Organic gardener in Sydney creates food and flowers

This morning I found a wonderful gardening blog, Garden amateur, by Jamie in Sydney, Australia. Jamie’s created a beautiful, yet practical garden, in a very small space, filled with fruit, veggies, flowers and charm. And the beauty part is: it’s all organic!

“The only themes going here are food, flowers and constant change,” says Jamie in his bio.

Here at left, where we might typically see lawn, we instead see potted fruit trees (foreground) and potted salad greens (right background), veggies encircled by colorful flowers and plants with variegated leaves, an inviting brick pathway, and what Jamie calls a “solar dryer” for clothes. Wouldn’t you love to walk out the door into this garden?

Always experimenting with organic pest control, Jamie blogs about “Organic pest controls that work well” — here’s an excerpt:

Here’s the zucchini patch this morning. Mostly healthy leaves and lots of flowers and fruits developing, but on the left of this photo you can see some leaves with powdery mildew. Me, worried? Not when there’s milk in the fridge!

The formula is as simple as can be. One part milk to nine parts water. I mix up a batch in a measuring jug, then apply via this 500ml spray bottle. As I have only three zucchini plants, this is more than enough. You can use any milk you like: skim, full-cream, buttermilk, low-fat, whatever. And if you don’t use all the solution one day, just give it a good shake a few days later and you can use it again. The experts say skim milk is probably best, as it has the least fat and so doesn’t smell much at all.

[...] It seems that there’s some top quality research going into developing organic solutions for common gardening pests, diseases and problems. The tradition that that everything about organic gardening is home-made and has a farmyard simplicity about it will just have to make a bit of room for the next generation of organic gardening – the one based on good science. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best thing that has happened to gardening in a long time. Organic gardeners have set the agenda for the future of gardening and finally, finally, science has got the hint and is catching up fast!

I’ve had bad problems with this mildew attacking my squash plants, and I had given up ever trying again. So I look forward to trying this formula. Thanks, Jamie!

I hope you organic gardeners out there will visit Jamie’s blog. You’ll find a treasure chest of inspiration!

Link

Photo of home and photos of plant & organic pesticide all by Jamie. Used with permission.