Apartment Gardening Gold Coast Australia

Apartment Gardening Gold Coast Australia is one of my projects to help people in small spaces and apartment gardens grow lovely plants and productive food gardens.
This garden produced today was planted with a variety of herbs into sandy loam, compost, potting mix then topped up with a Pine Chip mulch.
If you would like to create any type of apartment garden on the Gold Coast or Tweed Shire you can contact me on my mobile
Phone Marty 0406 101 546
 'Call me if you want one! Marty'

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Feb 3, Kid's Garden Crafts Gardening Crafts for kids

It's time to get lost in the joy of gardening crafts for kids.
On with the old clothes, grab your hats; out and into the garden... the world is bountiful.
Wonder what we'll make today, let's see...

Could it be brilliant decorations, unmovable monuments, mantelpiece-ready ornaments, rainbow-hued replicas of natures lookalikes, guffawing games or handy gadgets?
It's always the season for kid's garden crafts here, so whatever the weather, you'll find something to make inside or out — you bet.
These children nature gifts make unique, unforgettable presents too. Nature is cheaper and more bountiful than store shelves!
Grow a Hairy Harry and other rainy day growing activities.
Here's a game to make that can be played with again and again. It's as much fun as making it as it is to play the game.
See how 4 year old Max did... and teens and adults get a kick out of this game too. Kids' Nature Crafts Memory Game
That's right, let's get out the paints. I like, you like, we all like... painting!
Kids will find painting an outdoor object like steps or fences so hilarious and free-spirited. You might like to offer to help design the outline of what they'd like to paint, or suggest some ideas (swirls, stripes, footprints), or they may just like to randomly splash, splosh.
Paint is not cheap, but you can often pick up sale pots of house paint of odd discontinued lines. Or try www.freecycle.com and type in your area. Someone's bound to have a few pots of paint in their shed... the brighter, the groovier.
Here are some suggested victims for young painters (under guidance of course):
Paint the compost bin with brightly painted colors. Paint worms, snails, flowers, sun, funny faces on it. You can always hide it behind a tree if the effect is toooooo artistic!Plant pots, stepping stones, pavers or bricks look great with patterns on. A child can paint their name on a large stone.Gnomes, driftwood, rocks, garden stakes, notice boards can all get the kids' imaginative treatment. Colored stones can line a path; wooden notice boards on stakes can be painted with "Herbs", or "Jessie's Garden".If you have a back door step or 3, let the kids turn them into a work of art. Cover surrounding area for protection, unless it's garden or grass and won't mind paint splashed on.
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Nov 6, Building a Vegetable Garden Natural Gardening Preparing a Vegetable Garden

Preparing a vegetable garden of this sort is extremely attractive for those sites that have poor soil or invasive weeds.

It's also a great way to build a garden for those that can't, or don't want to, dig a good size vegetable garden!

Follow the natural gardening no dig diagram below, but first thing of course, is to choose the site for building a garden. Make sure the site is level and ideally most of the area gets at least 5 hours of sun a day.

If it's not reasonably level, roughly smooth out the humps and bumps, then fill the gaps and any lower edges with soil, sand or whatever organic material is at hand, such as bark, leaves, twigs, washed seaweed, paper, jute, wool carpet or similar. As this rots down, you will need to add more compost to these low areas and gradually build them up.

If the ground is on too much of a slope, build some terraces for an easy vegetable garden to maintain. You can make a grand affair with formal retaining walls, or just shore levels up with branches, bricks, rocks, planks, corrugated iron or other obtainable materials.

When preparing soil for a vegetable garden and it is over lawn or weeds, you can mow the area to ground level and build the garden on top, or you can leave the vegetation to decay underneath in time ? as long as you cut out light to kill off the grass and weeds underneath.

If you are building a vegetable garden on a hard surface, such as dry clay, an old stony yard or driveway, put down some cushioning organic material first (as above, bark, leaves etc).

Here's a guide following natural gardening basics. It is only a guide remember, and your circumstances may be such that making a vegetable garden exactly the same would be difficult. You want an easy to build vegetable garden, in fact any garden, so don't go blowing a gasket trying to find this and that, or putting this on top of that.

It's worth reading about Lasagna Gardening to show you how to throw out the manual for building a vegetable garden.

But back to the main guidelines: Begin with a newspaper layer of at least 5 pages ? or 20 or so pages if you like (or packing, wrapping paper, cardboard, sacking, natural carpet etc) to at least 5mm (? inch) thick.

If you have those really tenacious, weedy dudes such as onion weed, couch or buffalo grass, docks, convolvulus, ivy and other nasties, definitely put down a strong first layer such as well overlapping cardboard or at least 20 plus layers of newspaper.

It helps to surround the garden with some sort of border material. This can be bricks, logs, planks or rocks and can be 20-25cm high (8-10 inches) or more. See these suggestions here: Ways to contain raised garden beds.

A raised border contains the organic material within, discourages invasion of surrounding lawn or weeds, deters various people and critters, and means less back-bending.

Lay down a layer of pads of lucerne hay (alfalfa) leaving no gaps, to a height of 10cm (4 inches). Layer some good organic fertilizer on top to a height of roughly 20mm (1 inch). This can be just about any sort of good quality material like well rotted chicken, horse, cow or sheep manure. If you don't have this sort of material available, sprinkle a layer of good natural commercial fertilizer. No need to go the full 1" depth with commercial material.

Add a thick layer of loose straw to the garden 20cm (8 inches) and another layer of fertilizer and then top it off with 10cm (4 inches) of compost.

Water the garden until it's wet but not soaking. You can now start planting your seedlings immediately for an instant garden!

Here's a diagram of the process when starting a vegetable garden the no dig way.

It will NOT look neat like this! You also do NOT have to have these exact layers, materials and quantities. Nature does not use a tape measure ? use whatever you have at hand or can easily buy.

Building a vegetable garden like this (seriously messier than these pictures) can be achieved in a couple of hours if you have the materials on hand. Build several garden beds in different shapes to add interest and variety to your gardening.

No dig gardens are just the same as other gardens... just easier to build and maintain. Here are some step-by-step photos of building a no dig garden using a slightly different approach.

No dig gardens are more successful if you plant seedlings rather than seeds. The seeds can get lost in the mix and you are less certain about where everything will come up. With seedlings, you have a better idea of where things are. Also, with the rich organic materials in this sort of garden you can plant more intensively than you would with a normal garden.

What will do well? Beans, peas, capsicum, eggplant, tomato, lettuce, sweet corn, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and vine crops like melons and pumpkins. Root crops should not be tried until the bed is more mature.

Once your seedlings are in place, cover exposed areas with another layer of mulch. This can be straw, grass clippings or leaves. Try to keep the stems of your young plants clear of the mulch to discourage stem rot.

Of course you can start off with seeds, particularly biggies like beans and similar, but especially with preparing soil for a vegetable garden in the first year, the layers are bulky and not merged, so best to wait a good few months.

To sow seeds after building your vegetable garden, push away the mulch, make a shallow trench and add a layer of good soil, sprinkle seeds, then cover with fine soil. Keep the mulch away from seeds and only bring it closer once the seedlings are strong little plants.

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Oct 3, Lasagna Gardening - sheet composting - build a lasagna garden

You know those barren, sloped, stony, weedy, sandy or clay compacted places where you look at aghast and wonder how you could ever get a garden going there? That's where lasagna gardening proves its worth.

Just toss down layer upon layer. That's what a lasagna garden is — layers.

The layers are not so planned as a no-dig raised bed garden, where the compost is pre-made and added.

With lasagna gardening it is done by sheet composting whereby the scraps and weeds and old boots if you like are all dumped in one spot... well, layered on top of each other.

It's all recycled in one spot.

It really looks like a pig's breakfast, but boy oh boy does it work!

Start with whatever materials you have; maybe old leaves, then 5-10 layers of newspaper, or some thick cardboard, next a bucket of kitchen scraps, seaweed, some grass clippings, then straw. Soak it well with water.OR... start with cardboard, then old grass, straw, old horse or chicken manure, some soil or compost, then coffee grounds, more grass, prunings, fruit peelings, veggie scraps, wood chips, seaweed... just keep piling it on.

Honestly you can do any topsy-turvy way you like with whatever organic material is at hand. It will eventually all rot and provide a great home for your plants.

Obviously there are tried and true materials and the order they are layered, that speed up the process. It does help of course to alternate layers of carbon (brown, drier material) with nitrogen (green, living material) which provides a balanced state of aeration and moisture.

What it really rots down to is that lasagna gardening is just like other no-dig methods, whether done by gardeners, or in the wild...

With lasagna gardening — as with all no-dig methods, using newspaper or cardboard, or your old school reports if you want to, suppresses any greenery underneath and decomposes well. Equally important, earthworms love paper and stampede towards it, nicely aerating the soil.

Build up your layers of sheet composting to roughly 60cm (2ft) then watch as earthworms and microbes get to work... and within a few months your lasagna garden will look like a normal garden.

It may take a year for all material to break down completely and you can top up with a layer of scraps or suchlike and mulch any time.

Plantings can be done immediately, but remember it will settle quickly to a lower level, and for small plants there will not be much nutrients released from the material until decomposition occurs.

To plant seedlings and seeds in your layer garden, use some compost or potting mix.

For shrubs, or any plants that need some soil around their roots, you will need to dig a hole and put some compost in first.

Making a lasagna garden can be done at the end of summer and left over winter ready for planting in spring. If made in spring, add compost or good soil so that the plants have something to get their teeth into for growing to begin with.

Here's what has worked for me, and I can tell you it's more than one way! I have successfully tried:

So you can see the lasagna gardening method is ideal if you are renovating or have recently moved and need to 'tidy' up the place.

The various other raised bed gardening methods are all described here:

No Till Gardening
Straw Bale Gardening
Sq ft Gardening
Raised Vegetable Garden

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Jan 1, Grow a Hairy Harry - Growing Cress in Eggshells - Windowsill Gardening for Kids

It's called windowsill gardening, but of course these little plants can grow anywhere, inside or out... under the bed, behind the shed, in a tent, or on the coffee table!

Most of these can be eaten too...crunch, crunch, crunchy lunch.

Like Julio below, have fun with old Hairy Harry and other green weirdos.

Socks or stockings and decorating materialsLawn or cress seedContainer with waterSoil

Very young children will need help and older kids can do it all, but this gardening for kids favourite... Hairy Harry, is a hoot.

Take one of those pairless socks or stockings every household has and sew or glue on eyes and other facial features.

Put some lawn or cress seed in the sock end and fill with garden soil, potting mix or compost. Fill the sock until the face is filled out and tie a knot in the sock, making sure the mix inside is packed tightly.

Water the Hairy Harry sock regularly, or prop it on top of a jar or container with water. The loose end of the sock will act as a wick to draw up the moisture. Place in a sunny or warm position.

In a couple or so days, Harry will have a full head of green hair — straight if grass and curly if cress! In about a week, snip the cress and eat, and in a couple of weeks, the grass will be ready for a hair cut or styling makeover!

Materials:
Egg shells (or walnut halves)CressPen markerCotton wool or tissues

A variation on Hairy Harry is Eggbert. Even two year olds love to carefully arrange the materials with this idea.

Use the largest eggshells you have and clean out the insides (after breakfast or baking of course).

A funny or smiley face can be drawn on the shells with a permanent maker.

Stand the Eggberts upright in eggcups; an egg carton or even in a mock-up pebble garden bowl, with open tops upwards and poke cotton wool or tissue paper loosely into them. Sand or soil can also be used, but it tends to be messy in such a small area.

Cress seeds can now be sprinkled on top and watered gently. Keep moist by trickling or spraying water in several times a day.

Eggbert's curls will appear in 3 days and soon after you and your child can be munching cress in a sandwich or garnishing a meal. Thanks Eggbert, let's breed more of you!

2 yrs and up
Materials:
Large wide mouth jarMung bean seedsMesh material: muslin, fine hanky, pantyhose.

This is the quickest way to grow edible things. In just a few days, the kids will be able to pop fresh bean shoots in a salad or sandwich or just eat them as they come. This will also work with alfalfa, cress and snow pea seeds.

Put the seeds into a clean, wide mouth jar and place a mesh material over the mouth. It must be a material that water and air can pass through, but not the seeds, or fruit flies if in a warm climate. A bit of discarded pantyhose secured with a rubber band will do.

Soak the seeds overnight in water. Next morning, drain the excess water (use on pot plants) and place the jar on its side in a bright room, near a window. A couple of times a day, re-wet the seeds, drain and return to the bright space. The seeds will sprout and grow very quickly and within a few days will be ready to eat.

Growing sprouts is rewarding and there are many seeds and legumes that can be sprouted and eaten. Have a squizz at more in-depth information elsewhere if you and your children would like to experiment further. Beware many sprouts are super fussy and need exact requirements or they go bad on you.

Propagate garden seedlings — cute little containers for cute littlies to grow their own. Go to: Gardening Activities for Kids and read all about these mini gardens under: Propagate Garden Seedlings.

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Feb 3, Gardening for Kids Kids Gardening Gardening for Children

Guess what was hidden under a patch of toadstools down the bottom of the garden?

No, not some sleepy elves and dreaming fairies; it was a great big gi-normous treasure chest of golden games and activities of children's gardening ideas!

Lucky you, ring-a-ring a posy, let's have a nosy at what's in it. Let's see...

... There are zounds of projects and oodles of inspiring detailed notes on how to make, find, play, learn, slither and poke around with soil, sand, water, mud, plants, bugs, boxes and... oh just heaps of kids' gardening ideas.

These gardening projects for kids will allow even the youngest children to get involved.

We have plenty of quick and easy projects here. Children's garden projects will teach them about nutrition, nature, recycling and organic gardening. That's a good outcome!

So ginger up the troops and let's go: Gardening Activities for Kids

Kids don't mind taking all the time in the world when you're in a hurry... sigh, but with gardening, let them go with flow. Lie under a tree if necessary and observe the world, feel the warmth or wind, laugh at the snow and listen to the noises. Of course if you're all in danger of turning blue or pink, hurry back!
Just as it's nice to simply lie under a tree or stir mud in a pond, remember children usually hate dancing in the same spot for too long, if you get what I mean, so it's a good idea to spend up to 15 minutes only on one activity before changing tack.

Depending on age most kids love to water and plant things. When it comes to maintenance and preparation tasks like weeding, mulching and thinning out, that's when you can say something like, "10 minutes weeding, then we'll water the cabbages, or have a treasure hunt, or pick some peas."

We would love the children of the world to grow up self-reliant and with good business values. But at the same time with a few different environmental and sustainability ethics, rather than what a few rapacious ratbags are doing now.

If you nurture in kids kindness and respect for other people and nature, including plants and wildlife, they themselves will be nurturing, imaginative and community minded sunny buttercups indeed.

So tell them that plants need a nice cool drink when they're thirsty, just like you!

Explain that plants like to be fed wholesome food. Funny how they don't have mouths, but they have roots with little hairs on that take up the nutrients.

Plants need sun, not because it's nice to flop down in the sun after a swim, but because of photosynthesis (ooh long word — make up a game later with this word) whereby plants make carbohydrates by trapping the sun's energy with their green colour, a pigment called chlorophyll (ooh again).

We can't produce our own energy, in fact it's impossible for us and all animals to convert solar energy into carbohydrates, but PLANTS can.

So we have to get carbohydrates from plants and other tiny growing organisms, which our bodies then convert into sugars that give us energy to grow and live.

Ask your child if they like to win a race — race them if you like. Now tell them that insects, birds and animals are competitive too and they aim to grow more, get the tastiest morsels, hang out in the best spots where their mates go — although they do it as a survival instinct rather than for fun.

Explain that's why pests are pests, they really aren't making holes in the cabbage leaves 'cos they like the lacy look; no, they want to grow up big and happy and turn into butterflies, just like kids want to grow up and turn into film stars... or environmetalists, horticulturalists, toxicologists... okay, at least gardeners.

Thus the caterpillar has a life, but nature keeps the balance. So it's okay to squash the caterpillars that eat our food, but not to kill ALL of the caterpillars in the world because then some birds would die without their favourite meal.

Those birds would not be around to then eat other insects which could then multiply too much. Also other wildlife would miss their bird meals, such as snakes or even spiders (yes there are bird eating spiders) and they would perish and nature's balance would be upset.

If helping with a full-on garden seems too ambitious at the start when gardening with kids, try something simpler. There are lots of kids' gardening activities that don't involve an actual garden.

Wonderful sensory experiences can be gained by growing plants, making something out of natural materials, or generally pottering around with bugs, animals, dirt, stones, water and other life inspiring stuff.

Time to make some world champion gardeners. Have a look at these good old, reliable, and some off-the-planet new ideas for fun and informative gardening with children — and of course you.

Gardening Activities for kids Whoo hoo, wheelbarrows full of fun garden games, absorbing projects, and interesting activities for family gardening.

Kids Garden Crafts Take some of nature's materials and turn them into delightful bits and pieces to display, give away, play with or re-use another time. Here you'll find clear instuctions, for all ages and abilities, to make things outside or inside on a rainy day.

If you're having trouble getting the kids to eat vegetables, click over to this page: Vegetable Tips for Kids.

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Oct 21, No Till Gardening - How to Practice No Till Farming and Home Gardening

No till gardening really should be called no till farming, because it is referring to the elimination of conventional farming ways of plowing, compacting, degrading and eroding farmland, market gardens and sometimes community gardens by the use of machines.

Some readers may have quite large plots of land or grow vegetables in a small commercial way, in which case the following information will prove invaluable.

And just a mention for first timers into no till gardening. If your land has not yet built up a good layer of compost with all the necessary soil activity, then it may be necessary to aerate the soil yourself.

Plants need sun, air and water to thrive, and if the earthworms aren't there yet, the soil will need to be broken up deep down for you to get a decent crop in the beginning.

For a large plot of land, run a machine over it with prodder type spikes, and for a smaller plot, get yourself a long prodding garden fork and off you go. You don't want your plants to come to a full stop when their roots reach a hardpan layer.

Don't turn the soil, just poke holes in it. It's no till gardening, not no poke holes, so don't feel guilty because it's not as though you're turning the soil layers over or compacting the soil, (which is what conventional farming does.)

When no till farming first became popular, many farmers used chemicals or burning to get rid of their crop remains and weeds instead of plowing them under. Oops, that created more problems with chemical run-off into lakes and streams, and poison residues. Was plowing still a better option?

No... plowing or rotary hoeing is terrible for the land in the long term. There are many complex reasons, and you may like to read further information on this by soil experts. But for now here are a few simple points.

Firstly tilling creates soil erosion, because it breaks up the structure of the soil and fine particles are then easily blown or washed away, or washed down into the porous gaps in the soil and over time this actually clogs up the soil.

This can cause any one of the following depending on the clay and sand composition of the soil: Loss of soil; water-logging; too much aeration; compaction — made worse by heavy equipment; and formation of a hard topsoil pan which hinders seed germination and stops water infiltrating.

Secondly, although tilling initially makes crops produce abundantly because of sudden aeration, this is often excessive and abnormal for the plant.

In the meantime organic matter, bacteria, fungi, beetles and earthworms are all destroyed by tillage and not able to maintain the fine balance of harmony by providing nutrients to plants in a timely cycle. Eventually more and more fertilisers have to be used to maintain production.

No till gardening is natural and the soil ecology is NOT sent topsy turvy. Tilling damages and exposes earthworms and fatally buries other beneficial organisms including some that would normally help control invaders ? such as plant-eating nematodes.

Tilling releases CO? into the air, whereas if there was a rich organic soil layer, this carbon would be in the plant remains and thus retained in the soil. You can read more about how no till gardening sequests CO?.

Not only that, but the reduced use of heavy farm machinery with the no till gardening method, decreases emissions of CO?.

What farmers, market gardeners and small plot owners are doing now is either total no till farming or "conservation tillage." This means leaving the ground and any cover undisturbed, but using, if necessary, less damaging machinery to open up enough of a furrow or hole and in many cases do the sowing or planting with the same run.

Some of the popular implements used are harrows, cultivators and chisel plows. These land friendly machines only lift and moderately break the soil and prepare the surface for seed sowing or planting.

In poorer countries of course, hand or oxen tillage is done by armies of farm workers. But for small scale gardeners anywhere, a fork and rake with occasional spade use for planting are adequate.

The longer no till farming is practised and the sooner compost is added or plant remains left to decompose in the field, the better the soil structure becomes. Over time, the yeilds have proven to be higher with this method.

The golden rule with no till gardening is to avoid inverting the soil, and to tread lightly or not at all on your planting area.

Other organic, raised bed, and no dig gardening methods are:

Raised Vegetable Garden
Straw Bale Gardening
Sq ft Gardening
Lasagna Gardening

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Oct 26, Sq Ft Gardening - Square Foot Gardening -

Sq ft gardening, or square foot gardening, is also called a box garden... and you've guessed it... it's all done in small squares or boxes.

This is one of the easiest ways to garden. It makes gardening a pleasure for those who are frail or disabled.

So grab your pardner (or a spade) 1..2..3.. and let's go square dancin'!

But first a teensy bit of strenuous preparation. Build your garden first (the no-dig method naturally) using a solid boundary, such as planks, logs or tyres, around the edges.

Make your square foot garden beds long and narrow, or make a U-shaped bed, allowing for cultivation from either side without having to step on the garden. If your garden is against a wall, make it your arm's reach wide.

There are plenty of ways to mark out your squares or boxes. For example...

This one square foot garden size seems to be not too big, not too small, but just right... thanks Goldilocks! Really these sq ft garden plots mean no wastage, and make it easy to use the minimum of seed, thus a minimum, if any, of thinning. They are concentrated little factories of delicious plants.

Per square or box you can plant one cabbage, or two cucumbers, three marigolds, or four lettuces, 4 parsley, or eight beans, or 16 carrots, and so on.

As with all gardens, planning your square foot garden should take into account the usual rules, like north/south aspect for sun, water availability, and prevailing wind.

And because this neat little box gardening method is so suitable for the less-than-agile gardener, make the site as near the kitchen or living room as possible so you can easily nip out for some garnish, a lettuce leaf, or spot of maintenance.

After harvesting one square, add a trowel of compost, maybe some mulch and rotate with different plants, You can see that sq ft gardening is not at all daunting as you do it square by square over time if necessary.

Most work can be done seated, though some people prefer to kneel. You can lean down from an ordinary plastic chair, but don't strain your back. You may find a low bench seat with back support the best. Use an adjacent light chair to help yourself to rise by putting a hand on its seat.

Time to settle back, put your feet up and get into this method of sq ft gardening in a box...

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