Gardening

[Berlin]

...we cut 'em down and slice 'em up, maybe we could have a forum for growing them too?

It surprises me how few good Aussie gardening forums there are.

[pjt]

I reckon there'd be quite a few of us that do a bit of gardening, myself included.



Pete

[fenderbelly]

yeh gardening would suit me

[Enfield Guy]

Great idea.

[Sturdee]

There used to be one but the site became too big so it was moved to the sister Renovate Forum (http://www.renovateforum.com/forum.php)

Well worth a visit, not only for gardening, but also for general renovating problems.


Peter.

[HUON]

Stuff all on gardening ( growing things as opposed to building decks) on the "renovate forum". Let's have a site on growing plants, harvesting plants , preserving, pickling, bottling plants (by plants I mean fruit and vegetables). How about some pics of your vegie gardens/orchards.
Hope I haven't hijacked anyones post.

[Sprog]

Stuff all on gardening ( growing things as opposed to building decks) on the "renovate forum". Let's have a site on growing plants, harvesting plants , preserving, pickling, bottling plants (by plants I mean fruit and vegetables). How about some pics of your vegie gardens/orchards.
Hope I haven't hijacked anyones post.

That sounds good to me :)

[astrid]

Sounds good for hopeless gardeners like me :D

[HUON]

I'll take a few pics of the vegie gardens tomorrow and put them on this site, see if we can get the ball rolling

[Berlin]

After two days of +40 and no rain for weeks and weeks I'd be happy to see a photo of a green garden :(

[HUON]

G'day Berlin is it green up there or is the heat drying things off ? I'll get some pics up soon, not today though but soon.

[HUON]

Here are some promised photos of our vegie patches, I'll post more later

[DavidG]

Lazy garden
331817

[HUON]

David, a nice twist to the S bend

[HUON]

More garden

[pjt]

A serious amount of garden there Huon!


Pete

[JDarvall]

nice garden. and top looking pizza oven.

[Opelblues2]

nothing better than a couple of mates sitting on you deck, admiring the hedge you just pruned

[HUON]

Only used the oven a few times, hate to think how many bottles we've put to bed with a little help from our friends.
There's more garden to come, I've got a globe artichoke asparagus patch which the king parrots have taken an interest in

[Old-Biker-UK]

Huon - Love it.:2tsup:
Here is my yard this autumn, few more leaves down & i'll rake them into rows & pick them up with the mower.
Given up on the cabbages though, it will have to be Tesco for the curly kale & purple sprouting to go with christmas dinner. The caterpillars haven't left much even after feeding my pet robin with up to 30 of them every couple of days.

Mark

[HUON]

Thought I'd post a closer look at how I grow my tommies

[HUON]

Mark, here's one of our yellow robins. They love it when you start turning over the ground as do the grey shrike thrushes.

[HUON]

The chooks feel safe at our joint

[Berlin]

G'day Berlin is it green up there or is the heat drying things off ? I'll get some pics up soon, not today though but soon.

Hi Huon. It is dry. Really dry. Normally we get a reliable flow of storms at this time of year but only one has come through and what rain did fall fairly bounced off the ground. The real problem is the small plants we got in the ground at the end of winter so they could harden off over spring got cooked by the early heat.

That's gardening in Australia sometimes though I guess.

[Berlin]

Your garden looks great Huon! Very jealous. The down pipe hydroponic set up is great.

Is that chook a Speckled Sussex or a Wyandotte? Very pretty chook.

[HUON]

G'day Berlin, it's a s/l Wyandotte. I've got d/l barnevelders and white barnevelders as well. Hope you get some rain soon, raining here at the moment. Not looking forward to summer though, already had a couple of grass fires nearby.

[HUON]

Hope you're getting some rain, soaking rain, Berlin

[HUON]

Hope you're getting some rain, soaking rain, Berlin

[Old-Biker-UK]

Huon - how about some photo captions for us 'foreigners'.
A couple look pretty scary & I know one of them is a dog.....

Mark

[Berlin]

I'll have a crack Mark and Huon can correct me - in the last set of photos there is a yellow faced honey eater, a Death Adder, a Golden Orb Weaver and a Silver Eye... and a retiever. :)

Huon, we did finally get 15mm and more looks likely today but there won't be enough to flood the patio! I hope that water didn't get any higher!

Matt

[HUON]

Close Berlin, the dog is a maremma (stock guard dog, a mountain dog originally bred in the mountains of Italy), the snake is a tiger snake I found underneath a piece of roofing iron lying on the ground, so I took it down to the creek and let it go to meet other tiger snakes and hopefully breed ( I do a bit of snake handling from time to time).
How's that Mark?

[HUON]

Of course you've got to have a shed. And fire fighting potential, oh and another site for another shed of course.

[HUON]

Right, now this is a call to arms. How about some pics of your garden, how about some information about who you get your seeds from, what about some nifty ideas about growing your plants, seed saving, weed suppression, pest control, what sort of chooks you keep (all part of the garden) and ducks etc. Anything to do with gardening, not just vegies.

[ubeaut]

You asked for it and here it is.

Cheers - Neil :U

[HUON]

Thanks, ubeut and congrats Berlin for starting the ball rolling.

[Old-Biker-UK]

http://d1r5wj36adg1sk.cloudfront.net/images/smilies/smilie%20signs/whs0be.gif

[pjt]

I have lots of lizards here that help with ground beetles, cockroaches and the larva of somesort of a beetle, possibly the African Black Beetle, I have to dig them up for them tho:;
332739332738


Pete

[Berlin]

Thanks Neil! :)

[Berlin]

I watched a team of skinks mopping up after a termite swam at our place the other day. They're very effective. I haven't got to the point of hand feeding them though. :U

[pjt]

Another thing we have about here is the mud dauber wasp, at least a couple of species, when I see them they are either building a cocoon or provisioning it with caterpillars and/or spiders in readiness to lay an egg, I often see them flying in and around the leaves of various plants looking for prey.
Here's a cocoon I inadvertantly happened to break just on completion of being sealed up, it was in amongst some timber I was moving.
332808332807
This one is filled with various jumping spiders, all different colours and shapes, I'd rather see it filled with caterpillars but jumping spiders were on the menu on that day.
Just in this one cocoon there is such diversity in the spiders, look closely at the one with what look like feathers for palps, the whitish cylinder is the egg of the wasp, ordinarily this will hatch and then feed on the spiders which are in a suspended state, I wonder what we could learn from whatever it is the wasp injects into the spider to stop it going off.


Pete

[HUON]

Great photos, Pete, can't wait to see the next lot of photos.

Maybe we should start calling you the lizard whisperer.

[HUON]

The vegies are starting to reach for the sky and the bees are loving it. The self seeded dill is dwarfing the dwarf fruit trees, the corn patch has pumpkin varieties as a living green mulch and I recently planted climbing beans next to the corn. I've just bandicooted some Pink Eye spuds, raided the Broad Bean patch and reduced the weight of the bramble berry vines.

[pjt]

That's one of the things I miss now that I'm in Qld, the berry and stone fruits, I don't miss the cold tho:;

Here's a few pics of some life in the sunflower patch
332973332974332975332976332977
From left to right
The little dot at the top center of the seed head is a blue banded bee, these are one of the solitary types (don't live in a hive) they are also very very quick and dart here and there looking for just the right flower at the right stage of flowering. I don't see these too often. There is also a grasshopper there as well.

Lacewing eggs, another predator of pests, once they hatch! I see these often

A green praying mantis. Often.

Another of the many variety of jumping spider complete with spiky legs, this one has been in the same flower for the last few days. not seen often.

A yellow jumping spider. Not seen often.

Of the critters above the thing that always fascinates me is where do the ones that I generally dont see come from
:? Are they waiting somewhere for somebody to grow some sunflowers?




Pete

[HUON]

Wonderful what pops up when you don't use pesticides.

[HUON]

some home shots, some alpine shots

[HUON]

Thought I'd post some more pics, my tomato rack where the tomato vines are more advanced, the reason I like this system over others is firstly there is no tying of the vines or bunching up of the vines. This system promotes good air flow, hence less disease and pests more open to predation.
My friends the birds, King Parrots, Crimson Rosella, baby Willy wag tails
And our first cactus flower

[HUON]

Macadamia, last year and this year, Avocado this years crop (part of)and olives.

[Berlin]

Here are a few shots of our little cabin in progress, the little top bar hive we made to catch a bee swarm a few weeks back, the stick dome my father made as a bean/loofa trellis to shade our veggie garden and our little nursery and finally some storm lillies, proving it did finally rain!

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[HUON]

Great trellis, Berlin, and the lovely gable roof for you and your bees. Is the hive based on the Warre hive ?

[Berlin]

Yes, it's a Warré. We were lucky that we had all the tools and materials to hand so that we could whip a hive box up when the opportunity presented itself. It was a tiny wee swarm the size of a rockmelon so it was easy to catch but we weren't sure it would survive, but it's starting to pick up now. We added a second box, the lower one, and had a peek to see what was going on and they've drawn some nice combs. Nothing smells as good as a bee hive, especially a cypress and cedar bee hive!

The bean trellis is six metres across and three metres high, which may not be obvious from the picture. They look fantastic covered in vines. The shot of our nursery is through another small dome with a passion fruit growing over it.




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[HUON]

Fantastic, Berlin, keep an eye out for ants that resemble jumping jacks, they destroyed two small colonies of bees while we were away for a few days. Even a tray of water under the hive didn't stop them, pesky little critters.
Not sure if you have them up your way though.

[pjt]

Jumping Jacks:(( we used to call them Jack Jumpers, nasty little buggars, I used to live in Tas and we had them there, I haven't seen them here tho so might only be a southern states thing.
Native bees?



Pete

Re-reading Huon's post; we do have a smaller black ant about 10mm long that will give a nasty bite up here, I see a nest about here every so often, I have a native bee hive in a log that so far hasn't been attacked by ants.

[pjt]

I decided to combine corn and Lab Lab bean, I thought I'll plant it in amongst the corn and it will climb up the corn and then when the corn is done I'll pull the lot out and there's a nice bit of green stuff to go into a cold compost pile, however, I think I might have overdone the bean to corn ratio tho as the bean ended up smothering the corn so I pulled it all out, I did leave some bean vines as they are now providing some shade where it has grown up the shade cloth support and into the Mulberry tree.
Some pic
334336334337334335
An interesting thing about legumes is they host nitrogen fixing bacteria on their roots in root nodules, it doesn't seem to worry the plant at all, the bacteria have to be present in the ground or it will come as an innoculant with the bean seeds, the Lab Lab didn't come with an inocculant but I have grown innoculated beans (broad beans)here before so there are probably still some bacteria hanging around in the soil just waiting for a legume. Innoculated versus non innoculated seeds makes a big difference to the amount of nitrogen fixing nodules that end up on the roots, the idea is that the nitrogen is in the soil via the nodules when the bean is finished and there for the next crop.

It also has been interesting to see the Lab Lab climb as I want to grow annual "climbers" that will tolerate the heat, provide shade and then die off for winter, all I have to do is provide something for it to climb on. Sweet potato is another that I employ as a shade provider.



Pete

[Old-Biker-UK]

Not much need of shading in the UK!

I always either leave legume roots in the ground when I clear the vines or else put them through the shredder & spread back on the soil.
Incidentally I am still growing the same gene pool of runner beans that my grandfather had on his allotment 65 years ago.

This was me on the allotment, bean poles in the background.
My main job was de-budding carnations to leave one bloom.
The other thing I was required to do was to whistle while I was fruit picking......

Mark

[Berlin]

Great photo Mark.

I just looked at this thread on a computer (not the phone) for the first time in ages - apologies for the huge crappy phone photos, I'm letting the team down.

Pete, it was a honey bee swarm. I looked up the Jack Jumpers and they don't occur here but meat ants can be a problem apparently but I haven't ever seen a nest on our block so hopefully they won't be a problem. Hive beetle occurs here too but although we didn't have time to plan our hive, it's just where the bees landed, it's not too bad for monitoring for them. I've dug some cement through the sand at the base of the rock the hive is on to make it hard for them to pupate and the fact they then have to crawl back up the rock to get to the hive means they're exposed to all the other predators that live around there. Everything we know about bees we learnt in the last month so we'll see what happens.

Matt

[Berlin]

Pete, I wish I could grow corn. I've tried. It gets up ok but the amount of water you need to keep the growing is impossible for me to keep up with. Do you water yours or is there enough rain where you are?

[pjt]

Pete, I wish I could grow corn. I've tried. It gets up ok but the amount of water you need to keep the growing is impossible for me to keep up with. Do you water yours or is there enough rain where you are?

If I get the corn in early(end of winter/early spring) there will be a couple of months of watering, from now on we'll get more rain so I won't have to water as much, I'll get another crop in if I pull my finger out sans lab lab.


Pete

[Berlin]

Is the lab lab just an annual? A friend in Brissie grow Madagascar beans as a perennial shade crop over his more tender plants. It drops enough leaf through winter to get seedlings going but thickens up again when the heat picks up. I got some seeds off him but a hare ate them :(

Have you got some pumpkin in with your beans and corn?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_%28agriculture%29

Matt



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[HUON]

I planted beans 3 or so weeks after the corn as planted. I've also planted variety pumpkin and squash in between and in betwixt.

[Berlin]

Man, I don't know if I should bother with vegetables, both your and Pete's gardens look lusher than I think I'll be able to achieve. I will bother, but I'm pretty sure I'm in for some grief :U

We need some great big tanks, that much is clear.





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[HUON]

Well, Matt, Cath and I have been here for about thirty years, when we first arrived all we had was kikyu paddocks. It takes time to get to know your bit of dirt. One of the things we did before we started building was to start a garden (mostly native), somewhere to relax. Looks like you've already got yourself a native garden.
It took us a fair while to get our water "works" sorted, even now its still not ideal. But it's far better than what we started with.
One other thought, you could compensate by using lots of mulch when water is an issue.

[pjt]

Man, I don't know if I should bother with vegetables, both your and Pete's gardens look lusher than I think I'll be able to achieve. I will bother, but I'm pretty sure I'm in for some grief :U

We need some great big tanks, that much is clear.


I was going to ask whether you would be on tank water, for big tanks you also need the roof on which to catch the rain, good excuse to get the big shed :;, or the big under cover area, also, I would be looking at rain water harvesting methods other than just tanks, swales for e.g. and using your grey water, if nothing else just to grow mulch using the grey water, gives you a degree of separation from it, add lots and lots of mulch, and then there's all the wood shavings to use, the caveat here tho is don't dig it in, just leave it on the surface and add nitrogen to it, (wee on it) I will leave it in a pile and let it age for as long as I can and (wee on it) and then spread it thinly on the surface of a garden bed or if I use it to make a path it will be at least 4" thick (wee on it) and it will last a couple of years and then scrape it up and spread it on the garden bed, a few more caveat's, don't use man made board and if you are on any medication, don't wee on it unless you can be certain there's no ill effect to the soil life.

Before growing veges maybe look at growing just mulch, arrowroot is one I grow here for just that reason, it will put up with a fair bit of neglect and once it gets a bit of water and warm weather away it goes, available from http://greenharvest.com.au/Plants/ArrowheadToGalangal.html
Lots of info on their site and stuff to look at, something else to look into is Permaculture specially for water harvesting methods, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren are to names to look for if you are looking for a book, hope I'm not telling you how to suck eggs with all this stuff.

Lab Lab I think is an annual I'm gonna find out, this is the first time I have grown it.

I've been here must be 8 yrs and there's still lots to do and learn about growing, I would have starved ten times over if I had to rely on my output of veges. It seems tho that once you get something happening like say a swale with a bit of water in it that stays and soaks into the ground rather than just run away there's a snowball effect, worms start appearing that start feeding on mulch and they improve the soil then something grows better than it did before so you can grow a bit more mulch and feed a few more worms etc. etc..



Pete

[Berlin]

Thanks for the ideas Pete, I really do need to work on some swales. I read Bill Mollison's book and was very inspired but I have to say my main interest is endemic natives but I can see a lot of that good permaculture land management stuff will be necessary on our site to rehabilitate the soil before the veggie crop or the native re-vegetation.

My favourite permaculture book is Linda Woodrow's 'Permaculture Home Garden'. She's a genius. She mentions the saw dust paths too. We will be using our saw dust in the composting toilet but we bought a deadly looking mulcher that we will put woody weeds through so maybe that
should go on the paths. I've already been busted by the neighbour weeing on the citrus trees so I might have to wait for the screening plants get up a bit before further applications of Nitrogen.

I was a little worried about putting grey water on the veggies. Have you had any trouble with salt and what have you or do you just put on the mulch heap?



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[HUON]

Matt, have you tried the water conservation section on the Greenlivingpedia site. Some useful links there.
Cheers.

[pjt]

Thanks for the ideas Pete, I really do need to work on some swales. I read Bill Mollison's book and was very inspired but I have to say my main interest is endemic natives but I can see a lot of that good permaculture land management stuff will be necessary on our site to rehabilitate the soil before the veggie crop or the native re-vegetation.

My favourite permaculture book is Linda Woodrow's
'Permaculture Home Garden'. She's a genius. She mentions the saw dust paths too. We will be using our saw dust in the composting toilet but we bought a deadly looking mulcher that we will put woody weeds through so maybe that
should go on the paths. All the above good good. I've already been busted by the neighbour weeing on the citrus trees so I might have to wait the screening plants get up a bit before further applications of Nitrogen. :( neighbors :( you might have to educate them in the ways of the nitrogen cycle.

I was a little worried about putting grey water on the veggies. Have you had any trouble with salt and what have you or do you just put on the mulch heap? I haven't been utilizing our grey water, it is on the list of things to look into, from what I have read and understand of it there can be some issues with build up of soap residues and other stuff, no one solution fits all, a familly of 10 is a different problem to a single person that only uses bicarb and vinegar and then there's another extreme of complete unknowns like 100 000 people converging on Woodford for the folk festival for a week, a natural system (reed bed) cannot deal with such a sudden change so is ineffective. Just doesn't work, they truck it all out which flies in the face of the ethos off the festival but practicalities dictate such.
It really depends on your circumstances and whether you have people who will forgo their bottle of L'oreal with the latest whatever in it and just use a basic simple shampoo, sorry if I'm waffling on here.
It also depends on whether you want to go with a system off the shelf or a more natural system like a reed bed or something real simple like rinsing the dishes in a tub with next to clean water in it that just gets chucked out the door onto the grass.
If you have some doubts about your grey water but still want to use it then for a degree or two of safety you could only use it to grow an above ground mulch which you then use on the vegie patch, or put it thru a reed bed, but once again a reed bed system needs to be matched to a regular amount of water inflow.


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I haven't had any issues with salt that I am aware of, I have heard those that say our water isn't the best as far as salt levels go, I do try to not have any bare soil so lots of mulch to reduce any evaporation right at the soil surface.


Pete

[HUON]

Every time I go near "MY" shed I cop a verbal lashing from various parents offended by my proximity to their precious ones. The two nests attached to the orange leads are willy wag tails, the nest attached to the yellow lead is a scrub wren. Earlier in the breeding season I had a grey shrike thrush set up camp next to my tormek sharpener. The other photo is a yellow tailed black cockatoo helping itself to a green golden delicious apple.

[HUON]

Mark, you old biker you, pray tell what type of runner beans did you inherit? I've got the scarlet runner bean sometimes called the seven year bean.
Cheers
Brendan

[HUON]

The newest member of our Brachychiton family, it's a Boab. The next pic is a bottle tree followed by a flame tree then the Kurrajong.

[artme]

The newest member of our Brachychiton family, it's a Boab. The next pic is a bottle tree followed by a flame tree then the Kurrajong.

Love Brachychitons!!!:2tsup::2tsup::2tsup:

The Illawarra flame trees have been the best I have see this year, and that is right up and down the coast from Hervey Bay
to Sydney.

Try an Ormeau Brachychiton. A rare tree in deed with only about 24 known specimens!! Seeds might cost a packet!!

[HUON]

Keep me in mind when you get a spare seed, artme.

[Berlin]

It's a rewarding genus. We've been planting lots of the Little Kurrajongs B. bidwillii, and have more than a dozen flame trees (B. acerifolious) in pots that we grew from seed.

The Ormeau is a beautiful tree! There is a lovely pair? at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens but I've never seen see seed pods on them and I have looked ;)

[HUON]

Go Green rainforest nursery have just received a batch of about 15-20 Ormeau's in 6" pots going for $11.40

[fenderbelly]

I pulled some beetroot today and bottled it, i have rock melons and Butternut pumpkins growing but this year there is a
definite lack of bees to pollinate. When i'm in the garden i'm lucky to see one bee a day. When the farmers start reaping i normally get
hundreds of small native bees in the garden, i don't think i saw any this year.
I have one Queensland Blue pumpkin which self seeded early and it has two big pumpkins on, ( i love pumpkin soup ).
After a couple of near 40 degree days my worm farm is suffering, even after putting wet newspaper on them and tipping a bucket of cool water in the farm i've still lost around 50--60 worms.
My garden is sand, in the five years i've been here i've put sheep manure and chicken manure on it and i mulch with pea straw.
As i'm renting i'm not prepared to import soil. I'm glad i didn't, i've been told the bank is taking the house from the owner. Bugga.

The sand has changed colour slightly but it drains that quick it's not funny.

I have onions and banana capsicums growing as well as tomatoes.
Got about thirty orchids ( cimbidiums ) and about the same amount of cacti and succulents.
Herbs are Basil, Tarragon, Oregano, Flat leave parsley and Sage.
Have one really hot birds eye chillie.Eye watering. lol
While the garden is small i do get a huge amount of pleasure from it.

[pjt]

Good going Fred, apparently the honey bee numbers are in decline, I have Aus native bees here in a log but they never seem to be interested in anything I grow, the Cahdagi trees 2 blocks away when in flower hold more sway, the seeds they bring home are a real issue, the seeds will completely block up the entrance/exit, bit worried about them at the moment, activity level seems to be quite low.
Must be a bugga knowing that you are renting and trying to develope a garden and then the reality hits that you might have to move:oo:


Pete

[fenderbelly]

Good going Fred, apparently the honey bee numbers are in decline, I have Aus native bees here in a log but they never seem to be interested in anything I grow, the Cahdagi trees 2 blocks away when in flower hold more sway, the seeds they bring home are a real issue, the seeds will completely block up the entrance/exit, bit worried about them at the moment, activity level seems to be quite low.
Must be a bugga knowing that you are renting and trying to develope a garden and then the reality hits that you might have to move:oo:


Pete

I'm hoping to rent off the bank when i get the knock on the door, it's not going to sell quickly so i figure they will try to get whatever they can
until it is sold. Unless one of the holiday rental companies snap it up.

Cheers Fred

[HUON]

I love this time of year, that time when you start plucking the tomatoes from the vines or when you walk down the aisles of the supermarkets and you come to the vegie section, have a look at what's on offer shake your head and keep walking, thinking of all that scrumptious produce waiting back home in the vegie patch.

[pjt]

It sure is a good feeling, I haven't done so well this year, I tried a few different things this year, the wicking beds being one, they started out well but then the w. bed system seems to allow club root to become a serious problem so no good, then we get the rain and heat so mould has it's way, then damping off gets any seeds that get out of the ground :(
I put asparagus in this year and it has done well, no harvesting tho until 3 years old (next year) I'm thinking more asparagus as it doesn't require much attention once it's up and going.




Pete

[Berlin]

Pete, I'll use your post as a reason to kick off about wicking beds. I've got issues, not with the concept but the standard design you see all over the net, on Gardening Aus and Costas Gardning show... You probably addressed these issues but there are some fundamental problems with design as far as I can figure -
Firstly, water can't wick through gravel, or geotex for that matter, the texture is far too coarse, so the reservoir at the bottom would need to be filled to the brim all the time for any water to get into the soil. This means that a saturated anaerobic layer of soil would be sitting just 30cm (according to the common design) below you plants, which is a recipe for problems. Also, the reservoir is completely redundant if it has to be full all the time. The gravel layer may as we'll be 10mm deep!

Secondly the notion that water can only wick through a foot or so of soil is nonsense. It sounded like an oddly short distance so I looked into it and the actual max is more likely 2m, although it is highly dependent on the soil and the mineral content of the water. In nice tilthy soil full of organic matter I'd eat my hat if water didn't wick 50 or 60cm.

So, to work and grow well, I think the beds should be deeper, the reservoir should be of a suitably fine material to allow for capillary action to actually drain the reservoir (and for the reservoir to actually function as one) and the barrier layer should be either done away with or be fine enough to allow for some liaison between the reservoir medium and the growing medium.

I'm just a pleb and I'm probably missing something but I just can't see how they work if built as described in the how to's!

Phew... I needed to get that off my chest.

Matt

[pjt]

I have some issues with the ones I built and as a result of those issues I'll most likely dismantle my wicking beds, although I might leave them as well :? and I only had that thought as I wrote that I would dismantle them:doh:

I think the basic concept is good but based on my trials it seems that there are a number of factors that have to come together for them to work well.

With mine one big problem was what I think was club root, everything was going along fine then not, based on a bit of reading seems that the pathogen that causes club root is able to move about in the damp soil so with the constant supply of moisture it did it's work, hasn't worried the Lab Lab or the marigolds. So if there was something that you wanted to contain and was resistant to club root the wicking bed might still a viable option

I was seeing about 50mm of water depth be used up out of the reservoir and once the wicking stopped it seemed to take a while to get going again, I made my reservoir about 120mm and they could be shallower again I reckon.

I think the idea is that the water travels around the outside of the rock, and if another rock is touching that one the water then travels around the outside of that one as well and so on, I also put a course sand inbetween the pipes so water could also wick through this and up into the soil. Not sure if the sand was or wasn't better worse no difference.....

I used weed mat (which they say not to) I couldn't get anything else, it did let the water through and I'd be suprised if absolutley no roots got through into the reservoir, the soil did wick the water through about 200mm of soil depth.

[Berlin]

I think the idea is that the water travels around the outside of the rock, and if another rock is touching that one the water then travels around the outside of that one as well and so on, I also put a course sand inbetween the pipes so water could also wick through this and up into the soil. Not sure if the sand was or wasn't better worse no difference.....

.

That's the bit doesn't add up for me. The adhesion/cohesion matrix effect of capillary action only works in voids, tiny voids. I'd be pretty annoyed if water started flowing back UP my drainage lines :U


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[HUON]

Crikey

[Berlin]

Well it is drainage gravel, not wicking gravel. Water goes down through it, not up it. If water could just climb over the surface of a rock it would all be at the top of the mountains, not at the bottom. Am I taking crazy pills?


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[pjt]

Sophie (Gardening Aus) built a wicking bed and she used scoria which is full of small holes/bubbles so perhaps that might work better than ordinary gravel :?
I have what I think could be couple of chunks of scoria, I'll have to see if I can get them to wick.



Pete

[Berlin]

I'd be interested to know, Pete. When I get a chance I will do some experiments too. But we have a two week old baby and I am probably under-thinking things a bit at the moment!


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[fenderbelly]

This week sometime i will be moving in to my very own home, well mine and homestarts.:B
My son came up from the city and we moved all the heavy furniture in on Thursday, still got boxes and chairs stored in my friends shed but two days of moving stuff should see that knocked over.

I will have a fair sized garden which is a good size for me, there is a chicken run at the end of the garden and a 20' x 20' shed. woohoo
Most of the back garden is covered with limestone gravel which i will move to the front garden which is mostly lawn.
I plan to cover the lawn with weed mat and put the gravel on top of that.
At this stage i don't see any reason to water something i can't eat.
I will get a couple of chickens after getting advice from other chicken keepers in town.
when and if i get my PC working i will post before and after pics. I'm using my friends laptop to post this.
I will make a garden frame to grow seedling and I'm considering a small greenhouse using plastic and not glass.
I have no doubt i will change my mind and plans as time goes on.
A water tank will i think be my first priority.

[HUON]

Vegies starting outgrow the weeds at last.