Hello there, our wonderful avid gardener.
We’re a little late (but never too late 😉) with our autumn newsletter for 2024 - cue busy mums of teenagers and running a small business 🟰 super time poor! We’re not complaining, it’s just life!
Autumn also just happens to be one of the busiest times of the year in the garden, so we’ve got lots of jobs for you to plan as well as delicious recipes.
Enjoy this glorious time of the year and happy gardening.
Love, Hen & Pete xx 👩🌾👩🌾
Some veggies to plant this month in
cool climates 🌱
Beetroot | Broadbeans
Cabbage | Celery
Herbs | Lettuce
Onions | Silverbeet/Chard
Snow Peas | Spring Onions | Garlic
Our beautiful, downloadable planting calendar
for cool climates
Super handy to keep on your phone for quick reference.
We designed it especially for our region, so you know exactly what to plant and when.
Our clever friend, Tavia, made it look amazeballs! It also has hints and tips for success.
I highly recommend it!!
Only $8 😍
Now is the time to plant garlic 🧄 in cool climates, so find a sunny spot in the garden and get those little gems in the ground asap!
Ensure soil is rich in organic matter with good drainage. Plant bulbs pointy end up about 3cm deep and approximately 10-15 apart. Apply a thin layer of organic sugar cane or lucerne. Water in with a liquid fertiliser and once a month thereafter to encourage strong growth. Garlic takes approximately 9 months to full maturity.
Make the most of the space and intersperse with winter greens such as chard, kale or mustard. You’ll be harvesting from the veg patch in no time.
School holidays are nearly upon us
Keep the kids busy with our fabulous activity book
It's your family's passport to outdoor adventure and it's only $14!
Plus you get a FREE PACKET OF SEEDS.
100% locally created, designed and printed so you can also feel good about supporting multiple small businesses 😇 😍
The benefits of mulch
One of the most valuable things you can do for your garden is to mulch. Our personal preference is to use organic sugar cane, lucerne or pea straw mulch (the latter two add extra nitrogen to the soil). It tends to break down beautifully over time putting more organic matter back into the soil, encouraging earth worms and micro organisms for happy and healthy plants.
Mulching not only looks great in garden beds, it also suppresses weeds by blocking out sunlight, retains moisture in the ground which means less watering, and maintains more even soil temperatures (particularly important in our cool climate).
Be generous with the amount of mulch you apply. At least 8-10cm in depth. It will need to be replaced periodically as it breaks down but this is a good thing. It means it is adding back to the soil creating a healthy and bio diverse environment for your garden.
Autumn lawn care
Pete and I are constantly asked about lawn improvement, Autumn is a great time to start this process.
Here are our top 4 things to do now:
Aeration
This is probably one of the most important jobs in getting your lawn into shape. Soil gets compacted, especially over summer. Getting air down to the roots helps with moisture, oxygen and nutrients making for a stronger and more robust lawn. This can be done with a garden fork, a pair of those wonderful spikey shoes or with a professional aerating machine - actually quite reasonable to hire.
Feeding
Once aerated, we recommend using an all purpose lawn fertiliser. We love Neutrog Sudden Impact For Lawns, it’s organic based, slow release and has loads of microbial goodies in it, great for improving soil structure and microorganisms. However, any good quality product will make a big impact. Just talk to your local nursery or horticulturist. Mid autumn is ideal to feed cool climate grasses.
Weeding
One of my favourite mottos in gardening is “slow and steady wins the race”. Gardening takes time and patience. All of a sudden though, everything starts to come together and the rewards for hard work put in is exponential. A little bit of weeding consistently over time will have your lawn looking fab. If it’s really large or there’s just too many weeds, use a post-emergent herbicide.
Mowing
Frequency of mowing should decrease over autumn as lawns are preparing to store energy over winter. By mowing less often, roots will reach deeper into the soil, creating a stronger lawn.
Propagation
Autumn is a wonderful time to think about propagation. Not only is this a very cost effective way of sourcing plants, it also means you are creating strong, robust cool climate plants that will thrive in our unique and tough climate (rather than hothouse grown seedlings).
Some of our favourites are rosemary and lavender, which are not only lovely to look at in the garden, they also attract bees 🐝. These wonderful little workers of nature will in turn, assist in pollinating the veggie patch, increasing production yields.
Other cuttings that can easily be propagated, include; bay, sage, banksias, grevillea, buddleja (butterfly bush), westringia (coastal rosemary), wormwood, hydrangeas.
🌱 Take 10cm cuttings from mature plants - choose healthy stems with fresh growth
🌱 Remove 2/3 lower leaves
🌱 Dip in hormone powder (we’ve also had great success using local, raw honey)
🌱 Pot in small containers with good quality potting mix
🌱 Keep just moist (don’t over water) and sheltered from strong sun and wind.
Excess of carrots? No problem!
Our Avid Gardener's Light and fluffy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
A delicious recipe the whole family will love.
Carrots from the garden.
Eggs from the chooks.
Ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup olive oil
3 eggs
2 cup self raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 1/2 cups carrot, grated
1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped
Frosting
125 gram softened cream cheese
25 gram softened butter
1 cup sifted icing sugar
Method
Preheat oven to 125 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease and line a 22cm square cake pan with baking paper.
In a large bowl, whisk sugar and oil together until thick. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking between each addition to combine.
Using a wooden spoon, stir in sifted combined flour, spices and soda. Fold in carrot and pecans. Pour into pan. Smooth top.
Bake 1 hour and 10 minutes until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool in pan 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Meanwhile, in small bowl, using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter together until pale. Add icing sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy.
Split cooled cake in half horizontally. Place base of cake on serving platter. Spread with half frosting. Top with remaining half of cake. Spread with remaining frosting. Sprinkle with extra nuts.
A blue-banded bee!!! (Amegilla cingulata)
One of the most beautiful bees in the world who also happens to be an Australian native 😍. So much excitement in the garden when we spotted these magnificent beauties foraging amongst the salvias on the outskirts of Orange.
They move very quickly, so it was tricky to get a good pic.
INTERESTING FACTS
Blue-banded bees perform a really cool pollination dance known as ‘buzz pollination’ (sonication). Only a few native Australian bees can do this whilst the well known and very common western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is incapable of this type of pollination.
Basically, some flowers hold on very tightly to their pollen needing extra help to break it free. This is where the blue-banded bee comes in. It shakes its entire body rapidly whilst holding onto the flower, causing the stamen (the pollen producing reproductive organ) and anthers (these hold on to the pollen) to vibrate giving it that extra little nudge to break free enabling the pollen to be collected by the bee.
Very cool!
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