For more information go to Get Kids Growing with Organic Seeds

Use your watering system to soak the ground up to 20cm deep.  You will need to test how long this will take with your particular watering system.  After say 30 minutes, dig into the soil to see how far down the water has seeped. Then you can assess how much more watering you need to do.

If you’re using a basic grey water system – that is buckets of water from your washing machine or bath –  gently pour the bucket of water around your plants, allow it to seep in then add more water. Keep track of how many buckets of water ( or how many litres) you use to give your plants a good deep soaking

Empty plastic soft drink bottles

Remove the top and cut the bottom off the bottle and bury the narrow neck of the bottle near the plant you want to water. Fill the bottle with water and leave it to drip water to your plant. Check every few days and refill when empty

Timers

Purchase a timer to attach to your tap then attach you hose and sprinkler. You can then turn the water on for a set time (say 30 minutes) and know it will be turned off at the end of that time.  (Your local council will be delighted that you didn’t leave a sprinkler running all night!!)

Leaky hose

Yes – you read that correctly.  Leaky (or soaker)  hose is a special form of environmentally friendly watering system using hose made from recycled rubber.  This works best in lengths less than 15 metres. Lay the leaky hose on the surface of your garden. You can lay it in a straight line or snake it around so it goes close to the plants you want to keep damp. Keep the hose 2-3 cm away from the base of your plants.

Cover the soaker hoses with mulch after they are in place.

When the soaker hose is in place, connect it to the garden tap with a solid hose and turn the tap on just a little bit.  You will need to work out how much water to use when you see how quickly (or not) the earth gets damp.  It will depend on your water pressure and the nature of your soil.

Before winter, remove the soaker hose, wash the outside and flush out the inside to remove any bits of soil. Store it indoors.

Cut strips from old pantyhose to use as plant ties in the garden.

Tie firmly but not too tightly and the plant stems will not get damaged by the ties.

But roses will bloom in an ordinary garden for eight to ten months in the year with very little attention.

Yes – they do get bugs and they can appreciate a spray from time to time to keep them looking good and to stop bugs from eating the leaves.

Over the next while we are going to have more posts about growing roses – written by en expert who is passionate about them, has grown roses for more than 30 years and who wants to share his love of the rose.

I cut bunches of herbs, take them inside and lay them in a single layer between two sheets of paper towels.  Then I carefully lift the sheets into the microwave oven and turn it on for 30 seconds.

I check the process and keep doing this in 30 second batches until the herbs begin to feel crackly. This means they are dry.  I crumble the dried herbs in my hands and pour them into a clean dry jar with a tight fitting lid.

The best time of the year to harvest your herbs is the autumn when there is plenty of growth. Herbs that work well include rosemary, thyme, sage, marjoram.

You can also try chives, mint and parsley.  Let us know how this process works for other herbs.  Or you may have a different process that works for you.  We’d love to hear about that too.

You will need:

• A suitable sized pot say 20-30cm, or a trough 15 cm wide and from 40 cm long
• Potting mix (available from supermarkets, hardware stores or garden centres)
• A punnet of 6 lettuce plants (Some places sell a punnet of mixed plants so you get some green and some red – some with smooth leaves and some with curly leaves).

Fill the container with potting mix.

Set each plant about 8cm apart in your container.

Water the plants well after planting, then continue keep the soil damp but not soggy, and watch your lettuces grow.

If you want to grow your lettuces from seed, sprinkle some of the seeds from the packet on top of fine potting mix. When they are about 2cm high, transplant some so that the remaining plants are about 8cm apart.

You can grow lettuces all the year round in parts of New Zealand as long as you have a warm sheltered spot (or even inside) in the cooler months.  Check out the local situation where you live.

If you are gardening on a patio or balcony in pots you will need:

• Trowel (small spade)
• Short handled fork
• Secateurs ( for cutting flowers and dead stems)
• Gardener’s ties ( for tying long stems to stakes or railings to prevent wind damage)
• Scissors
• Watering can

In a larger garden you will also need:

• Spade
• Long handled fork
• Hoe
• Rake
• Leaf rake (for cleaning up piles of weeds and dead leaves)
• Large plastic bags or bins for carrying weeds to recycling receptacle
• Hose and nozzles and/or sprinklers for watering

Option extras include

• Wheelbarrow
• Hose reel
• Loppers (for trimming small branches on trees)

You can make compost in a black plastic bin, available from hardware stores or garden centres.  These take up very little room but don’t allow air to circulate very well.

If you have room, make a frame out of wood, old bricks or old corrugated iron.  The bin should be no more than 1 metre square.

It’s helpful to have 2 bins so that you can have one bin being filled with fresh organic material and one bin ready to use.  If you have room for a 3^rd bin then you can have one to fill, one to leave to fully decompose and one ready to use.

Heat forms in the organic waste material so that is decomposes and after a few weeks it becomes a dark crumbly soil-like consistency.  The hotter it gets the faster it decomposes and the sooner you get your rich compost.

You need to add organic waste in layers not more than 30cm thick. This enables air to circulate through the different layers and you don’t get clumps of organic material eg lawn clippings that get soggy and don’t break down easily.

Starting at the bottom, make your compost heap using the following:

• Twiggy material such as small thin tree branches, dead flower stems

• Dead leaves and flowers

• Lawn clippings

• Kitchen food scraps

• Repeat with more lawn clippings dead leaves and food scraps

When your compost is ready to use, spread it on your garden as thickly as you need it.  Your plants will love it.

What not to put into your compost

• Meat or cheese as these tend to attract mice and rats
• Weeds with seed heads – home composting tends not to build up enough heat to kill the seeds and the weeds will grow through the compost
• Thick stalks from tree branches – these need to be crunched up in a garden shredder

• Corn cobs, whole stalks and roots from the vegetable garden –cut these into smaller pieces and then add them to the compost bin.

• Rose prunings and dead leaves from rose bushes – if rust or other fungal diseases are present they will be spread through the compost and then through your garden.

• Oxalis, convolvulus, cooch, kikiyu grass and other weeds that spread along underground or form bulbs that are difficult to remove from your garden.

What to do with organic material that can’t be composted at home

If you have an organic recycling collection in your area, then put your weeds and rose prunings etc in there.  The commercial composting ventures build huge piles that get a steam up as they build up great heat that will kill most weed seeds.

If you don’t have any way of getting your weeds to a recycling depot or commercial composting operation, then probably the only thing you can do is put the weeds out with the rubbish collection or bury them deep in an unobtrusive place on your property.  They will eventually decompose in either of these situations.