KITCHEN GARDEN SEGMENT on REAL WORLD GARDENER radio show Scientific Name: Rungia klossii Common name: Mushroom plant Family: Acanthaceae Origin: New Guinea Rungia klossii is an evergreen Perennial growing to 0.6 m x 0.6 m at a medium rate. Soils: Suitable for: light or sandy, medium (loamy) and heavy (clay) soils. Habitat: Mushroom plant can grow i…

KITCHEN GARDENBeans and More Beans What is your favourite warm season vegetable or are there too many to choose from? Top of the list for many a gardener is the humble bean, because in warm weather, they’re so easy to germinate. In fact my bean crop was directly sown on a Monday and they were up by Thursday. But how do you get a continuous crop of …

KITCHEN GARDENIs Vietnamese mint really a mint? Scientific Name: Persicaria odorata Common Name:Vietnamese mint Family: Polygonaceae True mints botanically speaking have wide spreading underground rhizomes with erect, square and branching stems. The leaves are opposite each other on those square stems, with clusters of small tubular flowers. Ture m…

THE GOOD EARTHHow to Grow and Use Yacon: Peruvian Ground Apple Scientific Name: Smallanthus sonchifolius Common Name: Yacon, Peruvian ground apple Family: Asteraceae-same as daisies and sunflowers. Plant Height & Width: 1.5m x 0.5m If you look at the flowers they are like much smaller versions of sunflowers. Here’s a tuber that tastes similar to a …

TALKING FLOWERSSeasonality of Flowers Vegetables have their season when they’re available fresh and not just out of the cold room where they’ve been for 6 months or more. What about flowers? Many people forget that flowers have their seasons too, after all there are plenty of flowers available all year round. Hellebores-a winter flower Why is that …

SPICE IT UPFurikake: Japanese seasoning Isn't it time you enlivened your tastes buds with something you've never tried before? This next spice isn’t just one spice on it’s on but several spices or a blend of spices that are just right for Japanese food or any other food for that matter. Furikake is a traditional Japanese seasoning that is sprinkled…

KITCHEN GARDENLeaf Celery Scientific Name:Apium graveolens var. secalinum Plant family: ApiaceaeCommon Name: Parcel A relatively uncommon or even unkown herb or vegetable. Parcel stems from the idea that it looks like parsley but tastes like celery. Leaf celery is a biennial plant growing to 60cm in height. Biennial simply means that leaf celery gr…

SPICE IT UPKnow Your Cardamoms. There are many budding chefs and cooks that use heaps of spices in their recipes going by the success of cooking shows on television. Green and brown cardamom podsIndian, Asian and Mexican cooking particularly calls for a wide selection of these different spices. Some spices though come in a variety of grades, colour…

TALKING FLOWERS Tips on Choosing the Freshest Flowers Do you regularly buy a bunch of fresh flowers to brighten up your home? Do you find that no matter which ones you buy, you just can't seem to get them to last past a few days, but friends regularly boast about how their flowers last for over a week? Sometimes I cringe when I see a bunch of flowe…

TALKING FLOWERSDried Flowers and How To Do ThemDid you know that dried flowers are back in fashion?Perhaps, like me you thought that never went out of fashion, but do you dry your own on do you buy dried flower arrangements? No prizes for guessing that those brightly coloured flowers are actually bleached in vats of bleach first, then because all t…

KITCHEN GARDENTricks with Horseradish My father was a big fan of this vegetable or perhaps it should be called a herb? He loved it grated on various meats, ‘clears out the sinuses' he always exclaimed. Not too many gardeners are familiar with horseradish and even though it's a perennial vegetable that's easy to grow. Perhaps because gardeners and o…

TALKING FLOWERSSustainable Floristry Have you ever thought about what happens to the tons of flowers that are sold around Australia for weddings, funerals, special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries? Hydrangea flowers for sale Perhaps some of the lucky recipients might compost them when they're finished or at least throw in the in the green…

Root Knot Nematodes:Control So if you have correctly identified that your plants are affected by root knot nematodes, what can be done about it? Remember, they look different to nitrogen fixing nodules on roots of plants. tomato nematode Controlling nematodes1.Cultural Control by rotating your plants-nematodes only survive 1 year in the soil. 2.Gro…

PLANT DOCTORNematodes part 1: the backstory Did you know that there are 1,000,000 species of nematodes that have been identified? Nematodes live in our environment and although microscopic, unsurprisingly, are related to earthworms The majority of nematodes aren't plant or crop destructors. However, the few that attack the cell walls of plants can …

PLANT DOCTOR Germinating Native Seed Australian plants have evolved over thousands of years to respond to a variety of climatic extremes, from fires, to droughts to floods as well as being grazed by native animals. Wattle seeds need boiling water treatmentSuch a long, long time for plants to evolve as well as being isolated from the rest of the wor…

PLANT DOCTORPruning Native Plants For some reason, many gardeners have been reluctant to prune their native plants, thinking that if they did, those plants might never recover or worse, just drop dead. Then there’s the gardener that’s reluctant to prune something that they’ve just planted because after all, they paid good money for that plant, so w…

TALKING FLOWERSTips For Longer Lasting Flowers in the Vase Flowers are so uplifting and whilst they’re lovely in the garden, in the home, you’ve got them to enjoy for longer. After all, you’re not watching your flowers that are in the garden for very long. There are plenty of 'old wives tales', and just plain outright myths about what to do to your…

Climber Shrubs This design series that covers everything from mixed shrub borders, sub-shrubs, climbers, hero trees to best garden bromeliads but use plants that are non-general lines. I have to say, Peter Nixon, RWG’s contributor for this series, focuses largely on what he calls cool sub-tropical garden or ‘cool sub-trops’ which he refers to often…

DESIGN ELEMENTSClimber Heroes This design series is about plants that are categorised as non-general lines. Every week I’ve been saying that were talking about plants that you won’t necessarily find in your big box store or possibly even in your nursery so you may have to search for them. These plants are so worthwhile that because they provide yea…

DESIGN ELEMENTSBright Shade Planting This design series is about plants that are categorised as non-general lines, in other words, plants that are not production grown that then become available in several different sized pots. This series is also about year round interest in the garden even when plants are not in flower. Imagine opening the back d…

DESIGN ELEMENTSThis is a series about foliage colour and contrast and textural contrast for year round interest. The focus is also on non-general lines instead of production grown planting. In other words, plants that may not necessarily be easy to find but so worth the effort. We kick off the series with mixed shrub borders. MIXED SHRUB BORDER Are…

KITCHEN GARDEN LEMON VERBENA Did you think that herbs were just for making tea? Maybe not, but some herbs have endless uses, and this week I’m featuring the herb lemon verbena (Aloysia citriodora) that’s larger than you would expect to find in a herb garden so probably could fit into the back of a border but in a sunny location. Lemon verbena photo…

SPICE IT UPMIXED SPICE The name 'mixed spice,' sounds 'oldie worldie' to me because it's not something that comes up in too many recipes these days. Perhaps if your flicking through an old Woman's Weekly recipe book, or the cookbook you used at school in home economics class, you might find it in the cakes and buns section. What is mixed spice?Mixe…

Plant Nutrition Deficiencies:Phosporus and PotassiumWe have talked bout the role nitrogen played in played health and what to look for if a plant was deficient in one of the major nutrients, being Nitrogen. In fact there are three major nutrients which are classified as NPK ratio on the back of all fertilisers. So in this part of the blog, we carry…

PLANT HEALTHPlant Nutrition Deficiencies: Macro Nutrient Nitrogen The 'Plant health' segment was created for my radio show "Real World Gardener,' as a division of the 'Plant doctor' segment, because I felt that it’s important to focus on what can go wrong with plants that isn’t a pest or a disease. In the following audio podcasts, you will hear abo…