SPRING GREEN NOTES

 ATTRACT INSECT - EATING BIRDS TO YOUR GARDEN

Birds add a lot to our lives with their bright flashes of colour and morning song. It is hard to imagine living somewhere the smaller, shrub-living birds are not part of the environment, but sadly this is becoming the norm in many urban areas and large, cleared areas of farmland. Birds need to be considered as essential residents of any organic garden or farm. The robins, wrens, honeyeaters, pardalotes (pictured), willy wagtails, thornbills, flycatchers, warblers and tree-creepers are primarily insect eaters and do an enormous amount of pest control, particularly of aphids, scale, caterpillars and grasshoppers.
 

These insect eaters are mainly smaller, shrub-dwelling birds who need protection from their predators, including cats and hawks. People who allow their cats free range in the garden will often claim they still have birds but nearly always they only have the larger tree dwelling birds like kookaburras, crows, magpies and currawongs. Fitting any cats with multiple, small bells, or a mirrored collar, helps to prevent decimation of the wildlife population, as does restricting their wandering.
 

To attract birds provide safe nesting sites, free from predators and with privacy. Dense plantings of native shrubs, in out-of-the-way corners of the garden will provide important nesting sites for smaller birds, and as a bonus, can be chosen to provide nectar to attract nectar feeding birds such as Honeyeaters. Including prickly shrubs in the plantings gives added protection from cats. On farms designing a hedgerow of bird-attractant shrubs between cropping areas will provide a range of benefits.
 

In an urban landscape nesting sites for birds that require hollow trees are few and far between. It can take 150 years for a tree to develop a hollow large enough to house owls, parrots, gliders, possums and small insect eating bats. Provision of nesting boxes by urban residents can meet an urgent need and help to maintain a rich diversity of wildlife.

Small, insectivorous bats are nocturnal feeders, and play an important role in the control of night flying insects, including mosquitoes. Sugar Gliders mainly eat insects, such as leaf-eating beetles, moths, grasshoppers and caterpillars, they also feed on sap-suckers that excrete honeydew, such as scale.

Water is an essential element in the landscape, whether it is a bird bath or a small pond. Providing a reliable source of water for birds allows them to nest in the garden. Bird baths should be placed close to a nearby refuge of densely foliaged shrubs, to allow easy escape from predators.

More information on design for pest balance ....

 DELICIOUS, HOME-GROWN TOMATOES

 REDUCING PLANT DISEASE PROBLEMS

 FRUIT FLY - YOU CAN BEAT IT!

         
Here are some questions to consider when deciding on a fruit fly control strategy:
Are you a home gardener with just a few plants or trees to protect?
Is the fruit up very high, or easy to reach? Or are you a commercial grower?
Do you have limited time for managing your plants? Is regular weekly spraying an option, or would a “set and forget” product suit you better?
Do you also need to protect your fruit from other creatures, such as birds, bats or possums?
Our products to deal with fruit fly can be divided into 3 categories:
 

EXCLUSION:
An easy “set and forget” method – by installing exclusion products such as covers, bags or sleeves as soon as the fruit is set, you put in place a simple but effective barrier against the egg-laying female fruit fly. This will suit gardeners with a home garden to protect with fruit within reach. To buy Exclusion Products
TRAP:
These pheromone or “sex attractant”-based products are used to trap and kill the male fruit fly. Both the Bugs for Bugs Fruit Fly Trap and the Wild May Fruit Fly Attractant and trap are useful as monitoring tools, an effective “early warning system” to help you recognize the start of the fruit fly season. Traps for monitoring should be in place by late winter, in a position that you will easily notice and so maintain. Many people find that by trapping large numbers of male flies, the local population of breeding fruit flies is reduced and that this helps reduce damage in subsequent years. Many gardeners will be familiar with the disappointment of only noticing the fruit fly when it is too late and the fruit is stung and full of maggots.
BAIT:
Eco-Naturalure Fruit Fly Bait is the only product that attracts and kills both male and female flies. To be effective it needs to be reapplied every 7 days. It is particularly suited to larger gardens, bigger orchards or situations where the trees are too tall to reach the fruit such as mangoes or trees that are very heavy bearing such as citrus.

More information on organic fruit fly control…

 SPRING CITRUS CARE

Prune citrus lightly after all danger of frost has passed. Pruning is only necessary to remove dead-wood and keep the centre of the tree open and branches from crossing. Always remove shoots or suckers from below the graft as soon as possible, as they steal vigour from the tree and if left too long, leave large wounds for disease to enter when they are cut. Raising the ‘skirt’ so that foliage does not touch the ground will make fertilising and mulching jobs easier. To ‘skirt’ a tree remove low shoots so that the lower edge of the canopy is 60cm clear of the ground.

• Citrus trees are very hungry feeders with high requirements for trace elements; a regular spray with a seaweed fertiliser such as Natrakelp or the application of either Granulated Kelp or Shuttle Seven will supply this.

• Fertilise citrus in early spring, a one-year-old tree will need 4 to 8 kg of well-rotted animal manure, a mature tree will need between 20 and 40 kg of well-rotted animal manure. Only apply fertiliser to moist ground then mulch well, keeping the mulch and manure well clear of the trunk, to avoid collar-rot. Never place fertiliser close to the trunk or in heaps; spread it as evenly as possible to just past the drip-line of the tree.

• Watch out for the egg clusters and nymphs of the Bronze Orange Bug (pictured)  from spring through to early summer. At this stage they are easier to control than the larger, dark brown adults that appear late spring to mid summer. For the nymphs use a least-toxic soap spray such as Natrasoap.

• Check in August on lemons, limes and grapefruits for Citrus Gall Wasp which causes swellings on the twigs. Prune off and burn immediately. Insectrap is a non-toxic sticky trap that attracts and kills Citrus Gall Wasp.

• Citrus Leaf Miner causes ugly distorted leaves with silvery trails in the leaf tissue. Eco Oil is a non-toxic control, spray when new growth is about 1 cm long, reapply every 2-3 weeks. October and February are crucial times to spray.

• Band citrus trees with horticultural glue to keep ants and other crawling pests out, use either Tanglefoot or Trappit Barrier Glue. Sticky barriers are very effective at reducing scale attacks.

Books with practical information on citrus include the following:

Citrus: A Guide to Organic Management, Propagation, Pruning, Pest Control and Harvesting 

Citrus: A Gardener’s Guide

More information on organic citrus care ...

ORGANIC STRATEGIES FOR NEMATODE PROBLEMS

Nematodes or eelworms affect the growth of a wide range of plants, including rose, silverbeet, potato, carrot, tomato, lettuce and zucchini. They are tiny creatures that burrow into the roots of your plants and stimulate the development of galls, or lumps on the roots. The infected plants are stunted and they wilt rapidly in hot weather. On potatoes they can cause wart-like lesions on the skin. Nematodes are a particular problem for gardeners with sandy soils and in humid areas. When harvesting infected plants it is important to remove as much infected root from the soil as possible, as nematode eggs can hatch out of the roots as they decompose. Do not place the infected roots in a compost heap at it is unlikely to get hot enough to kill the eggs. Instead if your garden is big enough place the damaged plant material under a native tree or shrub that is unlikely to be a host plant for the nematode, so that they starve. In a small garden you may need to put the plant material into the garbage.
There are a range of actions you can take to control the nematodes, some of which may have undesirable consequences. Digging fresh chicken manure into a hot, dry soil, something normally to be avoided, has been shown to reduce nematode numbers. Leave the soil undisturbed for at least 3 weeks. Drenching with water, molasses or sugar can also kill nematodes, but will have a negative impact on the earthworms.
The best organic strategy is biofumigation - using decomposing plants to produce gases that kill nematodes. The most effective plants to do this are marigolds and BQ Mulch. The old gardening adage that marigolds stop nematodes is unfortunately only partly true - to have a significant effect, the marigolds must be chopped up and dug through the soil. The same applies to BQ Mulch, a dwarf brassica. Once incorporated into the soil, the plants release a bio-fumigant gas as they break down.
Soil solarization is also very effective for both nematode and weed control. To do this successfully lay clear plastic sheets on moist soil during the warmer months. The plastic must be pulled tight as close to the soil surface as possible with the edges buried. The aim is to keep the heat in. Leave in place for a minimum of six weeks.

SALAD MIXES

Salad mixes, mesclun, baby leaf and microgreens are new terms for many gardeners although they have been available in supermarkets as a packaged salad item for many years. So what are they and are they worth growing in the home garden?

Salad Mixes, 'baby leaf' or 'mesclun' are mixtures of green, leafy vegetables grown in a seedbed and picked by removing the outside leaves at a 'baby leaf' stage. Salad mixes or 'mesclun' were originally French; the name comes from the word mescla, which means 'to mix' in the local dialect of Nice. The idea was to make a salad that includes every taste and texture sensation: bitter, sweet, tangy, crunchy and tender. The original recipe was a combination of early shoots of rocket, dandelion greens and lettuce. Other ingredients in a mix might include chicories (syn. radicchio), beetroot greens, asian greens (tatsoi, mizuna), spinach, kale, and mustard greens.

For further information on growing salad mix

For a range of seeds suitable for salad mix

SEED SOWING

After a very cold winter, we are looking forward to a productive spring in the garden. In frosty areas like ours, it will be too cold to put out frost-tender seedlings until mid-September. Keep a garden diary so that you have a record of the last frost for the year, to help next year’s planning, as it can be very disappointing to have seedlings burnt to a crisp that you have lovingly raised. We like to get an early start with many spring vegetables, especially tomatoes, by starting them in a warm spot ahead of time. We use Mini Propagators for this and a heated propagator tray, but the top of a hot water system or a sunny spot on a veranda works well. Remember to use a good quality seed-raising mix as it has the necessary aeration to allow seeds to germinate successfully. For more information see..... Successful Seed Raising. A great benefit of raising seeds yourself is you have such an enormous range to choose from compared to bought seedling punnets.

For those of you who have to deal with frosted gardens, remember that spraying a seaweed fertiliser such as Natrakelp will help reduce damage to frost-tender plants. Even though frost-burnt foliage is unsightly, resist the desire to cut it off until all danger of frost is past.

SEED STORAGE: The best place to store seed is in a sealed container in your fridge. Seed stored in a hot garden shed or garage that can reach temperatures greater than 40° in summer will simply die. Seed stored open to the air where it can take up moisture will lose viability. The book Seed Production for the Australian Home Vegetable Garden explains the botanical basis and methods of saving seed in the home garden.

Browse the Organic Seed Shop

SOWING AND PLANTING GUIDE

• Early spring is a good time to plant perennial food plants such as yacon, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, waterchestnuts, ginger, turmeric, galangal and chokos. Potatoes can be planted into well-mulched beds, only use certified seed potatoes to avoid introducing damaging virus diseases to your garden.

• In August plant flower seedlings of sweet alice, cosmos, marigolds, phlox, salvia, nasturtiums, snapdragons, verbena and statice.

• Sow vegetable seed of broccoli, celery, Asian vegetables, cabbage, lettuce, peas, spinach, silverbeet, radish, coriander, beetroot, rocket, turnips and spring onions. Japanese turnips are sweeter than common turnips and very hardy. Plant carrots and parsnips from seed only, root vegetables should not be transplanted. If you haven’t tried Sugar Snap peas, now is your chance!

• In September sow vegetable seed or seedlings of silverbeet, lettuce, radish, spring onions, carrot, cabbage, herbs and beetroot. After all danger of frost has passed plant out cucumbers, capsicum, cape gooseberries, eggplant, okra, zucchini, rosella and tomatoes. Soil temperatures need to be around 20° C to germinate seeds of warm season vegetables. To check, see if pumpkin seeds are germinating by themselves from old compost, if so, then the soil is warm enough. Sow larger seeds such as beans, pumpkins, melons and corn directly in the ground. Remember that corn needs to be grown in a block not a row for pollination to be adequate.

• Plant flowers to attract beneficial insects for biological control, try our Good Bug Mix.

• Plant a green manure crop of Japanese millet and cowpeas in any unoccupied beds to improve the soil for summer planting.

• In October plant seed or seedlings for Christmas dinner: colourful, open-hearted lettuces like Brown Romaine, beans, ‘Ronde De Nice’ squash, cherry tomatoes.

We have all planted a whole punnet of vegetable seedlings only to find that they mature at the same time and then we have a glut for a few weeks then nothing left to harvest. Succession planting is a strategy to ensure we have continuous bounty from the garden all year round.

• While garden beds are being prepared for new plantings, look for fast turn-around plants to provide an early harvest. Start by growing sprouts or microgreens to quickly produce some salad greens. Microgreens are halfway between a sprout and salad leaf size. They can be grown in seedling trays and harvested when there are 4 or more leaves. Try seeds such as sunflower, peas, rocket and lettuce for a quick harvest. Many types will regrow and can be cut several times. Micro Green Growing Guide available ......

• Next plant long-lived vegetables like silverbeet, kale, eggplant, chicory ‘Red Dandelion’, chives, Welsh onions, leeks, cherry tomato, parsley and broccoli which can all be harvested over many months. They are planted only once or twice to provide a long harvest over the growing season. Don’t pull out leeks and spring onions to harvest; cut off above the roots and they will reshoot, saving the time and effort of continuous planting. Plant asparagus in a dedicated bed and they can produce for over 20 years.

• Then aim to plant veges that give multiple harvests. The young leaf tips and immature fruit of pumpkins and choko are edible as are sweet potato leaf tips; paw paws can be eaten green as a steamed vegetable or in curries and salads.

• Remember to plant lettuce and leafy greens regularly. Start harvesting the leaves of salad bowl lettuce, rocket, tatsoi, mizuna, kale, chicory when very young, instead of pulling the whole plant. Plant close together and when half grown, start picking to thin out and let the others grow. Some greens mature in as little as 4 weeks, so plant more every 3 to 4 weeks over the growing season.

• Plant different varieties of beans or tomato at the same time to give a longer cropping season. Dwarf beans will crop heavily and faster than climbing beans, which will crop slower but produce over a longer time. Pick daily to encourage flowering. As they start to flower, sow another crop. Cherry tomatoes will ripen quicker than the larger tomato types; 2 plantings over the growing season will ensure continuous cropping.

• Grow plants that store well, such as potato, sweet potato, ginger and pumpkin. They’re slow to mature but only need to be planted once a year. Potatoes can be planted twice a year in Qld in autumn and spring.

• Root crops like beetroot and carrot take about 12 weeks to mature. To ensure a long harvest period they should be planted out every 4 - 6 weeks.

• Harvest vegetables like zucchini and squash while still small to encourage continuous production over the growing season.

• Spring in the tropics and subtropics is the time to think about seasonal succession. Tropical vegetables planted in spring thrive in the hot and humid conditions over summer. Beans can be replaced with snake beans or winged beans. Ceylon spinach, kang kong, Egyptian, Brazillian and Surinam Spinaches can be substituted for silverbeet and leafy greens in a salad or stir fry. Potatoes can be replaced with other starchy tubers such as sweet potato, cassava and arrowroot; angled luffa can be harvested young and used like zucchini. Try growing ginger, turmeric, yacon and rosellas; they require minimal care and will provide a harvest over the summer and into autumn.

• Grow plants in season that suit your local rainfall and temperature conditions; select the best varieties for your area. Other varieties may still grow but they may be a lot slower to mature, take up valuable space and may be more prone to pests and diseases.
   

ASPARAGUS

By now, if you are lucky enough to have a bed of asparagus, the old tops should have been cut off and compost and well-rotted manure applied to feed the bed for its spring flush of growth. Asparagus is easy to grow in both subtropical and temperate climates. It thrives on lots of rain and has no problems with pests or diseases. In fact in old, abandoned gardens, asparagus can be seen growing years later amongst tall grass and weeds. We harvest by a rule-of-thumb, if the spears are thicker than a pencil we cut them before the spears branch, usually at approx. 20 cm high, if they are skinnier, we leave them to develop and feed the crown. Fresh asparagus is delicious steamed with a Hollandaise sauce, flavoured with fresh dill. More information on growing asparagus ....

Hollandaise Sauce
Have you been put off by the time consuming method using a whisk and double saucepan? Try this; it takes only minutes to make in a blender!

• 125 g butter (4 ozs)

• 2 egg yolks

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• salt to taste

• fresh herbs

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Heat to bubbling but do not let brown. Meanwhile, place in blender the other ingredients. Cover the blender, switch to low speed, immediately uncover and pour in the hot butter in a steady stream. When all the butter is incorporated, turn off. If using herbs, add chopped herbs and switch on until combined. If too thick, thin it with a little hot water.

GARDEN CALENDAR

JULY AND AUGUST

• Prune winter-flowering grevilleas, by removing seed heads and cutting long shoots back by a third, to promote bushiness.

• Bananas need management to produce good-sized bunches including regular removal of suckers. Each clump of bananas should be made up of a mature plant, a half-grown plant and one sucker only. Allowing all the suckers to grow will mean that bunches are either small or non-existent. Preference in sucker selection should be given to those with spear-shaped rather than round leaves and on the side of the plant that you wish the clump to move in. Fertilise with 400g of complete organic fertiliser after the emergence of the first new suckers and again 8 weeks later. Mulch well. Tidy the plant by removing yellowing, old leaves and if a bunch has developed, remove the flower bell. The flower bell drips nectar and attracts possums and bats; it also uses nutrients better saved for the fruit. Banana bags help fruit ripen and keep the birds away. Bags are half blue and half silver to provide filtered light and reflect heat.

• Established passionfruit vines should be fertilised in early spring, use up to 1 kg of blood and bone with 100g of sulphate of potash added, spread onto moist soil and mulch well.

• Prune citrus lightly in spring after all danger of frost has passed. Pruning is only necessary to remove deadwood and keep the centre of the tree open and branches from crossing. Always remove shoots or suckers from below the graft as soon as possible, as they steal vigour from the tree and if left too long, leave large wounds for disease to enter when they are cut. Raising the ‘skirt’ so that foliage does not touch the ground will make fertilising and mulching jobs easier. To ‘skirt’ a tree remove low shoots so that the lower edge of the canopy is 60cm clear of the ground.

• Citrus trees are very hungry feeders with high requirements for trace elements; a regular spray with a seaweed fertiliser such as Natrakelp will supply trace elements. Fertilise citrus in early spring, a one-year-old tree will need 4 to 8 kg of well-rotted animal manure, a mature tree will need between 20 and 40 kg of well-rotted animal manure. Only apply fertiliser to moist ground then mulch well, keeping the mulch and manure well clear of the trunk, to avoid collar-rot. Never place fertiliser close to the trunk or in heaps; spread it as evenly as possible to just past the drip-line of the tree. Check for Citrus Gall Wasp on lemons and grapefruits, which cause swellings on the twigs, prune off and burn immediately. More information on organic citrus care......

• Divide Queensland Arrowroot to increase the quantities you have of this useful plant. Our fruit trees have a semi-circle of Arrowroot planted a few metres below each one, to make mulching the trees quick and easy. This also traps any down-slope movement of soil and nutrients.

• If your peach or nectarine trees had peach-leaf curl last year, they will need to be sprayed with Lime Sulphur before the buds swell. Once fruit have formed, thin fruit to one peach per node and bag the fruit, to protect from fruit fly.

• Custard apples should be pruned now, cut back leaders, remove water shoots, prune laterals and skirt trees. Band trees, such as citrus and custard apple, with sticky barriers, use horticultural glue, to keep ants and other crawling pests out of trees. Sticky barriers are very effective at reducing scale attacks.

• Make sure fruit fly traps are in place by late August.

• Pineapples should have old fruit stalks removed, leave up to 3 of the strongest and healthiest suckers that are nearest ground level to bear the next crop. The soil should be acidic so avoid using any lime or dolomite in the planting area. Apply a complete fertiliser at the rate of 20g per plant in September. Always mulch pineapples extremely thickly to avoid the need to weed near those spiky leaves.

• Establish a water garden by recycling old laundry tubs to grow edibles such as waterchestnuts and watercress. This is a good time to clean out an existing water garden. Divide waterlilies every year if they are in a container, every 3 years if they are on the bottom of the pond. Re-pot into fresh, slightly clay soil with either pulverised cow manure or a slow-release fertiliser added. Binding the fertiliser into solid clay balls helps to stop it floating away from the roots. Top with a thick layer of sand or clean gravel to stop the water becoming murky.

SEPTEMBER

• Test the pH, excessive acidity or alkalinity will interfere with uptake of nutrients by plants. Remember never to apply lime at the same time as fertilisers as this leads to a loss of nitrogen, caused by it converting to ammonia and off-gassing. Allow 3 weeks between liming and fertiliser applications. Never add lime to a compost heap as this also leads to a large loss of nutrient into the atmosphere.

• Fertilise pawpaws (1 kg of pelleted fowl manure per m²). If your soils are boron deficient then add 5g to the mix, as pawpaws need plenty of boron. Remember that green pawpaws can be eaten as a vegetable. They make a good substitute for squash in a curry and are delicious in a salad.

• Put least-toxic snail pellets out in containers close to seedlings or use Copper Tape around pots and young plants.

• A wide range of fertilisers are available, with the word ‘organic’ being used rather freely. A good choice for the home gardener is an ‘organically certified’ poultry manure in pelleted form. Use up to 300g to the square metre in the vegetable garden, only ever apply to moist soil. Blood & Bone is a popular choice with organic gardeners, it is much higher in nitrogen (N) & phosphate (P) than pelleted poultry manure but it can be lower in potassium (K).

• Weed control starts now, keep any bare ground mulched. In orchards you can get rid of all household paper scraps by soaking in water prior to spreading on the ground. Cover with at least 5 sheets of newspaper or flattened cardboard boxes. Cover this with mulch. Try the least-toxic herbicide product called Go Natural Organic Herbicide.

OCTOBER

• Citrus Leaf Miner causes ugly distorted leaves with silvery trails in the leaf tissue. Eco Oil is a non-toxic control, spray when new growth is about 1 cm long, reapply every 2-3 weeks. October and February are crucial times to spray.

• Train vines regularly. Plant a new passionfruit, as they only last a few years before succumbing to Woody Passionfruit Virus.

• Providing a bird bath in a sheltered position in your garden has pest control benefits! It will attract the small, insectivorous birds that do a great job cleaning up scale and aphids.
  Watch for aphids on soft shoots of citrus and roses, check for beneficial insects such as Hoverflies and Ladybeetle larvae before controlling them. If some of the aphids look like little brown balloons, they have been parasitised by a micro-wasp. Spray Natrasoap as a least toxic control in the absence of predators.

• Prune spring-flowering shrubs when flowering finishes.

The persistent high rainfall experienced by gardeners in many parts of the country presents its own set of challenges. Very wet weather in the garden may lead to plants collapsing and dying, failure of seeds to germinate, fungal and bacterial disease and soil losing both structure and fertility. There are strategies which will help you and your garden survive these extremes, including understanding the properties of waterlogged soil and recognising the role of mulch and fungi in building a disease-resistant, biologically active soil.

Understanding waterlogged soil
Keep off the soil, it needs to breathe!
Plants breathe through their roots and their growth is limited by the amount of air that soil holds. Soil air exists in the spaces between soil particles; the very best soils have up to 50% space and will feel spongy to walk on, like an old-growth forest. The arrangement of the soil particles to the soil space defines the soil structure. Improve soil aeration by adding gypsum (2 handfuls per m²), organic matter and mulch. These all work to ‘create’ space in the soil.
Water sitting around plant roots can quickly cause plant death, even within 24 hours. Plants literally suffocate because when all the space in the soil is filled with water there is no air for the plants to breathe. With trees it may take many months before it is obvious the tree has died due to this waterlogging. Strategies that help water drain away faster include raised beds, mounds or agricultural drains.

What is a biologically active soil?
Soil is alive – or should be. In a healthy organic farm the microbial life including fungi, bacteria and actinomycetes in the top 10cm of soil, can contain 2 tonnes live weight of microorganisms per hectare. This abundant life is responsible for processing any raw, organic material into humus and releasing nutrients from rock minerals. Fungi and micro-algae help the soil particles to clump together which improves the soil structure and increases the ‘space’ in the soil.
Plant diseases that are common in stressed, low humus, conventionally farmed soils are often absent in organic soils. Predatory fungi that control disease-causing fungi like phytophthora are vitally important to help keep vulnerable trees such as avocadoes and macadamias alive in very wet weather. The amazing array of living organisms that reside in healthy organic soil are responsible for the ‘disease suppression effect’ found in organic vineyards, orchards and farms.
To encourage the soil life, we should provide ‘bed and board’ – food, water, air and somewhere to live. Food for soil life is organic matter and can be provided as: compost, mulch, green manure and organic fertiliser.

Space is where the action is
Without the all-important space there is nowhere for soil life, plant roots, air or water to occupy. Soil without space is compacted and lifeless. Without the ‘glue’ produced by the micro-organisms, the soil will lose structure and become ‘dust’, able to be lifted by the wind into a dust storm.
Bacteria are primary decomposers, they have first helping of the compost heap, their large numbers cause the heat that is given off. Fungi are secondary decomposers, they come along after the bacteria and break down the woodier residues. They are a vital part of a healthy soil. This is where you need to bring to mind an image of the rainforest floor and what is covering it: the fallen logs and branches and decaying leaves. It is this carpet of decaying organic matter that provides ‘bed and board’ to soil life. We can imitate this in our gardens with mulch.

Grow your own mulch
Mulch protects the soil from heavy rain and prevents erosion and compaction; it keeps the soil surface open to allow air to filter in and provides protection and food for micro and macro organisms like earthworms. Choose the type of mulch for the particular area of garden. Under fruit trees is an ideal place for large branches and bark mulches; these will feed the predatory fungi that keep the trees healthy and also provide a habitat for important pest predators like lizards, ground beetles, centipedes and small insect-eating birds. In a vegetable garden straw mulch, a slashed green manure or ‘soft’ leafy mulches like cut arrowroot are a better choice.

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