Permaculture Living

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).

A time lapse video of a morning glory vine. I’d wondered how beans and vining plants found their supports as they grow - this shows it in action.

Time Lapse: Morning Glory Vine

A little about the invasive weed, the Singapore Daisy.

Singapore Daisy
sphagneticola trilobata

Family: Asteraceae
Other Names: Wedelia Trilobata

Origin: Native to Central and South America from Mexico to Argentina

Description: Mat-forming groundcover to 70cm high, with stems 2m or more in length. Dark green glossy toothed leaves, yellow daisy-like flowers.

Habitat: Common in coastal and tropical Queensland, coastal New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Grows in many areas, both dry and wet soil areas – on roadsides, bushland, disturbed rainforest, wetlands, river areas and wasteland.

Introduction: Introduced as an ornamental and planted as a roadway embankment stabilizer in Queensland, also promoted by nurseries in the 1970s.

Dispersal: Able to spread by seed but most often spread by shoots from stem nodes. Regrows easily from stem pieces so is most often spread by dumping of garden clippings and prunings, as well as by birds and water.

Problem: Invasive and fast-growing groundcover that forms a dense mat, and prevents native species from sprouting and growing due to lack of space, sunlight and water. Climbs over and shades out low-growing existing vegetation. Reshoots very easily from pieces left in the ground or dumped.

Removal: Reshoots from tiny stem pieces so needs to be carefully dug out from the ground and destroyed in liquid weed teas, or killed via herbicide.

Weeds.org.au is a great resource if you’re trying to identify a particular weed.

An Australian native tree named after the aboriginal Jagera tribe who lived in South Brisbane.