Australian Bush Life

Hardenbergia violacia or Purple Coral-pea. Natural wildlife food.

We have never seen so much Purple Coral-pea – Hardenbergia violacea as has been abounding on our bush block in the last 2 years with excessive re-growth triggered by the bushfire in 2009. This is one fire loving indigenous plant.

During spring we had masses of purple flowers trailing along the ground and creeping up small trees and shrubs. Since December these flowers have produced numerous pea pods which have been bursting with ripe seed to provide a bounty of food for local wildlife.

Hardenbergia violacia - Crimson Rosella eating seeds.

Although there are many smaller animals like ants which undoubtably harvest the seeds from the ground we most commonly see parrots feeding on the seed pods. Our most common parrots, King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas will come right down onto the ground to spend time opening the pods gorging on the hardy seeds within.

Hardenbergia violacea seeds eaten by King Parrots.

Any excess seeds that are not harvested for food by our local wildlife will remain hidden amongst the leaf litter and soil on our bush block. The tough seed coat protecting this seed bank until the next round of germination. This plant is a hardy native survivor, the tough seeds can even be protected through droughts or bushfire.

More natural wildlife foods…

More information and pictures of Purple Coral-pea – Hardenbergia violacea…

Beetroot tied up with bright ties heavy with a bumper seed harvest.

We are really trying to collect as many of our own seeds as possible to close the food growing loop at our home. We try to collect seed from large/strong and healthy plants to ensure that we will have the best success in future growing of these food varieties using organic techniques. This all appears straight forward when the person collecting the seeds also always harvests the food as they can then avoid harvesting the certain parts of the plant to allow seeds to reach maturity.

But what happens when friends or family come and help with the harvest? Particularly unattended in your vegetable garden, those exact large parts of the plant being set aside for seed collection could easily be the most tempting looking pieces to be picked for immediate eating!

After have chosen specific plants which we hope to let go to seed we have come up with a few techniques/rules to avoid harvesting these individuals (or parts of them) prior to the seed reaching maturity such as:

• 

  Bean with bread tie to identify for seed harvest.

  Tie bright string around individual root vegetables as a reminder to avoid harvesting this plant. Tying low works well as usually this is where you would get down to harvest i.e. carrots, parsnip, beetroot, coriander, dill, onions etc.

• Tie bright bread ties around individual fruits, pods or branches as reminders to leave these ones on the plant. Tying at the location where you would cut the fruit or pod away from the plant works as a good reminder i.e. peas, beans, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, zucchinis, radishes etc
• Tie individual plants to posts using brightly colored strings works particularly well for plants that become really large when you let them go through their entire maturing cycle as it also stops them falling over i.e. radish, beetroot, parsnip,
  carrot, onion etc

More information on how to store seeds once harvested…

Kangaroo Grass as a garden feature plant

Kangaroo Grass - Themeda triandra seed in head.

Ever been looking for a beautiful tufting, non-invasive native grass with unique flower/seed heads to stand out in your garden. Well you can’t go past Kangaroo Grass as a great ground cover plant. This is one of our favorites it has a great tufting form and from spring to autumn georgeous flower/seed heads develop and tower above the grass gently swaying in the breeze.

This stunning grass is reasonably common and easy to identify once in flower/seed. We are encouraging it to grow where ever we can it works well in rock gardens and also along pathways. It can take a bit of foot traffic but we generally encourage it to grow along the sides of our walking tracks, fence lines or lawn area where it doesn’t get too much wear and tear.

Kangaroo Grass a Bush Tucker Plant

Kangaroo Grass - Themeda triandra flower/seed heads

Kangaroo Grass is also a bush tucker plant with the large grass seeds being edible. They can be ground to make a flour and were commonly mixed with water to make a damper cooked on the fire by Indigenous Australians. We haven’t tried this as it would require quite considerable effort to harvest and grind to get enough flour to make a damper of a size worth eating – but it is on our list to try in the future!

Why plant non-native and often weedy feature grasses in gardens when such stunning local grass species are readily available from nurseries?

Kangaroo Grass a wildlife food

Kangaroo Grass - Themeda triandra grassland

Like all indigenous plants the Kangaroo Grass provides food and habitat for wildlife. The large grass seeds are generally eaten once they hit the ground by insects like ants and also larger wildlife particularly seed eating birds like pigeons and quails. The indigenous grasses generally all have a tufting format which provides the perfect hiding spots for many of our native ground dwelling birds such as the Common Bronzewing pigeon and Painted Button-quail.

Kangaroo Grass after bushfire

Currently we are busy trying to build up numbers of this indigenous grass which recovered in greater numbers on our bush block after the bushfire in 2009. So instead of harvesting seeds for eating we are currently harvesting the seed and working on good techniques to grow the grass from seed for planting out. This process is a little tricky but we have had some success this year and have found out that Kangaroo Grass seed has an after ripening time. Which means that after the seed is picked (dropped) then it still needs to ripen over another 6 months or so. We ensured that we packaged the seed away over last winter and this spring – summer we have managed to sprout some Kangaroo Grass germinants.

We have 2 ways of getting seed to grow and produce a beautiful vegetable with fruits you can eat.

1. Add the seed directly to the ground in our vegie patch.
2. Grow seeds in pots or trays and nurture before planting out seedlings into our vegie patch.

Seedling with protector from slugs, snails and slaters.

Using either technique we always have the issue with slugs, snails or slaters eating our young seedlings. Even a tiny nibble by one of these invertebrates can be fatal as they love to take a nip out of the stem completely cutting a seedling in half.

We have been really working hard trying to improve our rate of raising seedlings from seed with minimal effort and tackling slugs, snails or slaters particularly using natural (non-chemical) techniques has been a challenge.

For small seeds such as carrot, radish, parsnip, coriander, dill etc we tend to go with the tactic of just planting out heaps directly into the vegie patch. Using lots of seed with the hope that invertebrate pests won’t be able to eat every germinant or seedling. We have found that to do this in an efficient and cheap matter it is really worthwhile to harvest our own seed so that we have plenty to play with and can afford to loose some this way.

For larger seeds that we plant directly into the vegie patch such as peas, snowpeas, beans, beetroot we plant the seeds inside a seedling protector so that they get the chance to grow with reduced predation by slugs, snails or slaters. We also use a seedling protector if we plant out seedlings that we have grown and nutured in pots or trays before transplanting such as curcubits (pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchinis, squash), tomatoes, chillis, capsicums, eggplants, corn etc.

Seedling protectors on hand in the vegie patch.

We have made all our own seedling protectors using recycled materials. We started with good quality plastic yoghurt tubs but in the end found that PVC plumbers piping was probably best in terms of durability and lasting potential when out in the weather. We don’t buy the piping but have found it all through local hard waste collections. 90mm  diameter piping is the best but smaller and larger diameters can work too. We simply cut lengths about 150mm long.

The best tips we have found for making the seedling protectors most user friendly have been:

• Have plenty readily on hand so that you can grab one or many easily when and where you need them (we have about 50 scattered around our vegie patch).
• Ensure that the opening is wide so that the seedlings inside are easy to water, a small opening makes it difficult.
• Use the protectors to create micro-climates to nuture your seedlings, protect from sun etc
• Don’t put mulch up too close to the protector while the seedling is small as this provides hiding spots for slugs, snails or slaters. The protectors only reduce the chance of the seedling being found.
• Make sure that no slugs, snails or slaters are trapped inside the protector this will be fatal for the seedling.
• Use other manual techniques to reduce the overall number particuarly of slugs and snails.

The small amount of extra effort in using the protectors greatly improves our seedling success rate. We tend to only keep the protectors on until the seedlings have begun growing their secondary or adult leaves and look big and strong enough to tackle the invertebrate pests. Usually this is about 3 – 5 adult leaves present, not including the original 1-2 leaves that are produced immediately after germination. Keep the mulch away from the seedling stem a little longer also helps.

Soil sifter used to sow carrot seed. Month old carrot seedlings below.

To improve rates of germination when we plant seeds directly into the vegetable garden beds we ensure we prepare the site. Of course it is important to have nice healthy organic soil. We are constantly working on improving the organic content of our vegetable garden beds by regularly adding composted soil from our worm farm. But the small details right as you plant the seed can also really help.

But one of the best and easiest tips we have found to improve germination rates is to sow into nice loose and fluffy soil. This works especially well for smaller seeds such as carrots, parsnip, beetroots, coriander, dill etc. We have built our own soil sifter from recycled materials that we found on the hard waste. Each time before planting small seeds we loosen and sift the area where we are going to plant. It also works well to sift another fine layer over the seed once you have laid them.

Home made soil sifter.

Sifting also helps to remove any large objects in your soil such as rocks, twigs or leaves. Some of these items may be too heavy for seeds to push up through and reduce their chance of successful germination. Always water in with a fine spray of water to keep the soil loose until the seeds have germinated.

To build the sifter we simply cut piece of 200mm diameter PVC piping. Then we used a piece of mesh that had 10mm x 10mm grid – which was a common wire spacing. We actually wanted smaller holes than the mesh had so we overlapped 2 pieces of the mesh to create holes of approximately 5mm x 5mm. The mesh was then attached using a few hose clamps joined head to tail and tightened off.

Last year we invested in a heat tray to try to assist us to get better germination rates of our fruit and vegetable seeds. Unfortunately last year we bought it a little too late (in October) and we didn’t get the best benefits from it’s use but this year we have been going full stream ahead. For us in South-eastern Australia it is great to get our seeds germinating from about mid August onwards.

We currently don’t have a greenhouse but have it as a project on our to do list, so the heat tray is the best way for us to warm the soil and get germination happening ahead of nature. The main reasons that we use the heat tray are to increase germination rates which in the long run means less effort in raising seed (and thereby in seed collection also), extend the cropping time by allowing an early crop and also to allow us to grow fruit and vegetables with long growing seasons which may not reach maturity using nature (seasonal temperature) alone.

We get the best early cropping results with tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, squash, corn, pumpkins etc.

We really need the heat germination tray to allow us to grow melons (rock melon, honeydew, watermelon etc) and also it really helps for capsicums, eggplants, chillis etc as these foods all have really long growing times to produce the fruit / vegetable some well over 100 days. So without the head start we found we just ended up running into autumn and the weather cooled just as the fruit / vegetable was coming on line and we didn’t have much success.

Heat germination tray for germinating seeds. Speed seedling growth for planting out.

We sprout many of the seeds in toilet rolls on seed trays and then transplant them into larger pots and keep them indoors during August and September. Usually by October the soil is warm enough and the chance of frosts really low so we can begin planting out our large seedlings into our vegetable plots.

Growing seeds in toilet rolls.

We use the inners of our toilet rolls to raise seeds ready for planting. They are so useful as it allows us to raise seeds and then plant them out without disturbing the seedling roots as you can just plant the whole toilet roll directly into the ground. The toilet rolls readily break down into the soil so there is no cleaning up later on, and adding this carbon source to your soil is a good thing.

We save them all year long as we find that we need the most rolls in spring and autumn when we tend to grow large numbers of seedlings for planting. We have been experimenting with the size of the roll. You can use them whole, cut them in half or 2/3rds. In general those with the biggest seeds need 2/3rds to whole size to allow space for their roots i.e. corn and curcurbits like pumpkins, zucchini and cucumbers. Half size rolls are okay for smaller seeds like basil, tomato and capsicum / eggplant / chilli.

We particularly tend to use the rolls in late winter and early spring as we try to raise seedlings indoors. We try to get seedlings going inside where it is warmer to get an early start. We then plant out these seedlings later in spring, for us usually October is best for warmer outdoor soils and the end of frosts.

We find this gets us cropping earlier and actually using less effort as we get a much higher success rate with our seeds and seedlings this way. Also some fruits and vegetables have such a long growing time to produce the fruit and if we had to wait until the soil was warm enough we would run out of growing time as they would be trying to fruit into the cooler autumn months. This is particularly for melons, capsicums, chillis, eggplants etc that take a long time to get to the fruiting stage.

Alfalfa seeds soaking in sprouter.

We regularly sprout alfalfa seeds for a supply of fresh greens – particularly for salads. We found that they don’t sprout well in the summer as they become soggy and effected by microbes, best grown under 20 degrees air temperature. In summer we rely on lettuce from the vegie patch but over autumn, winter and spring we re-sow alfalfa sprouts weekly for a constant supply of salad greens.

We have a sprouter that we picked up for a couple of dollars from a garage sale, but you can sprout them in a jar too. We use about 3 teaspoons of seed per week to keep us in regular supply. The seeds take about 1 week to reach a good size for eating and once they have reached this size we take them out of the sprouter and put them in a re-usable container and into the fridge. Our sprouter has multiple levels so we can have sprouts of different ages growing at once. But once you move them into the fridge you can immediately get some more seeds going again anyway.

Alfalfa sprouts in sprouter after 1 week.

For best alfalfa sprouting results when we first place the seeds into the sprouter we let them soak for between 4 – 10 hours before straining. After this they are rinsed daily until ready to eat. The sprouter we use has an automatic draining system to eaily flush the seeds with fresh water.

More tips on growing our own food…

Pumpkins a sustainable food source.

From a sustainability point of view growing pumpkins is right up there. They are easy to grow and harvest. Often self germinating seeds can be pulled out as seedlings from my compost bin or worm farm and transplanted directly to the pumpkin patch. They provide a large amount of filling and healthy food. You can add pumpkin to a wide variety of recipes and can even eat pumpkin seeds.

They don’t require any energy to process them for storage due to their thick and protective skins. Pumpkins stored well can easily last over the following winter and spring. It’s also really easy to remove, clean and store away seeds for growing yourself more free pumpkins the following year. If you have the space to grow pumpkins just go for it. They get the big thumbs up from us!

Dill companion planted with coriander.

Dill – Anethum graveolens is a great tasting herb and smells fantastic too. We regularly add dill to salads, fish, soups and it is great with white cheeses, mayonnaise and potatoes. This autumn we have grown our best batch of dill. We grew it alongside our coriander crop as they seem to be like companion plants, not so much helping each other but the 2 crops are very similar. They like the same amount of water, soil type and dill & coriander both germinate quickly and are ready for harvest in similar timeframes.

Just like coriander the best tip was to let dill go to seed so that you have plenty of seed to grow a good crop with. By letting 1 to 2 plants go to seed provides us with hundreds of seeds far more than ever comes in a packet from the shops.  Once the seed starts falling off the plant you can harvest, dry and store seeds for use later on. Planting the seed thickly in autumn and spring seems to work best for us to get a good healthy crop that will be ready for eating after about 6 weeks.

More on growing herbs and vegetables…