Tuesday Re-Use-Day - 9

Final Tuesday Re-Use-Day

On each Tuesday for the last few weeks I have been featuring photos of things that are re-used around Scarecrow's Garden.

Remember to click on any of the photos to enlarge them!

* The Re-used items are written in bold!

Odds and Sods

These old tyres have been used to build up a bird bath
they will be planted with water-wise succulents
to brighten up the front garden.
The water container is high enough above ground level
to keep the birds safe from The Black Ninja!
See here on Doc's Blog

When our new neighbours moved in across the road
they gave us all of their packaging boxes.
We split them open and lay them down on the pathways
under a thick layer of crusher dust.
See Here.

The cases from old computers make good 'white' boards
to write notes on in the kitchen.
Many white good appliance cases
can also be used in the same manner.

Newspapers can be re-used in many ways in the garden
but I found this useful last year.
I made a simple flour glue
and stuck seeds onto strips of newspaper.
The newspaper rots away after the seeds have germinated.
See Here

We make our own bread here
and our breadmix is purchased in calico sacks.
This year I cut a few sacks up
and re-used the fabric to make a pair of shorts for Doc!
He says they are very comfortable to wear in the garden!

Finally the ultimate re-use of garden waste
is of course making it into compost.
See here.

Over winter I used this underfelt,
a carpet underlay to keep the warmth in.
Just make sure you know the history of the underfelt
as it is sometimes contaminated with sprays for termites.

This is the final installment of Re-Use Tuesday but as I collect further re-use items I may add them to this list.

Food Gardening For Beginners - Part 10

Teas for Plants

Making Plant Based Liquid Fertilizers
Plant based teas, or brews, are made by half filling a bucket or larger container with the leaves of the chosen plants and filling it up with rainwater.

You then allow the mixture to 'brew' for a couple of weeks, stirring occasionally, until the plant materials have broken down. Be warned this process usually stinks (badly) so don't leave it too close to your (or your neighbours) house or windows.
A lid is a very good idea too!

When it is ready strain a small amount off, through an old stocking, and dilute with more rainwater to the colour of weak tea and water the plants with it.
A very weak (half strength again) solution should be used on young seedlings.
The plant residue can then be added to the soil, mulch or the compost heap.

Plants that are useful are:

Comfrey - Symphytum officinale
- provides calcium, nitrogen and potassium

Nettles - Urtica dioica
- provides calcium, copper, iron, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Dandelions -Taraxacum officinale
- provides calcium, manganese, phosphorus and potassium

Other deep rooted plants or weeds (don't include the seeds but these would probably drown anyway)
Some of these can include the leaves of greens from the veg garden like beetroot, brassicas, spinach and watercress.
Alfalfa - Medicago sativa (Lucerne to us Aussies), chickweed, fat hen and bracken.
Herbs like borage, chamomile, valerian and yarrow.
A mixture of any or all of the above.

There may be other useful plants in your area to use especially 'weeds' as these plants are often found growing on poor soils or problem areas. They actually are trying to help improve the soil by 'mining' up nutrients from deep in the soil, as their leaves die off the residues of these nutrients are left at soil level and help build the soil up naturally.

Compost tea from well made Compost is also useful.
As is a worm cast brew made by adding worm castings from composting worm farms to rainwater. Go here to see an excellent worm farm set up, step by step from Rhonda at Down to Earth.

I have said to use rainwater here because our tap supply is heavily treated with chemicals and some of these (like chlorine) can inhibit the breakdown process.

Liquid manures can be made in a similar way by tying some animal manure in a bag (hessian or shadecloth) and suspending it in a bucket or container of rainwater, leaving it to brew and then diluting the resulting liquid as above. Again this really stinks so positioning (and a lid) is important.
Liquid fertilizers can be purchased as a quick fix solution but it is easy to make your own and save your money.

Read more:
Comfrey Tea
Compost Tea
Brewing up Worm Castings

To read this series from the beginning go here: or follow the links on this page.

Part 11: Planting Bare Rooted Fruit Trees

Tuesday Re-Use-Day - 8

On each Tuesday for the next few weeks I am be featuring photos of things that are re-used around Scarecrow's Garden.

Remember to click on any of the photos to enlarge them!

* The Re-used items are written in bold!

In the Garden

Doc made me a couple of items, out of old conduit pipe,
when I was ill a few years ago and bending was difficult.
More info on this seed planter and tap-turner
can be found on his blog here!

Just after we arrived here
Doc built me this handy little trolley out of an old milk crate,
a couple wheels off an old pram and a piece of metal
he got from a recycling centre.
It's so handy for moving pots and boxes of plants
around the garden at planting time.

More old milk crates this time plastic come in handy
for plant covers against birds and chooks!
Also, here, as stands for my watering containers.

Old T-shirts and scraps of stretch fabric
are cut up and make great plant ties.
They have just enough stretch in them
so they don't damage growing plants.

Isn't it annoying when the handle breaks
on your favourite hand tool.
It still has plenty of life left in it...
...so Doc puts new handles on mine.
He makes these out of old broom handles.
Sometimes longer ones than the originals
for easier reaching in the garden beds.

These old sleepers were around the garden when we moved in,
being very old they make great edging in the veg garden.
Sometimes sleepers are treated with chemicals
so watch where you put them.
This bed is one of the new wicker water beds
and so is lined with plastic.

See here for more Tuesday Re-Use-Day posts.

Friday Photo Update - Fruit and Flowers

Looking good in the Fruit Garden already:

Apricots and Plums



Pears and Apples



Figs and Grapes

The Vegetable and Herbs are doing well too:



Asparagus is up, so is the Horseradish



Sugar Snap Peas and early Goldfinger Zucchinis



Flowering Raspberries
and Eggplants (saved from last season!!)



Waiting to be planted
these Nasturtiums are already flowering...
...eek I can't keep up with them!

More Wicker Water Beds

Three weeks after planting the pumpkins in the trial wicker-water bed, I'm so happy with the results that have I decided to make some more. So I asked Doc to help dig out Bed 10 in the Main Veg Garden.

When preparing this bed for green manure earlier this year we noticed that it contained many tree roots. As this bed had been raised last year it was an ideal candidate for a wicker system.
It now has 2 beds about 1m wide across it.

This time I purchased the drainage hose, black plastic and found some 50mm poly pipe fittings for the ends. The same procedure was used:- Clearing, digging out, leveling with sand then plastic in place.

This time lengths of the 50mm drainage hose of which one end was capped, the other end had an elbow attached with a length of 50mm poly pipe to rise above the surface of the bed to allow for watering.
The soil was mixed with the remaining compost with 2 coir peat blocks included to aid its water retention.

I then added some compost worms and covered the lot with felt after a good watering. Any good mulch would do but I had a clean source of underfelt to use.

This bed will be allowed to settle and planted out with tomatoes when all chance of frost has passed. A shade frame will first be built over it with 50% shadecloth attached.

Tuesday Re-Use-Day - 7

On each Tuesday for the next few weeks I am be featuring photos of things that are re-used around Scarecrow's Garden.

Remember to click on any of the photos to enlarge them! smile
*How the Re-used items were used is written in bold!

Old Fridges

Old fridges never die in Scarecrow's Garden or Doc's workshop for that matter.
See Here for some ways Doc uses them in his workshop.

They are sometimes left intact to become great storage cupboards either inside or out.
Just make sure the doors don't seal themselves on old fridges
as they could be quite airtight if kids could lock themselves inside!

Inside they usually have their doors removed so they act more like shelves.

The grill at the back is removed after the gas is emptied
(you may need professional help/guidance to do this safely)
but then they make good plant benches
when stacked on bricks or blocks.

The inside lining of the door makes for handy storage
when mounted on a door like this one on Doc's workshop door.

When everything is removed and re-used the remaining shell
can be used as a plant bench with pot storage beneath...
this one was actually a broody chook house previously!

See Here for other Tuesday Re-Use Day posts.

Holiday Plant Care

We've just returned home from 6 days visiting our daughter in North Queensland for her wedding. We had a wonderful time but had to leave the garden to fend for itself.

Our friend offered to look after the chooks and water a few things but with the water restrictions I couldn't expect her to water the whole garden by hand!

Before we left I sorted through everything in the shade house and put containers under the pots to hold a small reservoir of water. I lined trays with plastic to create a pool of water and gave the veg garden a thorough soak and filled the barrel/containers with water and left them to slowly drip.

In the hot house everything had either a tray underneath or a plastic pool set up.

In the old hothouse I set up a container of water to slowly drip into a box of basil seedlings...they have done really well.

More advanced seedlings were moved to under the back pergola into containers and a 'pool' set up by laying a plastic tarp over tyres to hold run-off water.
Our friend watered these (thank you) but they were at risk of frost damage there. Fortunately the -2C frost on Thursday didn't harm them and they are just about 'walking' out to the garden by themselves.

I had hoped it might rain during our time away but that just didn't happen.
The pumpkins in the wicker-water bed still haven't drooped their leaves nor showed any sign of frost damage, they did receive a thorough soak before I left.

Just about all the plants survived
and have now been taken out of these containers
to drain properly.