in place.
Pear and cherry slug affect a wide range of trees including plums, quinces and medlars. The little sap sucking bugs leave a trail of devastated foliage that makes it easy to see when they’re around. They stay on a tree for many lifecycles. The eggs become larvae that feed on the leaves then drop to the soil and pupate until they emerge as adult sawflies, which begin the process all over again.
Practically Pretty – Gardening Australia episode 1 2022
Millie visits a super-productive suburban garden that manages to look picture-perfect as well. Lots of vegies, a long avenue of fruit and nut trees lines the driveway, herbs and lots of colour. Natalie and Mark Buttenshaw moved to this ¾ acre block after running out of space at their last house, and started with lawn and 5 palm trees, but Nat had her vegie garden planned from day 1. “We’re still working on the house because we got stuck into the garden first,” Nat says.
In five years, they have created such a productive garden that Nat has now made ‘garden nerd’ her day job! The vegies are in raised beds as the soil isn’t great, but it means the soil temperature if a bit higher than the ground, which extends their growing season. In lockdown Mark added another terrace with beds for berries; they now have about 33 beds!
Nat included fruit trees at first, then discovered fruit fly, so took them out and focused on nuts instead. “There’s pecans, walnuts, macadamias, almonds, 25 diff heirloom apples, chestnuts, avocadoes, most of the citrus types…”
Teasing Roots
Josh teases out some root questions. Josh explains that teasing roots before planting depends on the individual plant. He shows an example of a correa whose roots are just fine and there is no need to disturb them.
However another plant – a feijoa – feels firm in its pot, there are roots poking out of the base and when he checks them, the roots have completely filled the pot, forming a dense mat. If planted like this, the roots would stay balled up and not spread to support the plant. He gently teases out the base and top of the root ball and cuts a line down the side of the root ball to make sure none of the roots are wrapping into a circle. It’s essential a plant like this gets a really good watering in when planted and its branches are pruned back to reduce the stress on the roots as they re-establish.
Grow Up Garden – Gardening Australia episode 1 2022
Sophie walks us through a show garden that demonstrates how a small-city home can still be packed with life. Sophie was planning to build a show garden for the Adelaide Show, demonstrating how to best use vertical space for productive – and beautiful – growing. It was called Grow Up and aims to meet the needs of gardeners limited to small urban spaces. When the show was cancelled, she had to come up with a Plan B.
She decided to build the display garden at her home instead, to demonstrate how to green small spaces, and hopes to transfer it to the Adelaide showgrounds later. The design includes two shipping containers on top of each other, linked by a spiral staircase and enclosed by metal screens and balconies made from recycled materials.
Sophie is keen to encourage gardeners to be positive when faced with hot, exposed areas for growing. She also wanted to show how small productive gardens can be sustainable as well as beautiful.
Beans to Brew
Jerry shows how to grow, harvest and roast your own coffee for a perfect brew that truly takes you from bean to cup. Nationally we consume 1.96 million 60-kilogram bags of the stuff each year, with the average Australian drinking close to 2kg of beans annually.
The majority of Australia’s coffee is imported, but it is grown on our shores commercially in tropical areas like the Atherton Tableland. But you can successfully grow coffee right down to chilly Melbourne. Australia’s first coffee plantation was in temperate Sydney. Coffee trees produce edible, red, fleshy fruit called “cherries”. What coffee drinkers crave is actually the seed, hidden inside the fruit.
Bumper Carrot Crop – Gardening Australia episode 1 2022
Hannah shares tips for managing your carrot crop through succession planting. The idea is to plant a new crop of carrots approximately every four weeks. As the latest crop of seed is sown, it’s time to thin out the existing crop of seedlings. This ensures your harvest is staggered across time, and you’ll avoid having a huge glut of carrots all at once.
