Bee Keeping part 2 and All Things Lettuce

We start with part 2 of a two part segment on bee-keeping, a veg that helps you sleep in Vegetable Heroes; a new series begins called pruning 101 with landscape designer Jason Cornish, in Design elements and a starry eyed violet flowered small shrub in plant of the week.

KEEPING BEES Part 2

Last week part 1 of this two-part series about bee-keeping went to air, so I’ll revise a little of that in the interview.
If you are considering keeping bees, don’t just get a bee hive and hope for the best.
Don’t be like some people that have put Flow Hives in the backyard and not put any bees in and wondered why they don't get any honey.

Would you be game enough to collect a wild swarm of bees?

Or others that have put just one queen bee in a Flow Hive [without a colony]."
Be informed and do the right thing.
Let’s find out about things you need to know about keeping bees in part 2 of this 2 part segment.
I'm talking with John Scot from www.eezybeez.com.au

Tip: using a smoker calms the bees quite a bit because it gives the bees a cue that something is going to happen.

You will also need to replace you queen bee after 3-4 years because she will have become less productive and your beehive colony will go into decline in as little as 6 - 8 months.

That is because the queen bee is unable to lay sufficient worker bee eggs.

Buying a queen bee can be done online and the best time to buy in Australia is from October until the end of autumn.

For a current list of queen bee producers refer to the Australasian Beekeeper (www.theabk.com.au), or the Australian Honey Bee News.

photo Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

Just remember, one of the most important things you need to do if you want to keep bees is to register with your state’s DPI.
If there's an outbreak of disease in the bee population that could threaten Australia's crops and environment, the department needs to keep beekeepers informed.
Registration allows the DPI to identify owners of beehives and know where the hives are located and communicate with them if there's ever an outbreak of disease outside of Australia,
If you have any questions for me or for John, why not write in to Realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2rrr, PO Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675.

VEGETABLE HEROES

ALL THINGS LETTUCE.

LETTUCE or Lactuca sativa, is a temperate annual or biennial plant of the daisy family Asteraceae..Lettuce helps you sleep better.

I’ll tell you why a little later on.

• What to the words Tango, Red Leprechaun, Tennis Ball and Freckles have in common? They’re all lettuce varieties that you can buy.

• Did you know that Lettuce was considered an aphrodisiac in Egypt?
• And that the Greeks used lettuce as a medicinal plant to induce sleep?

Lactuca sativa or lettuce is just everywhere and thought to have started in the wild as a prickly lettuce, found as a weed in the Mediterranean.

Why should you grow your own lettuce?

Nothing beats the freshness of home grown lettuce though.

What you mightn’t realise is that the flavour is lost in as little as 24 hours, and there’s no way supermarket lettuce is only 24 hours old.

• When to plant in Australia

 Lettuce can be planted all year round in all areas of Australia.

Having said that, in Arid districts, it might be a good idea to avoid the hottest months of the year, and in cool temperate districts, you might like to grow your lettuce in a greenhouse or undercover somewhere during winter.

• Not all kinds of lettuce are created alike however!

For all areas, planting or sowing in the summer months, should only be the loose leaf types of lettuce.

• Summer is not for sowing hearting types of lettuce.

Now’s not the time to be planting Iceberg and the other hearting lettuce varieties, like Butterhead and Cos Romaine because they prefer being grown in the cooler months of Autumn, and in some districts during winter.

These hearting varieties are OK in the coolest months. (The upper temperature limit to grow heading lettuces is 28°C)

Summer is just too warm for the hearting types.

• How to Grow Summer Lettuce

If you don’t want bitter lettuce leaves, they you have to grow it

as fast as possible and for that they need plenty of water and plant food.

Ideally your soil should hold lots of water and lots of nitrogen and other nutrients.

Sandy soils need help from your compost bin or worm farm.

If you have clay soils, growing lettuce shouldn’t be a problem, as is growing them in pots.

Remember this, Lettuce has shallow roots, so it dries out easily.

You must keep up a steady supply of water because any set back will at least, make them tough and bitter, at worst it will cause them to bolt to seed straight away without making any leaves for you!

So make sure they never get stressed (e.g. by forgetting to water them).

• Sowing lettuce 101
  

To sow lettuce seed, either spread the seed very thinly along a row and ever so lightly, in fact hardly at all, cover the seeds with soil, or sprinkle it over a bed and rake it in.

 For all you balcony gardeners, any largish pot will do for 3 or 4 lettuce seedlings.

Lettuce seed is very fine so just press the seeds into the soil and don’t cover them.

If you’re off to work everyday, sprinkle some vermiculite over the seeds and spray with water.

The vermiculite holds want but lets light through.

• By the way, lettuce seed doesn’t germinate that well at soil temperatures over 25⁰C. 

So if you are sowing it in a pot, keep the potting mix cool by putting it in light shade until the lettuce seed germinates.

I mentioned before that hearting types of lettuce will go to seed in summer very quickly and not form a heart at all.

For tropical and sub-tropical districts, the most heat tolerant kinds of lettuce are the open leafed varieties (Looseleaf).

All the pretty fancy lettuces you see in the shops, the frilly and curly varieties, they are your lettuce varieties you need to grow.

If your lettuce grows slowly even though you’re giving them plenty of water, then they need more food.

 Did you add organic compost, manures or worm castings to the veggie bed before you sowed the seed?

If you didn’t, then you need to supply extra nutrients, especially nitrogen. Some of the liquid fertilisers will do right now.

Some lettuce varieties for you to try are,

Lettuce Freckles-yep it’s freckly and it’s a butter lettuce as is Lettuce Tennis Ball.

Lettuce Amish Deer Tongue- Amazing two-in-one lettuce that can be cooked like spinach or used like lettuce, so you have a hot or cold vegetable to suit the season. Repeat harvest makes it a highly productive choice for space saving gardens.

Lettuce Crispmint is an outstanding variety with excellent flavour and crisp, minty green leaves. Seed Savers in the US have over 200 varieties of lettuce and rate this as one of their best.

to the elegant deep brown-red leaves that fade to green near the heart.

Lettuce Crispmint photo Diggers Seeds

So why is it good for us?

Lettuce is very good for digestion and promotes good liver function. It can reduce the risk of heart attacks and is good for healthy eyesight. It has good levels of Vitamin C, beta-carotene and fibre.

You won’t put on any weight eating Lettuce  because most varieties have over 90% water and are extremely low in calories.

Lettuce contain the sedative lactucarium (lactoo-caree um) which relaxes the nerves but not upsetting digestion.

As a general rule, the darker green the leaves, the more nutritious the salad green.

For example, romaine or watercress have seven to eight times as much beta-carotene, and two to four times the calcium, and twice the amount of potassium as iceberg lettuce.

By varying the greens in your salads, you can boost the nutritional content as well as vary the tastes and textures.  

AND THAT WAS OUR VEGETABLE HERO SEGMENT

A Little Wild Scent of Lemon

WILDLIFE IN FOCUS

with ecologist Kurtis Lindsay

In Australia native animals are “the property of the Crown”.
This means that no-one owns any native animals, they can’t be kept as pets and to do anything with them you have to be licensed by government departments.

However, there’s no protection from the government for most native animals-whether they’re injured or sick.
In some cases predation by foxes and dogs-feral and domestic have been decimating numbers of particular species of Australian native animals.
To counter this various not for profit organisations have stepped in to help out various animals and this is one such case.
Let’s find out about this rather large mammal.

Wombats have those backward facing pouches which only one other spices-the Diprotodon had as well.
The Diprotodon is of course extince and was the large known marsupial ever to have lived.
Although penalties exist for the illegal killing of wombats, sadly it’s been reported  by the Wombat Protection Society of Australia,(www.wombatprotection.org.au ) such killing occurs every night where on a farms they are shot, buried alive and gassed and on the highways of Australia vehicles indiscriminately drive directly at wombats without penalty.

The Wombat Awareness Organisation (WAO) is another non-profit organisation specialising in large scale rescue, rehabilitation and conservation of the Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons).
The wombat awareness group www.wombatawareness.com, have less than a week to The Wombat Awareness Org is the only dedicated registered Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat charity. We have 11 days to raise funds, fit out a new home & save the 40 wombats in our care from homelessness.
If you have any questions about wombats or a photo of a wombat the visits your park or garden why no send it in or write in to realworldgardener@gmail.com or write in to 2RRR P.O. Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675.

VEGETABLE HEROES

Well it’s TIME FOR VEGETABLE HERO  Winter Lettuce
LETTUCE or Lactuca sativa
You might think it too boring to be a hero, but did you know that the earliest mention of lettuce in history is a carving on an Egyptian temple? Lettuce was considered an aphrodisiac in Egypt.
On the other hand the Greeks used lettuce as a medicinal plant to induce sleep.
Lactuca sativa or lettuce is just everywhere and thought to have originated from the wild or prickly lettuce, found as a weed in the Mediterranean.Nothing beats the freshness of home grown lettuce. Just pick some leaves fresh when you need them.

The flavour of lettuce is lost in as little as 24 hours, and there's no way supermarket lettuce is only 24 hours old.
The Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is a temperate annual or biennial plant of the daisy family Asteraceae.. great in salads, tacos, hamburgers!
But here’s the thing not all kinds of lettuce are created alike! Hurrah, this is the time to be plant all those hearting lettuce like, Iceberg, and Butterhead, Cos or Romaine.
These varieties do best in the coolest months because the upper temperature limit to grow heading lettuces is 28°C so they’re not going to bolt to seed now.
Did you know that there are four main types of lettuce grown commercially in Australia and these are three of them?
In northern Victoria the main growing season for these types is May until October.
When to Grow LettuceA lot of people think lettuce is a summer crop but the best growing temperatures are a maximum of 25°C during day and 8°C during the night.
In cool districts, you’ve got until end of May, then again in September until the following May.
In arid areas you have from March until October, in sub- tropical and temperate areas, we’ve hit the jackpot because we can grow lettuce all year round.
How to Grow Lettuce
Lettuces taste best when they are grown as fast as possible and for that they need water and food.
Lettuces can be grown in light sandy soil to heavy clay types, as long as the soil is well drained.
Lettuce has shallow roots, so it dries out easily. You must keep up a steady supply of water because any set back will at least, make them tough and bitter, at worst it will cause them to bolt to seed straight away without making any leaves for you!
But at the cooler times of year, it’s not so much an issue.
So make sure they never get stressed (e.g. by forgetting to water them).
Any gardening book (all written for cooler climates) will tell you that full sun is essential.
Don't plant them in deep shade, like under a tree. They will just grow into pale, leggy things with few leaves on them.
To sow lettuce seed, either spread the seed very thinly along a row and cover lightly with soil, or sprinkle it over a bed and just water or rake it in. For all you balcony gardeners, any largish pot will do for 3 or 4 lettuce seedlings.
Lettuce seed is very fine so you'll get a few clumps. Thin them out, you know the drill.
If the weather is very dry and your soil sandy, you will need to water every couple of days.
 Stick your finger in the soil if not sure. Lettuces have a very shallow root system.
By the way, lettuce seed doesn't germinate that well at soil temperatures over 25⁰C.  There should be no problems at this time of year.
Funnily enough, my self-sowing lettuce like Freckles and Mustard lettuce start appearing around the veggie bed around mid-April onwards.

Freckles lettuce

Once your lettuce seedlings start appearing start giving them side dressings of compost, worm tea and so on.
Lettuce that seems to be growing slowly, or are starting to show signs of going to seed even though you’ve watered them, is a sure sign that they’ve run out of food.
Did you prepare your veggie bed with enough compost? Of not there are plenty of organic type liquid fertilisers that you can add to your watering can and use on your leafy vegetables.
So why is it good for us?
Lettuce is very good for digestion and promotes good liver function.
Lettuce  has good levels of Vitamin C, beta-carotene and fibre.
Lettuce obviously won't lead to weight gain as many varieties have over 90% water and are extremely low in calories.
Lettuce contains the sedative LAC-TOO-CAREY-UM (lactucarium) which relaxes the nerves without affecting digestion.
So I’m going with the Greeks on this one-remember they used lettuce as a sedative, probably eating it with their evening meal.

As a general rule, the darker green the leaves, the more nutritious the salad green. For example, romaine or watercress have seven to eight times as much beta-carotene, and two to four times the calcium, and twice the amount of potassium as iceberg lettuce. By varying the greens in your salads, you can boost the nutritional content as well as vary the tastes and textures.  

AND THAT WAS YOUR VEGETABLE HERO SEGMENT FOR TODAY!

DESIGN ELEMENTS

Starting a garden from scratch series with landscape designer Peter Nixon.



Starting with a bare patch of grass.

This series that starts today is more for those people who most likely have a bit of a garden but would like more.
To start a garden you have to have some kind of impetus and
They’re faced with a patch of grass and have as yet not decided how to proceed to the next step.
Most people want an integrated garden space so the house and garden flow seamlessly from one area to another.
But you may have inherited a garden with large mature trees, so how do you put your stamp on the garden?
You may like listening to gardening shows and that’s certainly a start.
Let’s find out about the how to get going with your garden..

Look at your site and decide how you want to use it.
Yes, you can put old bikes, and other unwanted stuff in the backyard but it's not that relaxing to look at.

You can even add a touch of whimsy to an orchard.

You want a pleasant green space and you can start today by thinking about where you want some trees for shade and shrubs for flowers or just leaf colour.

Plant of the Week

Backhousia citriodora Lemon Scented Myrtle

If you’re not growing one of these trees in your garden, you’re missing out on some great bush tucker.
This tree has strongly aromatic leaves that can be used in teas, and cooking, such as in biscuits, in Asian cuisine and wherever you like generally.
Leaves from this tree can be used as a substitute for lemongrass in Asian cooking.

Not only that, this tree can put on a stunning show of flowers in late spring early summer.
Some councils even grow these as street trees.
They’ve been used for thousands of years by indigenous Australians for curing headaches and for repelling mosquitos and other insects.
Just rub the fresh leaves on your skin or you can buy insect repellent with a lemon scented myrtle base.
A sniff of the deliciously lemon scented leaves are also a great relief for mild headaches.
A few leaves steeped for 5 minutes in boiling water makes a delicious tea which is also good for the digestion.




Lemon myrtle in a dried powdered from can be used in baking cakes and biscuits.
One teaspoon of lemon scented myrtle to one cup of flour is recommended.
Backhousia citriodora is slightly frost-tender when young but can be grown outside in frosty areas provided it is planted in a sheltered position in semi-shade.
Did you know that several specimens are thriving in the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra in the Rainforest Gully where some protection is provided by the tree canopy and surrounding shrubbery.
Temperatures as low as -8ºC have been recorded in this section of the Gardensduring winter.

Diamond Pythons and Nepenthes

REAL WORLD GARDENER Wed. 5pm Sat. 12noon, 2RRR 88.5fm Sydney and Across Australia on the Community Radio Network. www.realworldgardener.com
The complete CRN edition of RWG is available on http://www.cpod.org.au/

Wildlife in Focus: Carpet Pythons get their names because their attractive patterns are supposed to look bit like some oriental carpets and not because they like to sleep on carpets. Listen heare to Kurtis Lindsay talk about Australia's Diamond Back Python.

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Vegetable Heroes:      -LETTUCE or Lactuca sativa, The Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is a temperate annual or biennial plant of the daisy family Asteraceae.. great in salads, tacos, hamburgers!
  Growing Lettuce
  • Lettuce can be planted all year round in all areas of Australia. In summer, only plant the loose leaf types of lettuce and. Not all kinds of lettuce are created alike! Sorry, Iceberg is out, as is the other hearting lettuce varieties, like Butterhead . 
These varieties  ok in the coolest months. (The upper temperature limit to grow heading lettuces is 28°C)   It’s just too warm for the hearting types. 
 Lettuces taste best when they are grown as fast as possible and for that they need water and food.
 I had visitors recently who noticed that my seedlings had doubled in size in 3 days! That’s good going.
 •If you can’t find a position that provides dappled shade in the afternoon, try interplanting between taller plants that will not totally shade them like capsicums/peppers or eggplants, staked tomatoes. •The most heat tolerant kinds of lettuce are the open leafed varieties (Looseleaf). All the pretty fancy lettuces you see in the shops, the frilly and curly varieties, they are your lettuce varieties you need to grow. 
  •Darker lettuce absorbs more sunlight than lighter colours, so it will wilt sooner (but they are prettier). Choose light green over dark red.

  •The most heat resistant kinds of lettuce in my experience are the oakleaf varieties.

Design Elements:The well planned pink garden isn't just pretty, but is soft restful and easy on the eyes.Since the time of the early Romans to the days of Shakespeare, gardeners have considered pink to be the finest colour in the garden. Find out how to design a garden using Pink, with Lesley Simpson garden designer.

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Plant of the Week: Nepenthese spp or Pitcher Plants.

May I start with saying I’m a novice Nepethe grower. I have one medium sized plant and a couple of very small plants which have yet to show signs of growing. For a year my bigger plant grew taller and taller and the pitchers dropped off completely. I had it hanging under the shade of Native Frangipani.

Friends of mine were also puzzling over the same thing. About 5-6 weeks ago I placed it in full sun and to my amazement, not having read the manual, I came out one day and there was a new pitcher. Woo Hoo.

 It took about a week to open its lid, but there it is.

There are two types, Troical lowland and Montane or Highland pitcher plants. Lowland species prefer hot temperatures, and highland species prefer warm temperatures. 

Nepenthes require high humidity.  Traps will not form properly, abort, or die back in low humidity.

Tropical Pitcher Plants prefer good air circulation and a light, well-drained, porous soil.  A soil mix of 1 parts perlite, 1 part orchid bark, and 1 part coco peat works well.  Pure live sphagnum moss or “orchid mix” is a good soil alternative.  Nepenthes are tolerant of a variety of soil mixes.  Keep the soil evenly moist and well drained.  Water with mineral-free water from overhead.  Nepenthes prefer a hanging pot or basket.  They like bright, full sun and high humidity. If you live in a dry area, hand misting every day is essential.

You pitcher plant is carnivorous and will feed itself.

Even indoors they will attract and capture an occasional fly or other insect.  Don't feed them meat or cheese.  This will likely rot and kill the trap.