Problem Solving articles – here I answer questions and help provide solutions for common garden problems.

9 Strategies to Help Combat Common Edible Garden Problems

Having garden problems? Do you ever feel frustrated with your soil, pests or limited space? Is it too hot or windy, cold, wet or dry to grow food? If you’re having challenges growing an edible garden, it helps to have a ‘tool kit of techniques’ you can use to overcome common problems.

9 Strategies to Help Combat Common Edible Garden Problems

There are a variety of strategies you can apply to harvest from your edible garden all year round.

When the Growing Gets Tough

Here in subtropical SE Queensland, Australia, we have challenging wet and dry seasons. We often experience long months of drought. Our growing periods are not governed by a calendar with a traditional three month season like many places in the world. Spring typically only lasts a few weeks in the subtropics and summer is at least four months long! Here the hot/wet/dry months can be very challenging to grow food. Many northern hemisphere gardeners look forward to warm summers as a prime growing season but get frustrated with a long, cold period. So no climate is perfect!

“Extreme temperatures, high humidity, wild storms, hail, damaging winds, sudden heavy downpours, driving rain, drought and flooding are common weather issues to deal with. Not to mention pest insect population explosions. It’s no wonder many food gardeners throw their hands in the air and give up altogether!”

So what CAN you do when growing conditions are difficult?

 

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17 Water Saving Tips for Container Gardens

Are you trying to grow a garden with little rainfall? Struggling with a dry season, heat, drought or water restrictions? If so, it can be especially tough to grow food. You CAN grow healthy crops in pots – with the right strategies. These easy, water saving tips may help YOU achieve an abundant harvest.

17 Water Saving Tips for Container Gardens

One key to success is to adapt your growing techniques to keep your garden alive and thriving

Discover the best containers to choose; how to improve your growing medium; suitable plants; where to position your pots; and how to maintain them to save water.

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Design Tips for a Productive Kitchen Garden

Do you ever feel frustrated when pest insects damage your plants? Wish your kitchen garden was more productive? You’re not alone! Even the healthiest gardens struggle with a few ‘unwelcome visitors’ at times.

Design Tips for a Productive Kitchen Garden

 

If you have limited space for your food garden, then losing precious crops, can be even more disheartening.

The good news is there are design strategies you can use to:

  1. Maximise your space;
  2. Minimise pest insects;
  3. Enhance the beauty; and
  4. Even improve some of your harvests.

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20 Reasons Why You Should Mulch Your Garden

Are you sick of weeding or watering your garden all the time? Losing plants to hot summers and freezing winters? There may be a simple solution to minimize the impact of these challenges – Mulch!

 

20 Reasons why you should mulch your garden

20 Reasons Why You Should Mulch Your Garden

What is Mulch?

Mulch is a material that is spread around a plant or over the soil surface as a protective layer. If you think of soil as a ‘cake,’ the mulch is simply the ‘icing’ or ‘topping’. It provides a huge range of benefits for you and your garden. Mulch comes from a wide variety of organic or inorganic materials. Mulch ranges in cost from free to expensive.

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15 Benefits of a Herb Spiral in Your Garden

Herb Spiral Design

Do you have limited sun, space or time to garden? Want a highly productive, energy efficient way to grow food?  Then consider a herb spiral design in your garden. Creating a Herb Spiral close to your kitchen might be your perfect solution.

 The Herb Spiral design is easily accessible from all sides: to plant, water, fertilise and harvest. This large long herb spiral has a dry microclimate at the top and a moist zone at the bottom. | The Micro Gardener

The Herb Spiral design is easily accessible from all sides: to plant, water, fertilise and harvest. This large long herb spiral has a dry microclimate at the top and a moist zone at the bottom.

What is a Herb Spiral?

The Herb Spiral is a highly productive and energy efficient, vertical garden design. You can stack plants horizontally AND vertically to maximise space. It’s a practical and attractive solution for urban gardeners. A herb spiral design is typically 1.5 – 2m (5 – 6.5ft) wide in diameter at the base and rises to 1.0 – 1.3m (3.2 – 4.2ft). The centre of the spiral is at the highest point. The spiral ramp provides a planting area large enough to fit in all your common culinary herbs.
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Imitate Nature for Higher Yields & Less Pests

Get Hundreds of Free Workers AND an Abundant Harvest!

Want less pests in your garden? To help achieve a balance between pests and predators, I’ve found that imitating natural ecosystems can be a useful pest management strategy to use.

 

Imitate Nature for Higher Yields and Less Pests

Facilitating natural predator-pest relationships in your garden is a way to harness hundreds of free workers to help manage insect imbalances. An example is the ‘aphid banquet’ on the menu for this ladybird’s lunch!

How to Work with and Imitate Nature

Whilst ‘having a relationship’ with birds, lizards, frogs and insects may not be on your To Do List, seeking a ‘win-win’ outcome by working with these creatures in your garden can help you:

  1. Achieve a higher crop yield (by encouraging more Pollinators); and
  2. Minimise insect damage to your edibles (by creating an unwritten ‘Workplace Agreement’ of sorts with Pest Predators – one that offers the kind of job perks that are an incentive for them to get to work in your garden)!

I’ve learned the benefits of ’employing’ hundreds of workers in my garden. Even though I don’t know them all by name, they still turn up regularly for work, never ask for a raise, are reliable in undertaking their jobs and save me hours of hard labour. In this article, I’ll share with you what my end of the agreement entails and how you can negotiate a similar arrangement at your place.

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Coping with Caterpillars – Part 2

Are caterpillars damaging your plants? If you’re having a tug-of-war with caterpillars over who gets a fair share of food from your edible crops, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to come off second best! As mentioned in Coping with Caterpillars – Part 1, the first step is observation and diagnosis to ‘know thy enemy’.

Use a magnifying glass to get up close and personal to see what's happening in your patch.

The next step is what intervention you choose to use to manage the situation.

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Coping with Caterpillars – Part 1

Most of the time, my garden’s thriving but sometimes the weather tips things out of balance in favour of less welcome garden guests! In our hot, humid and wet subtropical climate, this can happen more frequently than I’d like. No matter where you live, creepy caterpillars are sure to visit sometime during the year. If they start to chomp on your crops, you’ll need some strategies up your sleeve!

Coping with Caterpillars Part 1 - How to Manage Pest Problems in your Garden

Extended periods of heavy rain can play havoc, creating the environment for pest populations to arrive en masse and thrive. It’s hard to inspect your garden with days of teeming rain. So by the time the sun shines again, there’s sometimes a pest problem to deal with.

Do you really have a pest problem?

I have a few Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies I use to minimise insect invasions and maintain balance, so I thought I’d share how I deal with one of the most common critters – caterpillars.

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Garden Design Ideas for Small Spaces

Good design is essential for small space gardens. If you have limited room to grow as many of us do in urban areas, maximising the area you can garden in and wise plant selection are top priorities. These space saving solutions may be just what you need.

 

It's important to use good design principles to make the most of small garden spaces. | The Micro Gardener

Sometimes it just takes a little inspiration to make some simple but creative changes to your space.

 

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Top Tips for Wet Weather Gardening

Don’t you love it when it rains?

… and hate it when it rains TOO MUCH!

Top Tips for Wet Weather Gardening

All gardens need adequate moisture but periods of heavy rainfall, storms and runoff can bring you a truckload of challenges. These include:

  • waterlogged plants;
  • leaching of soil nutrients;
  • erosion; and
  • pest and disease problems.

11 Wet Weather Gardening Tips

Want to minimise these common issues? Dig into these wet weather gardening tips to learn how.

I’m into ‘designing out’ problems whenever I can – both in my own garden and for my clients.

Good observation, a bit of thought and planning can help reduce the impact of water-based problems.  These are some of the strategies I use to help avoid these issues. (more…)

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