General Gardening - superjamie/lazyweb GitHub Wiki

Gardening

Some experiences with gardening in south east Queensland.

Success

  • Dwarf Mulberry - We put this in our terrible soil years ago and give it literally zero care. Good crop of berries every year.
  • Tomato - Grow in winter and spring. Summer probably too hot.
  • Perpetual Spinach - Not actually spinach, it's a beet. Great in self-watering pot, needs lots of water. Top up with nitrogen fertiliser I guess every 3-4 months.
  • Mint - Almost a pest it grows so much. Keep it separate from other stuff. Once in soil it won't stop growing unless the soil ecosystem completely dies too. Easy to propagate.

Failures

  • Basil - Either goes yellow or black and dies. No idea what I'm doing wrong.
  • Garlic - Too hot and humid for summer. Try again at start of winter.

Trying

  • Dwarf Lychee - From the garden expo in Nambour, put in 75L pot
  • Dwarf Mandarin - From Bunnings, put in 75L pot
  • Blueberries - From Bunnings, four different Southern Highbush varieties
  • Avocado - Still sprouting from seed like this

Good YouTubers

Raised Beds (and pots)

Our house soil is absolute rubbish, all hard clay and builder's rubble. We pull up stubborn weeds with concrete dust on them!

If you dig down into that sort of soil, you just make a clay "tub" for water to sit in, the water doesn't drain away. I think it would take years of tilling and adding compost/manure/worms to convert that sort of ground into useful soil.

Raised bed gardening solves that by letting you add your own good soil and control it.

You can also grow some stuff in pots depending on what it is. Herbs are fine in 10L to 20L pots. Small edibles like tomatoes are fine in 20L to 50L pots. Dwarf fruit trees want at least 50L, preferably 75L or even 100L.

Info

Nurseries

These places post their trees, so you aren't limited to just what's around you.