Permaculture Made Easy and Solve Your Garden Design Problems

REAL WORLD GARDENER Wed. 5pm 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/ , just click on 2RRR to find this week’s edition.
INTRODUCING NEW SEGMENT!
The Good Earth:There’s no reason that an ornamental garden can’t have permaculture principles in it already? But generally permaculture includes being self-supporting, maybe not entirely, but  find out more how to start your garden with Tafe teacher and Director of Permaculture Sydney Institute, Penny Pyet.

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Vegetable Heroes:   Angelica or Angelica archangelica.
   Although angelica is a hardy biennial herb-growing the first year and flowering the second-it will continue to live for several more years if you clip off the flower stems before they start flowering. 
 The bright green, feathery leaves look tropical and are large, becoming about 0.7-1m long, and are divided into 3 leaflets with toothed edges. Greenish white lightly scented flowers that hang in umbrella like clusters at the ends of the stalks which are 1-1.5m tall, hollow, and stiff. so it's not really a plant for all but the largest of pots. The roots are a yellowish-brown to a reddy-brown colour.
How to grow it-Angelica likes deep moist, rich soil that is slightly acid, growing best in semi-shade. As usual add home-made compost when first growing this plant.
So why grow this herb? The stems of home grown and then candied Angelica leaves  are better than any store bought stuff and Angelica leaves make a tea the is similar to China tea. Angelica will grow in all climates in Australia except the hot humid districts. One thing to note-it dies down in winter then pops up again in spring.
To get the flower seed, it’s just a matter of waiting after the flowers have died. One seed head has about 100 seeds. But you need to sow them within a few weeks after ripening or they lose their viability.
 Seeds need light to germinate. Ideal temperature for germination is 20C, and germination usually occurs in less than 2 weeks.
  TIP:When buying or ordering angelica, make sure to use the botanical name for it, as there are several species of angelica, and they are not used in the same ways. eg. There's Chinese Angelica, or Dong Quai (Angelica sinensis) American Angelica and Wild angelica.
 If they self seed, then keep the strongest as replacement stock. 
 You also can propagate angelica from root cuttings.

Design Elements:  Today the problems are My garden is a big boring square and my yard is too big or seems too big?.. That usually means you don’t know where to start, so pencils at the ready....!

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Plant of the Week:Acer palmatum or   Japanese Maples make a statement on their own with fine delicate lacey foliage and strikingly coloured leaves. What could be better as a focal point in a small garden are using several in a large garden to highlight a different colour or to complement a colour scheme?
Plant for the red coloured leaves in Autumn
Native to Japan, China, Korea  :small deciduous tree 15' to 25' shape can be rounded to irregular.
Leaves can be fine to medium texture. Japanese maples have a slow  growth rate .is slow 
Summer Foliage :opposite, 2" to 5" long, medium green color,5, 7 or 9 lance-shaped lobes, palmately arranged.
 Autumn Foliage :turning yellow, orange, red or purple dependable for fall coloration color develops late and leaves hold well.
Bark :twigs have green and red, polished, shiny bark that is showy trunk and main branch bark is gray .stem and bark color is a valuable ornamental feature .    Grow in :full sun to partial shade is best; shade tolerant ,moist, slightly acidic, well-drained, high organic matter soil is ideal .often stated to be delicate plants, but probably more adaptable than given credit for.
Japanese Maples perform best when grown in quality, free draining organic soil, in a cooler environment. Light dappled shade can be beneficial, as is protection from hot winds. Good water and nutrient supply during the spring and summer growth phases is important, and mulching can be helpful.dislikes hot, dry locations ,avoid windswept winter locations    Make a great specimen plant, especially cultivars accent plant for artistic appearance ,rock gardens ,in mini-groves avoid over use of colored foliage selections .

Artistic Garden from the Ground Up and Ethereal Pandoreas

REAL WORLD GARDENER Wed. 5pm, 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/2RRR
Design Elements: Art in the garden series is to inspire you to add finishing touches or maybe change your view of the garden. You may not have considered the ground as a canvass for art in the garden before, Listen to Lesley Simpson garden designer here.

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Vegetable Hoeroes:Onions.  Or Allium cepa from the Alliaceae family that contain Garlic, Leeks Shallots and Chives. You won’t cry with these onions because today I’m going to focus on the “odourless” Onions that will grow in all parts of Australia. I should specify that these seeds are of the  brown mid-season Odourless Onion readily available from garden centres from one of two major seed suppliers.,. There is a Red Odourless globe onion that is a long day variety, only suitable for cooler districts.
 In temperate and arid climates you can sow the seeds of Odourless Onions from mid-Autumn to early Winter. The same goes for sub-tropical areas.
In cool temperate zones, sow the seeds late Autumn to winter.They love sunny well drained beds, especially when the bulbs mature in summer.
 If you’re observing crop rotation, and you were growing tomatoes in that bed, always lime your soil  a week or two before planting onions.
 Avoid applying manures and blood and bone to the beds in which you're about to grow your onions because they prefer alkaline soil. You can use spent mushroom compost instead of cow manure.      Onion seeds can be sown into seed raising mix into punnets. Or if you want to sow them directly into the garden, make it easy for yourself, mix the seed with some river sand-say one packet of seed to one cup of sand and sow it that way. Bit like sowing carrots!
 They can be transplanted to garden beds when the seedlings are around 8 cms tall.     
TIP:When planting out onion seedlings, instead of planting them sticking straight up, lay them down in a trench and move the soil back over their roots. In about 10 days they're standing up and growing along strongly.
In about 6 months the onions should be ready-tops will start to yellow and go dry. Pull them up whole-leaves and all, and then leave in a dry place for 3 weeks to cure. Should last a year if stored in a cool and dry place. After that they'll porbably start sprouting.

Plant of the Week: Pandorea Jasminoides "Lady Di", or White Bower of Beauty has white trumpet flowers with a yellow throat, are a striking feature of this hardy climbing native plant. It’s perfect for training along pergolas and around archways and has shiny dark green attractive leaves. This is a hardy plant in most areas and soils, accepting of mild frosts, so that’s down to -3⁰C,  through to tropical zones.

Evergreen in frost-free areas; perennial if roots are protected during heavy freezes, when it will die back to the ground. 
The Bower of beauty is a vigorous climber that likes part shade but accepts full sun as well. This popular and well known variety is native to NSW and Queensland but is often seen growing all over Australia. It can be easily trained over fences and trellises forming a dense screen.
  Why grow one at all? Bird attracting- Suitable for hedge- - Fast growing
So attractive, I had a birds nest in it for the last two years.
Flowers mainly in Spring and Summer, then you get the long seed pods filled with winged seeds that germinate easily given the right conditions.

I’ve given away quite a few plants that have been grown from seed.

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Bushland Gardens and Red Banskias

REAL WORLD GARDENER Wed. 5pm, 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/
Design Elements:So you live near the bush, or your garden is all bush. How do you connect the house and the garden so that they’re not two separate entities. Do you see the best part of the garden from your house? Well you can’t move the house around, but maybe you can do something about the garden.

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Vegetable Heroes:     Leeks, known scientifically as Allium ampeloprasum var. Porrum, are related to garlic, onions, shallots, and scallions.
Sow the seeds of Leeks from Spring until the end of Autumn in cool temperate climates, and late summer and autumn in warm and tropical zones,  and in arid districts, seeds must be sown in February/early March and then you can transplant them in April and May. 
I sowed some seed a several weeks ago and have already transplanted them into the veggie bed because they were a couple of inches-about 20cm high and were the thickness of a pencil.
Using some kind of dibble tool or the end of a rake handle to make a hole that's just deep enough to leave only the top inch of the seedling exposed. Set the leek seedling into the hole and fill it loosely with soil. Space seedlings a handspan apart.
So that the lower portion of the leeks are nice and white, you need to blanch them with either soil or mulch.         When they’re 4 weeks old in the veggie bed, use a thick mulch of sugar cane or similar. In another 4 weeks or when they reach about 10” that’s 24cm, do the same again, or you can use shredded newspaper.      
To be honest you can do all this, but if you don’t the leeks are just as tasty.
Make sure the plants get at least an inch of water a week; otherwise the stems will toughen.
Begin harvesting leeks as soon as they're big enough to use.
They usually take 16-18 weeks--4 ½ months.
Online seed suppliers_-      www.edenseeds.com.au and www.diggers.com.auwww.heritageseeds.com.au
www.greenharvest.com.au
www.cornucopiaseeds.com.au
Plant of the Week:Banksia Coccinea or Scarlet Banksia grows to about 5m. this is a spectacular W.A Banksia that most people in the eastern states would love to grow. It’s always featured in books about Australian plants. The flower spikes themselves aren’t big, but they’re just so spectacular looking that everyone wants one for their garden.
The leaves are leathery ovate and toothed margins, light green above and greyish white below.
The flowers are small and tubular grey with bright scarlet straight protruding styles tipped with gold and arranged in vertical rows. On a terminal short cyclindrical spike of about 6cm long set in rosette of leaves. This Banksia flowers in winter.
It naturally grows in sandy or marshy areas on the south coast of W.A. However, in the book on Australian Native Plants by Wriggley and Fagg, the author notes that this plant is difficult to establish in the eastern states except in Millicient in S.A. where it’s thriving in acid sandy soils over limestone. So if you’re area has underlying limestone, it’s well worth a try.
It has been grown with some success on the sandy soils of the Mornington Peninsula, southeast of Melbourne, as well as in Adelaide.

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On Kew with Ferns

REAL WORLD GARDENER across Australia on the Community Radio Network

Design Elements: Paths are essential to creating a sense of flow. “Without flow, a property is made up of a series of unrelated spaces,” Designing your garden path couldn't be easier with Lesley Simpson, garden designer. Listen here to the podcast.

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Vegetable Heroes: Rumex scuttatus or French Sorrel. Sorrel is a close relative of dock, and has similar large, arrow-shaped leaves. If you know the weed Curled Dock, you’ll know what I mean.
Sorrel, whether French or the Garden variety, grows best in a rich soil, but will grow in any well-drained soil, and can be planted in sun or partial shade.
Sorrel grows anywhere in Australia, and for Tropical and Sub-tropical climates it’s a good substitute for Spinach, which tends to run to seed in those areas.
Prepare the bed by digging in generous amounts of aged manure or compost. An occasional side dressing of compost is all that is required during the growing season.
The plants should be kept moist, so water well during dry summer months.
French Sorrel is a perennial (means in will continue growing year after year) grows to about 15-45 cm high, and about 60cm wide if you put it into the garden.
Once the plant has matured, it can be treated as a 'cut and come again' crop. 
Leaves grow  upward on a strong stem, so they don't get gritty, like spinach. When picking the leaves, remember the smallest leaves are the most concentrated in flavour.
Plant of the Week: Doodia aspera or Prickly Rasp Fern. 
 Doodia aspera, commonly known as the Prickly Rasp Fern, was the first Australian fern brought to Kew Garden You have a shady spot in the garden, don’t we all? What about a native fern with the unfriendly name of Doodia aspera or prickly rasp fern or even common ground fern. 
Ferns require good drainage and it is important that some form of protection, such as overhanging trees, shrubs, a garden wall, the wall of a house or shade cloth, is provided. Where there are extremes of dry heat and cold, you can make a microclimate by closing off  an area with shade cloth or something similar to keep the humidity high.
 Ferns generally prefer filtered light and moist conditions and slightly acidic soils which is what the rainforest floor would be like.
 You don’t have to live in a rainforest to grow this plant. Grow it as an attractive pot plant for indoors or out, mainly due to the masses of pink/red new fronds which arise when the plant is in active growth. Good in the garden situation as it is tolerant of root competition and is very hardy. Also able to tolerate some direct sun.    This plant is one of the most drought tolerant native ferns and gets a tick of approval from the “grow me instead” group.  
For details on fern propagation, please visit http://www.anbg.gov.au/ferns/fern.spore.prop.html.
Feature Interview: Marianne talks to John Seimon, Project Manager of Plant Bank at  the Australian Botanic garden, Mt Annan. For more information on plant bank go to http://www.rgbsyd.nsw.gov.au/