Gardening Australia episode 13 2022: Costa visits an apartment dweller whose new garden hobby is growing, Clarence explores a botanic garden run by volunteers, Jerry meets scientists hunting hardy wild taro, and Millie suggests natives for tough garden spots.
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 13 2022
Grow to Share
Costa calls in on a newbie gardener whose infectious love of growing vegies is spreading to her apartment neighbours! Growing food on your own quarter-acre block is now a “pipedream” for many aspiring gardeners, particularly those from younger generations. Edith and her partner Shannon live in a block of six units and Edith started eyeing off “the patch of dirt” behind her building, after successfully growing herbs and other plants on their balcony.
They started with two garden beds, after getting strata approval and soon caught the productive gardening bug. There’s now 15 beds – all filled with fruit and vegetables during the warmer months. Edith found the recycled garden beds through online freebie sites and gumtree and had several tonnes of soil delivered. Crops now include spinach, silverbeet, rocket, lettuce, Asian greens, cabbage, kale, broccoli, and in spring and summer they also have pumpkin, peas, eggplant, cucumber, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes and various herbs.
Edible Water Plant Refresh
Josh refreshes his edible water feature. Josh has designed his garden to have several areas for wildlife habitat alongside productive patches. His raised pond meets both needs, being home to Pygmy Perch, Motorbike Frogs, and lots of edible plants. The outer edge is planted out with Lebanese Cress and Kangkong, which have become a bit leggy and weak over time so he’s giving them a refresh.
Lebanese Cress is used as a salad green and Kangkong, or water spinach, is great in a stir-fry. To refresh, Josh removes the plants and gently teases the large cress clumps apart into individual plants, ensuring each retains some roots. Now he can work out why they were struggling. The soil has slumped as the organic matter has completely broken down and needs rejuvenating.
New soil consists of two-thirds sand, which won’t break down, and one-third potting mix. Small pieces of Lebanese Cress can go straight in, but larger pieces are best cut back almost to the base, so they don’t wilt. Cut Kangkong back to a node before planting too.
Niche Natives – Gardening Australia episode 13 2022
Millie suggests some native plants to suit the most challenging spots in your garden.
Every garden has a challenging position, but luckily nature has filled every niche, from riversides to mountain tops, to exposed coastal dunes – there is a plant adapted to almost any position. Millie explains how to match the microclimates in your garden to those in nature, to help you choose the perfect plants.
Hunter Helpers
To celebrate Volunteer Week, Clarence explores the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens, which are maintained by a keen, hard-working group of volunteers. The beautiful Hunter Region Botanic Gardens were built by volunteers and continue to be maintained by dedicated locals. Positioned on around 130 hectares of bushland at Heatherbrae, NSW, there’s 33 hectares of garden space, comprised of 25 different themed gardens.
Clarence takes a look at a selection of these spaces and meets a few of the gardeners as we celebrate Volunteer Week.
Kevin Stokes is one the founders of the garden and one of 200 regular volunteers. He says volunteering is a “two-way street”. “You get as much back as what you put in.”
“They (volunteers) see what they’ve done and see it come to come to fruition,” Kevin says. “It’s a very serene site, you just keep coming back.”
Neil Wilson has worked in the bromeliad garden for the last six years and has even planted bromeliads from his own collection.
“Not many people see them at home,” Neil says. “But the whole community can access them here in the gardens.”
His tips include weekly watering, no full sun between 10am-2pm and growing bromeliads under a canopy. Neil prefers not to use fertiliser and reckons “you can get some some weird formations.”
Future-proofing Taro – Gardening Australia episode 13 2022
Jerry goes taro hunting with scientists studying hardy, wild varieties to breed a new generation suited to climate change. We’re in a plant-filled laboratory and greenhouse at the St Lucia campus of University of Queensland. Here scientists are studiously observing hundreds of taro plants, trying to unlock the secrets of a new kind of taro that’s ready for the challenges of climate change-both at home and abroad, in an international research partnership with Fiji.
Taro (Colocasia esculenta cv.) is a tropical plant primarily grown for it’s sweet, starchy, edible corms, which are a hugely important food crop globally. A staple food in African, PNG, Asian, Caribbean and in particular Polynesian cultures, taro is believed to be one of the earliest cultivated plants. In 2018 global production was over 10 million tonnes.
Despite this global importance, the crop remains somewhat neglected in scientific research, particularly when compared to commodity crops like wheat. “Taro fits in what we call ‘orphan crops’, where all the research funding attention in Australia focuses on larger staple crops at the expense of others. It means we can make advances with these ‘orphan crops’ quickly, as there’s less improvements that have been made already” says plant physiology researcher at the University of Queensland, Dr Millicent Smith.
Ornamental Pears
Sophie profiles some of her favourite trees for shade and beauty. While Sophie has 10 varieties of fruiting pears growing in her orchard, she also has nine varieties of ornamental pears in her garden.
She shows you some of her favourite varieties that have all the other benefits of pear trees, minus the fruit: beautiful form, autumnal leaves, attractive grey swollen hairy buds on bare stems in winter, single white blossoms in late winter or spring and glossy green leaves over summer. They’re also a lot hardier than people think, able to take the baking heat, tolerate drought, they’re suitable for heavy soils and Sophie even feeds them salty bore water.
These trees have been bred to varying shapes and sizes to suit a range of climates and soil types adding structure and elegance to more formal and cottage style gardens.
Growing Onions
Tino shares his tips for growing onions. In many parts of Australia, Autumn is the best time to start planting onion seeds or seedlings, particularly in warmer areas because onions need a long cool growing season to develop well. Tino waits until it’s consistently cold before he sows his onion seeds.
There are lots of onions you can grow at home, with long keeping onions able to be stored for many months after harvesting. Tino has chosen ‘White Gladolan’ onions to grow from seed, characterised by a white flesh and a sweet flavour. For the seedlings he has chosen common brown onions, for their longevity. Regardless of what type of onion you sow, the cultivation technique is always the same.
Onions like a sweeter soil of around 6.5 pH, that is high in organic matter, but not overly rich. A bed prepped with aged sheep or cow manure is perfect. They also love a full sun position, and grow above the ground unlike their close cousin, garlic. So drainage needs to be good, but it’s not as important as it is for garlic.