Fruit &amp; Vege Garden

Originally posted by nursery: ↑

I've had a great garden in pure sand. All you need is plenty of organics. I use cane mulch and grass clippings. I also use dynamic lifter extra or Searles 5 in 1 which is poultry manure with blood and bone, fish meal and trace minerals. Chemical fertilisers are too soluble and are quickly leached and end up below the plant roots. In Israel they turned desert into a food bowl.

As you build up the organic content you build up the soil bacteria and in turn they break down the mulch. You can speed up the process with a green manure crop. I find red clover a great green manure crop, dig it is as it starts to flower. Plants are living things, they are like us in the way they need food and water to survive.

Companion plants are worth looking at e.g. I always plant marigolds with tomatoes and potatoes. I also have a mini worm farm in the garden. My worm farm is a lidded bucket with no bottom. You just add the household scraps, a few worms to get started.and the worms do the rest. Bunnings sell live worms to get you started.

I'm 91 and started gardening from a toddler.

When the world wearies and life doesn't satisfy, there is always the garden.

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I have had success adding compost and manure to the soil but breaks down and leaches through the soil within a year. BTW this area use to be market gardens, they would use shit loads of NPK but I want to minimize the use of chemical fertilizers.

In the beginning brought in truck loads of mushroom compost and manure to spread and dig into all the garden, I soon realised that 1, it was hard work, 2 expensive and 3 inefficient. I am now going with raised garden beds so I can concentrate managing the soil more efficiently.

I tested the soil ie mix some soil in a glass of water and let it settle. It shows about 50/50 sand and slit/organic matter which is good but still the solid dries out far too quickly. From what I have read adding clay to the soil will not only help retail moisture but in doing so will also retain nutrients, the logic sounds good to me.

I have issue with my fruit trees it that the leaves are often yellow, photo of a mango tree here

I worked out that this was an iron deficiency that because of lime-induced chlorosis, from what I understand now alkaline soil is the major source of this problem as it locks up iron/minerals in the soil and makes them unavailable to the plant. This makes sense as I have lots of lime stone, the garden use to have lots of native trees and shrubs and also I have a bore that is in lime stone.

Apparently the long term fix is to apply agricultural sulphur, I did so last year and have seen an improvement. I will apply more this year along with some clay.

Appropriate your comments and any more your might have