Category Grow

Almost everyone loves blueberries, a fruit as delicious to eat fresh as baked in muffins. This versatile little powerhouse fruit has a reputation for being super good for you, too – high in antioxidants (particularly anthocyanin, responsible for this fruit’s blue colour) and fibre, and a great source of the vitamins A, C, E, potassium and manganese.

Blueberries are a fantastic addition to the home garden, be it contained on a balcony or sprawling across acres, due to their adaptability and longevity – a happy mature blueberry bush can produce fruit for many years.

Description

Blueberries are a perennial woody bush originating from North America. They can be deciduous or semi-deciduous, with a stunning autumn display of colour; or evergreen, depending on the variety and where they are grown. Bushes range in size from around one metre through to more than two metres tall, making them great for anything from growing in pots to creating edible hedges.

In the pursuit of self-sufficiency, many of us dream of living on a country property with livestock, chickens, an orchard and a large vegetable patch. The reality is that most of us live in suburban settings, with small yards and limited space. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t grow lots of food – we just need to be smart about how we do it.

Growing food in small spaces is about subsidising our grocery needs with a variety of fresh produce. Most of us would never be able to grow enough food to completely replace our weekly shopping, but we can grow enough so it has an economic impact, saving on food bills; has an environmental impact, by cutting down on food miles and the effects of industrial agriculture; and, most importantly, has a cultural impact, where we come to value our food and recognise the importance of celebrating it.

For many people, growing their own food is about adding fresh produce to their staples. Whether it be some fresh parsley for winter soup, lettuce and cherry tomatoes for a summer salad or greens for a smoothie, almost all of us can grow something.

When deciding you want to grow food, regardless of the space you have available, there are some initial questions to ask yourself. What can I grow that I will use all the time? What can I buy that is already readily available and inexpensive? What do I eat? What space am I working with? Is it a backyard, a courtyard or a

Regenerative agriculture is attracting a lot of attention as a way to reverse declining soil fertility while pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and stashing it back in the ground. Yet, restoring soil health is not just for farms. It is something we can do in urban places, too, and gardeners can lead the way in their small corners of the world.

Proponents say that regenerative farming, if adopted broadly, could help slow the rate of global warming. With better management, global croplands could store up to an additional 1.85 gigatonnes of carbon each year, or as much as the entire transportation sector emits.

Researchers at the Rodale Institute calculated that replacing conventional farming practices around the world with regenerative ones would allow us to sequester 100 percent of annual global carbon emissions.

Often the first vegetable in the garden to herald the arrival of spring, asparagus provides a delicious welcome to the coming season. While it can take some patience, there is little that comes close to the taste of your own asparagus plucked straight from the ground. Once established, asparagus plants can produce for over 20 years.

A member of the lily family, Asparagus officinalis is a perennial plant with fern-like fronds growing to 1.5 m high. It retreats to dormancy in the cooler months, with quick-growing shoots emerging from the ground in early spring. It is these shoots that we recognise as asparagus spears, and when they start to emerge, they will need to be picked every day or two to get the sweetest, most tender asparagus for the pot. If left to grow, the spears continue skyward and the tightly bunched scales on the tip loosen and elongate, eventually becoming branches on the tall, ferny plant.

Once established, around eight to twelve plants will provide a family of four with a good amount of asparagus for two or three months over spring. Nutritionally, it’s a great addition to the vegie garden, containing B vitamins, vitamin C and potassium, as well as a number of antioxidants. It also contains the compound asparagine, which gives asparagus its ‘umami’ flavour, the savoury fifth taste that’s also found in tomatoes and mushrooms.

A highly productive vegetable garden that produces lots of food all year doesn’t just happen, it comes about through intentional design. It’s achieved by selecting appropriate plants and using particular gardening techniques that extend the harvest season.

Gardening Calendars And The Importance Of Timing

A gardening calendar is more than just a reference, it’s a valuable tool to help gardeners get organised, perform scheduled tasks and carry out long-term planning. Good gardening calendars usually contain more than just seedsowing information; the better ones will detail the expected weather patterns of the month and list the garden tasks that need to be performed, making each monthly gardening experience much more structured and predictable.

The humble potato is a staple in the diets of most Australians. It makes sense then to grow them at home. The benefits of a freshly dug spud go beyond the incredible flavour; when you grow your own potatoes, you know exactly what type of soil they came from and what they have been exposed to. By avoiding the use of pesticides and herbicides you can eat your potatoes, skin and all, knowing that you are getting maximum nutrition without ingesting any nasty chemicals.

Types

Originally from South America, there are around 3000 varieties of potatoes worldwide, with around 20 varieties to choose from in Australia. Choosing a variety to grow will depend on how you like to eat them. Floury potatoes with their higher starch content are good for mashing, baking or making chips. Waxy types hold together better after cooking and are good for potato salad or gratin. Whatever variety you choose to grow at home, you’ll be doing yourself a big favour by avoiding the conventionally grown potato as it is routinely featured in ‘top 10 veg to avoid’ lists due to chemical use in production.

Vegetables, fruits and grains are a major source of vital nutrients, but generations of intensive agriculture have depleted our soils to historical lows. As a result, the broccoli you eat today may have less than half the vitamins and minerals it would have had less than a century ago. We can grow our own vegetables using lots of compost and avoiding chemicals, but how do we really know our soil has enough of the appropriate minerals in the right balance to grow truly nutrient dense food?

Nutrient dense food has its full complement of minerals and is the best kind of food to keep you healthy. For food to be nutrient dense, it must be grown in soil that has an abundant and balanced supply of minerals. If key plant nutrients in the soil are lacking or way out of proportion, then the food produced in this soil will not be nutrient dense.

There is also a biological side to it that is equally important to plant health and ultimate food quality. However you first need to bring the minerals into proper balance, then the soil food web (worms, nematodes, algae, amoeba, fungi, bacteria) comes into healthy balance too. When it comes to micro-life, there is rarely a need to import them. When the soil is favourable to the proper organisms, they will predominate, appearing as if from nowhere. Soil biology can greatly assist the plants in assimilating nutrients, but only after the minerals have been brought into balance.

The humble carrot may be easy and cheap to buy, but the absolute pleasure of picking a few fresh carrots to crunch on straight from your garden and the taste sensation you will receive are well worth the investment of your time.

With a bit of good planning, it’s possible to have a supply of carrots from your garden nearly year round, and what a food to have on hand—this versatile vegetable is an absolute powerhouse of nutrition. Raw, steamed, baked or juiced, carrots are packed with vitamins any way you eat them. And the humble carrot has a beautiful secret that only carrot growers will get to discover.