Succulents - easy & fun plants

 

You have to love Succulents with their ability to be grown almost anywhere. They will thrive with little fuss, in small amounts of soil & in the most sunshine. They need little watering, so are excellent for Australias climate & droughts. They come in all colours, textures, shapes & sizes. They can be put in corners of the garden, in pots on the patio, on windowsills or indoors.

Succulents are really good fun & a great plant for newbie gardeners. You can start your collection by visiting the nursery, or steal cuttings off friends & family (as I do). Think about where you want to plant a succulent, think about what size or colour you want. Ask how they grow ie: are they ground spreaders or tall? Cacti are awesome but not much fun to handle, so avoid the more prickly ones. Smooth leafed succulents include Echeveria, Aeonium, Crassula, Sempervivum, Sedum, Agave & Cotyledons. Arrange them artistically, try to avoid clashing colours or textures.

In the garden

 The best planting time is now, Autumn or Spring, avoid Winter as it is usually too cold & wet. Plant into well drained soils, in plenty of sun. Many succulents will tolerate shade as well. My garden is testament to that. If you want to grow a succulent border, try buying a few plants to get you going, then propagate the rest. Some great border succulents are Echeveria & Sedums, as they clump & spread really well.

Larger plants, such as Yucca, Aloe or Agave need more space & you need to think where you want these plants situated for the best affect. Plant flexible foliage plants nearby, ie: flax, daisies or lavender to soften the look.

Pots and containers

Succulents love growing in pots. They are the renters friend as you can drag the plant from rental to rental. 

Always use terracotta pots for succulents, if you can. Because they don't have a glaze, making them porous, it helps improve drainage and aeration which reduces the chance of rot. But succulents will grow in any container - pots, urns, troughs, window boxes, or even an old boot. The only limit is your imagination. Mulch the top of your container with pebbles to finish them off.

 Potted succulents will need protection from extreme cold or heat. You need to use a potting mix specially for cacti or succulents, or make your own by mixing coarse sand to your potting mix. 

Propagating Succulents

1. Remove leaf or flower & dry

To propagate your own, simply remove a leaf or flower then leave to dry outside for a few days to heal the wound and prevent it from rotting when planted.

2. Dip into root hormone gel & place in tray

Dip into root hormone gel and place in a pot or tray filled with potting mix. To prevent the roots from rotting, use a specialised potting mix, or make your own, with equal parts good-quality potting mix and coarse sand, or gravel mix.

3. Cover tray

For best results, cover your tray or pot with a plastic bag for a week, using a couple of skewers to ensure the plastic stays off the cutting. This will act as a mini greenhouse, offering protection and humidity while new roots form.

Problems

Very few pests & diseases bother succulents. They do not like being mulched with moist mulch, they prefer pebbles & stones. They do not like prolonged cold or wet conditions, but will tolerate a little frost if the plant is kept dry. Wet Winters may cause black spot on leaves. Remove the infected leaves promptly.

Feeding and watering

During Spring & Summer, when the plant is actively growing, you will need to give them a feed. use a slow release fertiliser in granule form. Succulents are like sponges, or a water storing vessel. They take what they need from rain, then let the rest drain quickly away. Constantly wet soil will eventually be the death of most succulents, as the stems will rot at the base. Thats why it is important to have excellent drainage, & do not water at all in Winter. I try to keep most pots under cover of the verandah, so I can control the water, not mother nature.

To start your collection, make sure you visit friends & relatives with your scissors ready. Most gardens stock at least one succulent. They are excellent to hone your propagating skills. Ive pinched plants from one end of the state to the other. Most will grow here, even in our worst Winters. I have lost a few to too much moisture , so it is trial & error to what will grow in your garden. If you do have a plant that tends to rot, try placing in a pot in a sheltered area, & watch it take off again. I find that a few varieties need to be shaped, as branches get too heavy, so snap off a few branches here & there to keep it well balanced. Then I plant these branches or leaves somewhere else. They never go to waste.

Happy Grubbing

Gardenia Trellis.

Permaculture - not Hippy nonsense

PERMACULTURE

Growing some of your own veggies, composting your food scraps, redirecting that air-conditioning drip onto the fruit tree on the patio… it’s the little things we decide to do that can lead us toward a more sustainable existence. In Permaculture, these small gestures are sometimes called examples of the ‘one percent rule’ which can, when we do enough of them, add up to significant benefits in our immediate environment – and a happier, healthier and decidedly more interesting life.

Permaculture is described as a deliberate design of ecosystems that offer diversity, stability & resilience, a philosophy of working with, rather than against, nature. The beginnings of this study started some 40 years ago, & was dismissed as 'hippy nonsense" at first. The concept of Permaculture, today, is based on 3 profound core ethics:-

• caring for earth
• caring for people
• fair sharing of the earth's bounty & resources

Unfortunately, as most of us only connect to food when we drop into the supermarket to buy our groceries, not seeing it as something that comes from the earth, we have disconnected ourselves from the process. Permaculture has 12 simple principles, which to most of us would be seen as common sense, ie; - integrate rather than segregate; work with nature, not against it; create no waste .

What Is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a system of design principles for building and cultivating sustainable human habitats, drawing inspiration from patterns in natural systems. And in this case, ‘habitats’ means whatever you call home – apartment, farm, terrace, suburb or even houseboat. A functioning Permaculture system is a habitat that takes into consideration as many of its inputs and outputs as it possibly can, and aims to become as efficient and sustainable as possible for the sake and comfort of its inhabitants. This includes growing food wherever you live (window-sill tomatoes), finding creative and useful ways to reuse waste (emptying out the bath water), thinking carefully about how to make things do more than one job (left in the sun for the afternoon, the back seat of your car is a brilliant spot to rise bread dough or make yoghurt in a flash) and basically working with what you’ve got (Balcony seems too small for a mini veggie plot? Go vertical and harvest climbing beans, peas and passionfruit from the balcony walls and barrier instead).

Want To Learn More?

There are quite a few courses & workshops around Australia. Topics can include building up the soil, what to plant in a small urban garden & how to mulch & water successfully. Pest & disease control is discussed, also weed control, companion planting, harvesting & storage.

All courses are based on permaculture principles, such as catching & storing energy, produce no waste (composting, recycling) & integrate rather than separate (companion planting, crop rotation)

• Permaculture College Australia (Nimbin)
• Milkwood Permaculture (Mudgee)
• Permaculture Sydney Institute (Sydney)
• Southern Cross Permaculture Institute (Gippsland)

How To Include Permaculture Principles

Catch and store energy: Energy means things like water, heat, a cooling breeze – anything that passes into your system that you need, try to find a way to catch and store it within your system for your future use. Collect rain run-off in a tank (or a bucket) to catch and store water, paint a sunny north-facing brick wall a dark color to catch winter heat, create the ultimate airflow path to direct and divert that cooling breeze throughout your whole house.

Integrate rather than segregate: Aim for multi-tasking in all aspects of your habitat, and try to make sure that everything serves more than one function. This can apply to objects, structures, plants and any other element of your system. For example, remember that north-facing brick wall? As well as painting it a dark color to catch and store heat energy in winter, you could plant a passionfruit vine to trail up it. The northern aspect will help ripen the fruit, the leaves will shield the wall from collecting heat energy in summer, and, being deciduous, the passionfruit will lose its leaves over winter when you want that wall to be catching all the sun it can. That wall is now multi-tasking  and providing you with both passionfruit and a more comfortable environment throughout the year.

Use and value diversity: Permaculture is big on diversity. Diversity, frankly, is what any stable system hinges apon. An enduring example of diversity being used to stabilize and enhance a system is the French cottage garden, known as the Potager. A Potager garden is a part ornamental, part kitchen garden, where cabbages grow under roses and beans grow amongst oregano with poppies towering overhead. The diversity of plants in a Potager, which is frequently without rows of any single particular vegetable, creates an admirably stable system through diversity, where pests are often confused by the riot of shapes and colors, and therefore cannot wreak havoc on more than one of your cabbages before they get picked off by either birds, ‘good bugs’, or you.

Creatively use and respond to change:  Whether it’s taking out the front lawn and putting in water-wise, bird attracting plants and groundcovers in response to water restrictions, voluntarily down-sizing (which incidentally gives you more time to make your habitat more sustainable), or just opting out of the culture or More in favor of an outlook of Enough, change is the main constant of any system. 

Use small and slow solutions:  Those seemingly 'big projects' getting you down?Permaculture advocates a simple solution to this problem: start at your back  door, and work outwards from there.  You could roll up your sleeves and begin with nurturing just one pot of herbs on your windowsill, and take the adventure from there. Who knows what, in a few years time, you might have created beyond that window.

3 Tips For Planting Yummy Crops

• Plant the most highly productive & prized plants, something you love to eat. Picking different greens continuously for 8 weeks is more exciting than watching 2 capsicums plants grow all season.
• Grow a variety of heirloom & native plant seeds
• Top planting recommendations for a beginner include :- tomatoes, peas, strawberries & carrots, greens such as lettuce, silverbeet, spinach, kale & rocket, flavoursome herbs such as chives, basil , parsley, oregano, mint, rosemary & thyme. Companion plant marigolds, calendula & nasturtiums.

Friends Together

The principles of Companion planting is as old as gardening itself. It means planting certain plants together for better yield & flavour. Basically, by planting a variety of plants together, confuses the insects that seek out that particular plant. 

• beans are happy near celery & cucumbers, but dislike onions & fennel.
• beetroot like being near lettuce, onions & most cabbages, but dont like pole beans & mustard
• carrots, lettuce, radish, onions & tomatoes like each other but dont like dill anywhere near them.
• corn likes pumpkins, peas, beans, cucumbers & potatoes, but not tomatoes
• lettuce likes onions, strawberries, carrots, radishes & cucumbers.

Good Gardening Habits

Gardening, with its bending, stretching, lifting etc is great exercise. But overdoing it can lead to pain & injury (I have what I call gardeners knee & now shoulder) Here are 4 tips on how to avoid injury:-

• Warm Up - light raking or walking warms up the muscles. Do light stretching before, during & after your gardening session
• Maintain Good Posture - particularly the core muscles - and body movements. Use your legs & keep your back straight when picing up large or heavy objects; hold objects close to your body to prevent back pain & strain
• Practise Erganomics - stay close to the ground to trowel, plant & weed. Wear knee pads & make sure tools are sharp when pruning or sawing
• Pace Yourself - Take breaks & change tasks to avoid overuse of certain muscle groups

I hope this explains things

Happy Grubbing

Gardenia Trellis