Gold Coast Organic Growers - September 09 Meeting

• Watering - as it's so dry try and use a hand-hose, not sprinklers
• Display of Chantonay carrots - they are pretty big (Top Weight even bigger, but only good for deep soils). Chantonay are good for no-dig gardens. I boughts some red core ones at the seed bank after the meeting which I'll plant on the weekend.
• With carrots, you can use sand - but also just quickly sprinkly along the line and thin out when they germinate... not worth trying to transplant. They take about 14 weeks to get to full size, but you can eat the biggest ones first and get a crop for a good proportion of the year
• Can you eat the tops? Yes - they are very nutritious and one guy puts them in his juices and smoothies (200x vit c of bottom)
• Parsley is from same family but is ok to transplant. Takes about 21 days to germinate so best to grow from seedlings.
• If you have a badly drained soil use Chantonay as Top Weight doesn't like the wet low-down in the soil and can get scab.
• Some letters from Government on GM crops on trial, Blue Rose, herbicide resistent sugar cane - the club gets 4 of these bulletins a month and they are available to any members that want to read them. Personally this stuff scares me a lot... for example what happens if a herbicide resistent gene makes it's way into an invasive weed??? They will say this could never happen - but have they done enough research???
• Someone asked about Cobbler Pegs. They are a weed - but are useful if you don't let them get to seed. Can be eaten in Salads and the Chooks/Ginaeu Pigs love them. Seeds are an old toothache rememdy. Someone mentioned to check out Isabelle's "Survival Guide" for more info on Cobbler Pegs.
• Question about Water saving Crystals - much discussion, but no-one really knew if they were organic or not. I doubt it.
• Potatoes - should they be flowering yet and when to harvest? Mine are flowering at the moment. Harvest when tops die. The guy that mentioned the carrot tops said you can eat the potato tops... I don't think this is right, I thought they were deadly nightshade family and very posionous - I hope he is still with us next month!
• Question about a good shade/fruit tree - Panama/Strawberries & Cream tree suggested - you can get it at Daley's in Kyogle.
• Capsicums in pots question from @hhcv - his get going well but then die before fruit. Probably lacking nutrients, add more compost and read about nutrient deficiencies (could be anything - Iron?). Pull up plants and check for nematodes (this is what happened to mine) - you could also try the wormtec solution which is supposed to introduce good nematodes.
• Mangoes - they flower a lot, but no fruit. Probably due to wet year last year - Bees could not polinate so flowers just drop. Could also be blackspot - try Ecorose blackspot (Ross)
• Community Gardens - GCCC handout. I now have a part share in an allotment at Southport.... looking forward to getting some veggies in there.

We then had an excellent talk from Narelle Cheney from Miessence about Aloe Vera... great product, what an amazing businesswoman. I have arranged to interview her for my new video blog at http://refactor.blip.tv when I get things going. It's not IT related, but I am interested in bootstrapping startup stories for http://upstarta.biz and she is on the Gold Coast (and used to be in IT).

Until next time.... happy gardening!

Gold Coast Organic Growers August 09 meeting

Gold Coast Organic gardeners meeting again tonight and it was great to see a massive turnout - especially seeing @dpn and @hhcv turn up. Most the evening was taken up by an awesome presentation/Q&A by Greg Plevey from wormtec, there were so many questions we could have gone until midnight I reckon!

Anyway - some notes from the intro section:

Spring starts in August on the Gold Coast - get planting now... this weekend should be a good weekend for planting seeds. Good things to plant at the moments are:

• Sunflowers
• Nasturtiums (very beneficial in veggie patches and are edible themselves)
• Beans
• Lettuce
• Carrots
  - Giant Western Red has now been replaced by "Top Weight"
  - For no dig gardens try Chantenay instead
• Basil
• Echinacea

Now have new seed packets - are colour coded (green-veg, pink-flowers and I forgot the other colour) and include more info on the pack about seeds and our club. They cost $1.50 please help the club by buying all your seeds from here if you can - they are mostly organic and your purchases help maintain the low prices.

Question about seed germination. Ross' method is to place seedlings in poly veggie cartons and put under glass (old shower screen) to keep humidity up. Create an humid "environment" for the seeds to keep them moist.

Some new books in Library. Good one on Sprouts by Isabelle Shipard. I love sprouts - they are a real superfood - must get some going this week as my wife bought a new sprout kit this week.

Report that some events are happening with Community Gardens - http://goldcosatcity.com.au/parks for more info. I also found another page here

Viability of Seeds. Smallers seeds are viable for less time. Keep at constant temp - NOT IN SHED (Ooops....! Mine are going in bin on weekend then!) Pumpkin seeds can keep 3 years - but most are only 1. Stories about 20 year old seeds from grandmas are the exception to the rule!

Someone asked about Ants on Strawberrys. Planting Penny Royals distrupts then a fair bit. Other solutions were agitating the ground (they hate movement). Get rid of Aphids (they farm them). Fish/Seaweed solution in the morning. Pine needles aroung the base of strawberrys (this is mostly to make soil more acid - but seems to stop ants too... maybe cos plant is then stronger?).

Question about Sweet potatoes - when to harvest. Should have a purple flower and they literally push themselves out of the ground. Reminded me to put mine in - hope it's not too late.

@dpn asked about his Tomatoes - he has lost 2 crops - thought it was a virus. Ross suggested it is probably too many bad nematodes and suggested following the method explained in this months newsletter. Organix was recommended as a solution to bring the good ones back - I reckon Greg's magic Wormix stuff might also do the trick!

Question about best Paw Paw tree - get a Red Paw-Paw - they taste way better. If there is not much space get a Bisexual one so you don't have to buy 2. I then wrote down "Pathos" in my notes (from @hhcv) - I can't remember what this is from!

We then went onto Greg's talk - which was nothing short of amazing... didn't write many notes as I was pretty gobsmacked. Go to his site http://wormtec.com.au for all the info. The soil biology primer he mentioned (only available for a couple more weeks for free) can be found here - it's only html - so my advice is try and scrape it (using wget or similar) before it's gone. A few of my own notes from what he said that might not be on site.

• Worm diet - as varied as possible - Lucerne, Blue Crusher Dust, Newspaper, Veggie Scraps are a good mix. I have a fair bit of crusher dust around my place - I'll have to try that!
• Horse manure - leave it for a month to let wormicides die. Chook, Cat & Dog poop is probably ok for wormicides (my question).
• Northern Rivers Seasol is way better than the Seasol brand - twice concentrate. Northern Rivers are at Harbourtown (Demand Avenue).

And that's it from me... see you again next month. This blog was mentioned in the newsletter - so welcome to new readers!

Gold Coast Organic Growers July 09 meeting

I just got back from my 2nd meeting of the GCOG (Gold Coast Organic Growers). It's a really awesome group of people - so much shared brains- trust is held in this group, what a source of info.

Anyway - the group is very low tech, much of the information is available verbally at the meeting and the paper newsletter. There is nothing wrong with this at all - and this format probably suits the older demographic of the group. Personally, I find it very hard to remember things and I am going to start taking some notes and posting them here from now on.

Maybe some members of the group that don't get the chance to write things down can use this as a useful reference. I'm not going to go into great detail - just some bullet points you can search on.

Anyway, here goes:

Much of this evening was spent talking about Citrus and fruit trees. Here are a few things that were mentioned:

• GOTU KOLA is great for Arthritis - you just eat it like salad (3 leaves a day). Someone brought some in
• Grumichama - great native fruit tree for SEQ - everyone raved about it. Make sure you get 2 (NOT from same clone)
• Jaboticaba - great tree but can take a long time to fruit. I think this is the one that fruits from the stem - again get 2.
• Acerola Cherry - has enough Vitamin C in 1 cherry for 1 day. Used to use it for Vit C tablets before they synthesised it (there is also Brazilian cherry - but this is not native and can escape).

I also found out that the Mandarin tree I have is probably just root stock - it died and I trimmed it right back (doh!). I also asked some people about Sweet Potatoes afterwards - you can plant the ones from the supermarket (not disease prone like normal potatoes). Peanuts are also very good as clay-breakers but watch out for animals digging them up (just use untreated peanuts from health store).

Whilst reading my notes - I found my notes from the May meeting. Here they are for prosperity

• Kelor Tree - had some magical quality I forget what (have to google it)
• Icecream pudding tree - yum