Many Canberrans are avid gardeners. We especially love growing tomatoes. If you didn’t know this already, just look out for the number of tomato plants outside the IGA or your favourite garden shop every spring. If you’re not already doing so, I hope, that by the time you finish this article, you’ll also want to start growing tomatoes and other vegetables.
Photo by Julien Kettmann on Unsplash
I also hope some of the ideas in this article help you to control the pests that attack it in a way that makes it safe for all the animals in your garden as well as supports your efforts to be even better at keeping yourself and your family healthy.
This Gang-gang some of his friends let me feed them. They need our help in keeping their environment toxic free.
This male King-Parot is also very trusting. We are stuarts of the whole earth and especially our own back yards. What have you got living and visiting your garden?
My 2018 crop from a small vegetable garden of 6 m x 2 m had produced over 150 tomatoes and a daily supply of silverbeet for months. However, in the incredibly hot and dry summer of 2019, the year of catastrophic fires for Australia, there was very little food in our neighbourhood for the local possums. That meant I ended up with less than 15 tomatoes instead of 150, and almost no silverbeet. The possums must have seen my vegetable garden as an oasis that year. So I know how disheartening it can be to take care of a veggie garden, only to loose the crop.
I think experiences like this are the closest thing we 'city slickers' (as my cousin from the bush puts it), have to help us understand what it must be like to spend $100 000 dollars to sow a crop of wheat, only to loose it all due to a lack of rain! After growing up on a large farm near Wagga and working it for 30 years, my cousin bought a farm in Tasmania to get away from the unreliable rainfall on the Western slopes of New South Wales. I wanted to share a few ideas with you here about what I am doing to protect my veggie crop so you can have consistent bumper crops and not give up on your veggies like I nearly did.
Before I share what I'm doing about protecting my veggies from pests, I'd like to mention how important is to support your plans to be strong and healthy. This is because no matter how much we protect them there's going to be something out there eating them. If they grow faster than they are being eaten then we'll still end up with a crop. A great way to do this organically is to have a compost bin.
This is my current favourite composting bin currently about $60 at Bunnings. Black and sealed is great because it keeps it really warm in the sun and the worms love that. The lid means you're not also inadvertently breeding rats that feed on the scraps!
Compost is a really convenient way to get rid of your weeds, leaves, twigs, lawn clippings and kitchen waste. When you dig the compost into your garden it not only provides extra nutrients, but the organic matter helps water soak into the ground and stay there for the roots of your plants.
Cute, but making plans to invade your veggie patch tonight!
At the time of writing, spring of 2021 has just arrived. After two years of almost complete vegetable crop failure, I had promised myself that I would not bother this year. However, the drive within me to grow some vegetables got the better of me. It’s something that I learned from my grandfather and my parents. As a result, I found myself preparing the veggie garden again this year. This time, I am determined not to be at war with possums and the rest of nature and instead, just get more prepared for the challenge. Watching the entertaining and informative movie called The Biggest Little Farm, inspired me to try harder to produce food while living with nature rather than against it. I’d like to share some of what I have learned about that with you here.
Growing vegetables can be incredibly rewarding. I find it meets many personal needs. One is my desire not to waste resources, and instead enhance the earth by putting leaves swept from our many paths directly onto part of the vegetable garden in winter. That keeps the soil very moist resulting in an incredible build-up of worms. Utilising vegetable waste from the kitchen to make compost also feels good and the veggies love it. Just before spring comes, I add the compost produced from the prior year and dig it into the entire garden. Picking up the soil one shovel load at a time, turning it over and tipping it back in feels satisfying because those leaves and twigs can provide not only more nutrients, but also help retain the moisture during our hot summer. The Biggest Little Farm film brilliantly demonstrates how taking care of the soil also enhances the amount of positive life forms in the soil which increases the productive capacity of that land.
Another personal need for me is getting exercise as well as maintaining strength and flexibility which gardening does. Feeling a sense of purpose and positive expectation is an important aspect of improving quality of life for all of us. Gardening provides that for me by providing extra tasty and super healthy food that I can share with family.
Sharing something you have made or grown can be especially rewarding
Further rewards from gardening: I have family, friends and patients that I trade vegetables with. When I have a bumper crop, I take some of it into my chiropractic practice and ask people to take some. Sometimes I have more of one type of vegetable, or it ripens sooner than another family member's. When that happens, I can then share it with them, and they will often be able share something else with me. That provides an extra level of positive interaction and connection with people. It’s always nice to arrive with a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates but if you haven’t already done so, imagine arriving with a bowl full of fresh potatoes, tomatoes, spinach or coriander?
I dug these potatoes up and took them to my friend’s house. They were some that I had missed after last year’s crop.
Gardening is also a chance to still the mind and get lost in quiet activity. Tenderly checking on the well-being of the vegetables and protecting them from the onslaught of so-called ‘pests’ while at the same time endeavouring to respect the pests by letting them know they are not welcome, can be rewarding. When endeavouring to be an organic gardener, something to keep in mind is to make your tiny patch of the neighbourhood uninviting to pests rather than poisonous to them. One way to do this is to grow certain plants like rosemary and thyme deter snails and slugs? You can even save eggshells, let them dry out for a week or so, then crush them up and spread them around your plants. Did you know that if mosquitoes are a problem for you then you can reduce your use of toxins by growing lavender, basil, mint, and marigolds? (Warning: I have just managed to get rid of mint in my vegetable garden so I strongly suggest growing it in pots as it can quickly get out of control.)
Keep those pesky mosquitoes at bay with Marigolds and other beautiful plants in your garden.
Photo by Samantha Fortney on Unsplash
When we do have to kill pests such as snails etc there are ways to do it without torturing them or killing many other lifeforms that can be the collateral damage when we have a mindset of ‘war in the vegetable garden’. I have an aunt that is an avid gardener and I asked her what she does to control snails and slugs. She gave me a really effective, humane and non-toxic solution. It is to take a small container and put some beer in it. (Note: cheap beer works fine). Snails and slugs are crazy about beer. They’ll sniff it from a distance and slide right in, get drunk, become unconscious and die.
The beer works a treat (literally) but I added one extra thing that reduces the evaporation of the beer so there’s more beer left for me! Not only that, but it stops it getting diluted by the sprinkler system or rain. Take a plastic container such as a 4 L ice cream container, and cut a doorway into two sides, turn it upside down and put it over the smaller container with the beer.
The regular commitment to weeding, watering and protecting the vegetable garden is, for me, an extension of my caring efforts as a father to my children, the loving support I give to my 95-year-old mother and my partner, as well as the care I give my patients. These are all aspects of my life that bring joy and purpose to it.
My 95 year myself with my old mother in the garden.
As I hope you can see from my article titled ‘The Many Benefits of Eating Organic’, I can see the need for, and tremendous benefits of, gardening as organically as possible. While it appears at first to be easier and quicker to just buy poisons from the hardware store, I have decided to take the time to learn from other gardeners who have been able to successfully apply organic gardening principles. Even though I know the health benefits of eating organic I’ve been inspired by my daughter Larissa who is also an avid gardener. Two years ago, I helped her her set up her new garden. (Well, I moved some dirt for an hour or so.)
Larissa’s new raised bed veggie garden made from second hand materials last season. It is a great way to reduce the chances of straining your back while at the same time making it faster, easier and more comfortable to work in your with your garden.
This year for Father’s Day, Larissa gave me GMO FREE seeds from Eden Seeds. Many of the seeds we buy are not organically grown seeds and can even be genetically modified. I used to think “I doubt that genetically modified food will harm us?” But then Larissa wrote an essay on the topic at high school. When I read it I was shocked at the amount of good research that shows how it can harm our health. Keep an eye out for an article on that topic that I plan on writing soon.”
The card that came with this year’s Father’s Day gift.
I feel blessed to have had time with my grandfather at a very young age. Before the following picture was taken of myself with grandpa, I can remember his magnificent vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Wagga, rural New South Wales. He had been a farmer all his life but when he retired, he focussed his passion on his garden.
A picture of Grandpa Roy teaching me the joy of gardening. It looks like I had to dress up for gardening back in those days. Maybe that's why I hardly ever wear a tie these days.
That picture was taken in our front yard in Cheltenham, Sydney. The year prior, I remember working hard at helping my father dig out the weeds from that area and improve the soil and building a compost bin. The fact that I can remember being extremely useful very likely has more to do with my father's generous encouragement and appreciation then it does the actual work done! Dad always managed to make me feel that way.
Last week I became frustrated when I discovered my young silverbeet were being eaten; and not by humans. I consulted my daughter for ideas, and she thought it might be the work of little black caterpillars that she has seen come out in the evening at her place. She suggested cutting the bottom of large plastic pots, turning them upside down, then push a little soil around the bottom outer edge. She found that approach can be a simple, low-cost and poison free solution to that common problem. I did that, however, early today I looked out the window and saw that my pots had been turned over. I went straight out to investigate and, with an incredible application of intelligence, concluded that little black caterpillars would not be able to tun there pots over. So I thought “Ah Ha, those pesky possums are behind this!”
Damaged silverbeet seen after possums pushed them over to eat them. Also, note the modified pot solution for caterpillars.
I decided to leave the modified pots in place until the plants get stronger and bigger and could keep up with the occasional caterpillar or snail, but knew I needed something to deter the possums. Before I tell you about that, I have an admission to make. My first thought was to revert to poison spray. I knew I had some kind of Beyer concoction in the garage but decided not to use it and instead looked for the Pyrethrum. The toxin is supposedly not harmful to put on the vegetables and in my experience that's probably true given it stops working to deter the pests after about three days.
Here's what the Bunnings website has to say about it. "Pyrethrum daisy is best known for its natural insecticidal properties. Pyrethrins extracted from its dried flowers and seeds are effective in deterring and controlling sap-sucking insects like aphids, thrips, leafhoppers, harlequin bugs, white fly and caterpillars. Pyrethrum sprays can be safely used on edible plants. including vegetables and herbs.
Tasmania is the world's leading supplier of commercial pyrethrum. In spring and early summer broad acres of the countryside turn white when the plants are in bloom."
I wanted top see if there was anything else to back up my effort to protect the spinach because I didn't want to make the possums sick. Therefore, I turned to the internet and found one gardener’s experience using crushed garlic and water to spray onto the plants. I’m still testing that so please feel free to send me an email if you want to know how that went.
Garlic water is said to chase the possums away.
Another precaution I’m going to take this year is to put a fence around the entire garden. In fact, it was only after promising myself that I would put up a fence that I decided I would have a vegetable garden this year. Please don’t be discouraged though, I might have a few more possums than you since my Dad, who died nearly 18 years ago, built a possum house in our garden. There’s no way mum is going to let me take that down. I found a video by two experienced gardeners talking about how to deal with our possum friends. I learned several new things from this Gardening Australia video about the topic but most importantly, I found out that even a reasonably low chicken wire fence (I’m going to play it safe and make mine 90 cm), can be very effective at keeping the possums out. The supplies seen in the picture below cost me $190. That’s a lot of veggies I must grow to get that money back, but I purchased some nice thick Aussie hardwood posts and the whole thing should last at least 10 years.
The possum box Dad built
One of the culprits seen in the box!
Getting ready to construct night security measures.
My plan is to report back here in a few months with a picture of a flourishing vegetable garden. If the possums and caterpillars beat me this time, I’ve got some more ideas up my sleeve for next year. Rather than quit, I’m determined to make this sustainable and get this right, just like the team of dedicated farmers and volunteers in the film I mentioned above called The Biggest Little Farm.
Dr. Jason Barritt
chiropractor
Please feel free to contact me here: vitality@bodymindec.com.au