When I was a child all our neighbours and friends had a large tub - generally an old enamel washing machine tub - buried close to the vegetable garden. This was the ‘brew’ tub. Ingredients for the brew - compost, manures and seaweed - were widely discussed and benefits widely acclaimed. And it turns out these gardeners were onto something!
Our salad bar makes the most of winter’s great salad greens.
Most warm-season grasses stop growing when the nights turn cold, allowing weeds to get a foothold while your attention has turned indoors. So now is the time to target terrors like bindii, wintergrass and dandelions and avoid seeding - and many years more weeding.
Fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes are one of the great joys of summer. The best way to ensure that your tomato-growing experience delivers baskets of delicious fruit is to keep plants healthy.
Eden, Isla and Skye amazed their school friends when they took their own salad greens for lunch. Lettuce show you how easy it is!
African violets are treasured, long-lived indoor plants. Make them shine with these tips.
The plants I'm talking about here are botanically speaking Pelargonium though commonly called geranium. True Geranium species are delicate-looking perennials, usually with blue flowers.
Blueberries are pretty shrubs, with delicate, pink, bell-shaped flowers that give way to delicious purple-blue berries full of goodness and high in antioxidants.
Wherever we take travellers in the tropics, from Mexico to Singapore, the Daintree to Cuba, there is one tree that grabs their attention - cacao, the source of our lingering love, chocolate.
April is garlic-planting time and it’s easier than you think to grow a year’s supply for your family.
Button mushrooms are easy to grow at home.
Bob Magnus (owner of Woodbridge, Tasmania) sells four different varieties of apples grafted onto extra-dwarf rootstock. These trees are designed to grow as a one-metre-high hedge. They are pretty and productive in an edible or ornamental garden. Choose all four for many months of fresh apples. Here’s how Bob recommends growing apples as a stepover.
Strawberry seed packet holds well over 100 seeds and with a recommended retail price of $3.50 its the most economical way to grow your strawberries.
Ratatouille will convert the most meat-loving individual into a vegetarian – if only for one night! It was originally a common dish, prepared in the summer with fresh summer vegetables.
We are fortunate to have a reasonably big space in our garden that we can allocate simply to growing food. Other gardeners make the most of space on a sunny balcony or terrace. If that’s not an option for you either, consider what might done on the verge!
Planting punnets of vegetable seedlings is easy, but it is much more cost-effective and more fulfilling - not to mention offering wider choice and better results - to sow seed directly into the garden. The key is to sow plants suited to your climate, at the appropriate time of year.
Skye, Eden and Isla love to collect fresh herbs from the garden to add to dinner. Herbs are easy to grow: a perfectly delicious project for the summer holidays.
For space saving nothing beats a tepee! A single structure will provide 36kg of cherry tomatoes, cucumber and green beans over a 3 month stretch.
This home-grown fertiliser contains more potash and more nitrogen than commercial feeds, and costs only the price of a bucket and its water. Your vegetables will love it, especially your strawberries at the end of winter and next season tomatoes.
Plants in pots need the right nutrients, water, air and a quality potting mix to live happily ever after.
When cucumbers are on, you may find you have more than enough for salads, sandwiches and crudite platters. The secret - pickles. Our favourite recipe is from Cornersmith: Recipes from the Cafe and Picklery by Alex Elliott-Howery and James Grant.
Need a lightweight, easily stored, highly effective potting medium? Look no further than this byproduct of coconut production, which has advantages for plants as well as gardners.
Peas are one of those crops that can make the home gardener feel smugly self-satisfied because they taste so good fresh from the garden.
In the first of a new series that shares the knowledge and experience of food growers around the country, Kate Neale dishes the dirt on her top summer growing tips and her favourite new harvest.
Mickey Robertson’s kitchen garden at Glenmore House is as beautiful as it is productive, experimental and instructive.
It's time to get the jump on the cold this June and prepare the garden for the mid-winter chill
Back by popular demand - our reminders of what to do in the garden this season.
The temperate kitchen garden in autumn is all about planning for winter, planting hearty veg and preserving your harvest for the colder months. Linda Ross has plenty of tips on what you can do in your patch right now.
After a big growing season, early winter offers an opportunity to restore a little order. Sharpen those secateurs and get ready, because it's time to whip things into shape in the temperate garden this June
Mid winter is a time to prune. But it doesn't have to be devoid of colour in the garden. Time to get busy with the mid-winter July jobs.
Time to get the early winter jobs done this June.
It’s the most unpretentious of vegetables, yet is so fashionable there was a worldwide shortage of seed recently due to overwhelming demand. Beyond the fad, it’s worth a spot in the garden.
Though globe artichokes are simple to grow, preparing them for the table involves that rarest of modern commodities - time. But if you’ve ever eaten freshly cooked artichokes you know the several processes involved amount to small effort for delicious reward.
In the Kitchen Garden this winter Linda Ross is composting, planting winter veg and planning for the future.
This spring try something new: a vertical pumpkin patch; a fence line of sweet potato or a hanging basket filled with the sweetest, most productive strawberry ever.
The key to a thriving herb garden is to give each plant the conditions it needs to prosper. The result is easy gardening, and delicious pickings. Here Linda Ross shows you her favourites and the conditions they need to thrive in spring.
Arno is a garden designer and writer whose garden in Brisbane is mostly edible. He is constantly testing the received garden wisdom for its relevance to subtropical gardeners, and trialing new products. Let's see what Arno's growing this spring
Summer brings the vegetable patch’s peak of production. The heat of the sun powers growth, but threatens disaster too. Rise with the birds for early deep watering, and let your mantra be mulch, mulch, mulch.
Warm up this winter with a new project to increase your home harvests: compost bin, worm farm, raised beds, chicken coop, citrus wall? Now’s the time to get stuck in.
Autumn is the crowded moment in the vegetable garden when warm season vegetables reach their peak harvest and the cool season crops are keen to get in the ground. Here’s how we manage it.
Phone: 1300 133 100
Email: help@gardenclinic.com
Quote your membership number