Permaculture Living

The pulp from the tamarind pods is used for a sour flavour in Asian food. It’s also a sweet snack in Thailand - just watch out for the hard black seeds.

It’s broccoli and cauliflower harvesting time in Brisbane. Normally there is just one head of broccoli per plant…

Unless it’s this strange branching specimen which is at least a year old, and survived a hot summer to produce again this winter.

And again, and again.

I’ve just set up a worm farm to produce castings and liquid fertiliser to feed my container plants.

Regular composting has worked pretty well for me but requires a lawn to provide the carbon elements; the worm farm produces pure liquid and solid fertiliser, and can used in much more limited space.

I bought the Can-O-Worms direct from the nursery at Northey Street City Farm for $80, and ordered the worms from Kookaburra Farms. The worms turned up in a box in the post, not seeming to mind being shipped around halfway around Queensland.

Below is the Can-O-Worms in its packaging. It comes with three worm layers, a base to hold the liquid fertiliser, a lid, a tap and nut, five legs for the base, a manual, and compressed package of coir fibre.

And the cotton bag full of worms.

Inside, a mix of compost and 1000 compost worms.

Step one of the process was to put the brick of coir fibre (complete with paper packaging) into a bucket of water and let it soak while putting together the rest of the farm.

Step two was to add the attachments to the bottom layer of the farm: screwing the tap to the hole and fastening it with the nut provided, and sliding in the five plastic legs. The bottom layer isn’t for worms, but is where the liquid fertiliser collects (hence the tap).

Step three was to add the first of the worm trays to the base - and to wait for the coir fibre to soak up the water. When the coir was broken up and fully soaked, it looked like this:

Next the coir was spread over the first worm tray.

Then the worms and their compost were added on top of the coir fibre.

Together the coir and worms reached the top of the ribs on the inside of the tray, which meant I could go right ahead and add the second worm tray (the worms like to feed from the top, so will move on up into the next tray when the lower one is full).

I sprinkled a small handful of food scraps on the bottom of the second tray and covered it all with the cotton bag (wet) the worms came in, to keep them in the damp and dark as they like it.

I put the lid on, and (later) moved the farm out of the sun into a shadier part of the balcony. I stashed the third worm housing layer to be used as the farm fills up further.

Two days later, the worms have been busy turning the food scraps into worm castings.

Mulberry flowers rapidly becoming berries. They seem a little early this year - I thought the fruit was usually ready in mid-September, and this photo was from the end of July.

A nice, easy customer question. I wish they were all like that.

Question: There are cockroaches in my compost. How do I get rid of them?

Answer: I asked the customer if the compost was dry looking. Customer said yes, so suggested wetting the compost with a bucket of water. The moisture will discourage the cockroaches and also encourage better decomposition of the contents.

(There’s more info on making compost in the article on growing vegies in containers.)

This was a customer question that I couldn’t answer on the day, as I’ve never had to try and grow vegies in less than subtropical temperatures.

Question: Do broccoli plants grow in a very cold and snowy winter?

Answer: Plants will tolerate frosts and can survive below freezing temperatures (online sources say from -1 to -6C) but may be stunted and/or set broccoli heads earlier than normal. For best crops, they should be covered with insulation (mulch for small plants, cardboard boxes or plastic buckets for larger ones) to protect them from the worst of the cold.

Another customer question from my time working in the nursery.

Question: What tomatoes can you grow in winter? Is fruit fly a problem?

Answer: Winter is a good time to grow larger tomatoes (Beefsteak, Roma, etc) in Brisbane. These would normally be susceptible to fruit fly and hard to grow to full size without being stung, but in winter pests like fruit fly are less numerous. The plants and fruit do grow more slowly but on the upside there are fewer pests around.

In summer, cherry tomatoes are the best choice for vegie gardens in Brisbane, as they’re less susceptible to fruit fly. There’s also a bigger harvest of cherry tomatoes, so if a couple of fruit do get stung, there’s still plenty left to harvest.

I worked in the Edible Landscapes nursery for a few days and answered (or tried to answer) a lot of customer questions. The following question about sooty mould on citrus trees was pretty common.

Question: My mandarin tree has a black mould on the leaves and is not bearing as much as usual. How do I fix this?

Answer: It has sooty mould, a fungus growing on the leaves, which means there is a sap-sucking insect problem like aphids, scale, white fly or mealy bugs. The insects suck the sap from the leaves and exude honeydew, which drips back onto the leaves, and the mould grows on the sweet substance.

Spray it with white oil to kill the sap-suckers and thus get rid of the mould. To make white oil, mix together:

- 1 cup of cooking oil
- 2 cups of water
- 1 tsp of dishwashing liquid
- Dilute the mixture at 3 teaspoons per half a litre of water and spray on the affected leaves.

Make sure to use it in the cool of the day so it doesn’t burn the leaves. The mould should then wash off in the next rain (or hose it if you’re impatient and then reapply).