Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Now is the best time, lots of learning, lots of dreams and schemes.  The permaculture movement is located in Australia so most of what they teach is more applicable to you than me, I am considered boreal forest so pretty much one step away from the arctic. LOL and a moan. 
Your big issue down under seems to be water, so make sure you figure extra storage in for the dry seasons, "hugel" ? not sure on spelling ? culture might be to your advantage especially with the slope that you mention.  They are using it to advantage in the middle eastern desert, first time the natives saw mushrooms growing in the open I guess they were a little freaked out. I listen to you talk of sugar cane twice a year and I think of my ninety five day growing season and just drool.  But as they say if wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets.  I like where I live only  minutes from  the Rockies, elk, grizzlies, and cougars, while you talk of wallabies and koalas, love to visit but you guys have some crazy poisonous stuff as well.   Truth be told as much as I would love to have citrus, figs, and bananas in the front yard I'd miss the snow.  I am a northern girl I guess through and through.
Right now it is the start of demented squirrel time for me I am bottling, preserving whatever you'd like to call it like a crazy person. 25 pounds about 11ish kilos of tomatoes into marinara sauce and picking raspberries every time I walk by the hedge and then toss them onto the baking sheet in the freezer.  I picked bread seed poppies today and will be saving the very best few for seed for next year,  there is always so much that goes on the list for next year.  I have cherries that need picking and apples that are bending the tree over they weigh so much for the poor little tree.  The goal is to preserve at least one batch everyday from now till the first snows.  I want to use my garden produce first then local, then national...don't want anything imported if I can help it until the snow flies. 
Besides preserving food plants I am also preserving herbs, medicinal, culinary, and for lack of a better term domestic....like some soap berry leaves to do a rinse and willow preserved three or four ways for pain relief, fireweed, rosehips.  While some I
With your property check and see what native medicinal or edible plants you have growing you mentioned a couple but the way a lot are being just stripped out of the wild incorporating some in your landscape can be a great way to save a species.  I am trying to put some in mine, stuff that is tough, that will take our climate and laugh at it.   I went to this medicine making workshop two weeks ago and now dandelions, chickweed and plantain all have a place in my life.  So some how over the next year or so I will get the weeds out that stress me out, leave some that don't or that I can justify by saying that they are medicinal or edible.  Although after tasting lungwort I figure I would have to be coughing up my lungs before I could take it as a tonic to clear it.  It is useful externally as well but ^^%^*(&)*^% does it taste nasty.    So I  have not looked at your pictures yet will do so after I pull the last seven jars out of the boiling water
and set to cool. Must then get some shut eye as I have to go to work at the job to pay for the play that I do in the kitchen the garden and the greenhouse.  Need the cold of winter just to catch my breath.
cheers
Bina at the lake who is also Janet at the lake but they tell me that you should use a nome de plume on the internet cause it is a scary place...I don't know where they hang out but it is not with the gardening groups, or the cooking groups or chicken group......

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From: "ashley.online@yahoo.com.au" <ashley.online@yahoo.com.au>
To: Organic_Gardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2013 9:32:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Organic_Gardening] Re: Newbie


 
To Janet and Bina, Thanks for your lovely email but we have not got as
far as planting anything yet as we are still building the house.

We have to design our veggie garden which will all be on a sandstone slope
facing the west and our orchard will be on the 1/4 acre we own beside the
river at the bottom of the land. See photo of our block from the other
side of the river and photo of last veggie garden in Victoria, surrounded by
hedge. At the moment yes we are in Winter, the temp is 23 C degree today.
We are sub tropical.
My neighbour grows mandarins, pineapples and macadamia nuts plus everyone
grows mangoes. We have lemons of course and tomatoes. We are in a sugar
cane high yield area with many farmers cutting 2 or 3 times a year. Banana
farms too. My husband has just starting fishing from our new jetty but has
a long way to go before being successful as the trawlers that dock on the
other side of the river.

You could look this area up on your browser - called the Clarence Valley
River Tourism area and we get most of our seeds from the Diggers Club in
Dromana, Victoria branch. They have non genetically modified seeds.
Look them up www.diggers.com.au At the moment we are just planting a
few native plants to set some edging to an area. Bottlebrushes, grevilleas
and banksias. We have wallabies on the block and koalas in the area so we
also planted tallowwoods and grey gums for future generations.

I am trying to remember the best build up of the veggie beds for when we
start. I think it was 10 layers of newspaper first then compost then
mushroom mulch then chicken manure then sugar cane mulch or lucerne hay then
another layer of everything again from the newspaper upwards. Leave for 4
weeks or so untill all new mushrooms come up and dig in will and then plant
and cover with more sugar cane or hay.

The first year we did this was when we lived in Victoria, much colder,
mediterranean climate, and the cauliflowers were great. But we didn't feed
the beds again as we thought they would be OK for a few years and we never
got another cauliflower. We know this time not to wait and see. We
shall feed every year with seaweed solution or fish emulsion. Looking
forward to the future crops when we get started later this year.
Regards to everyone. Claire in NSW

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