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How I Grow
Gardening chats.
How I Grow
From Palms To Produce | with Doug Urquhart
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We interview Doug, one of our "The Seed Collection Community" members.
BIO: A retiree, I started growing my own vegetables 2.5 yrs ago in our suburban yard on the Gold Coast, QLD with no prior experience. Gardening helps me stay active mentally and physically. I mainly grow in raised beds, pots and growbags, as is easier on my back and knees.
Location: Southern Gold Coast, QLD, Australia.
More about this episode:
We trace Doug’s shift from health scare to thriving garden, turning sandy soil and palm stands into productive raised beds. He shares practical methods for container sweet potatoes, ginger and turmeric in pots, probiotic sauerkraut, and calm, effective pest management.
• Why raised beds suit sandy soil and sore knees.
• Hugelkultur-style filling with chopped palm to save soil costs.
• Cool-season crops started early under shade and in pots.
• Vertical sweet potato in 160-litre pots with trellis control.
• Summer winners: sweet corn, ginger, turmeric.
• Fermenting sauerkraut for gut health and easy storage.
• Mindset of persistence, balance and simple tools
'How I Grow' is produced by The Seed Collection Pty Ltd.
Find out more about us here: www.theseedcollection.com.au
'How I Grow' is produced by The Seed Collection Pty Ltd.
Find out more about us here: www.theseedcollection.com.au
You're listening to How I Grow, a podcast by the Seed Collection. I'm your host, Nat Buckley, and today we will be listening to an episode that was recorded by Gemma back in 2024.
SPEAKER_01My name is Gemma, and today I'll be speaking with Doug, who is from a subtropical climate in Queensland. Doug is a retiree who gardens in his suburban backyard on the Gold Coast. He did not have gardening experience prior to taking up the hobby two and a half years ago, but he is passionate about his garden as he says it keeps him active mentally and physically. I think there'll be many listeners who can relate to Doug's gardening journey and who will really enjoy the gardening tips and tricks that he shares. Hi Doug, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
SPEAKER_02Good morning, Gemma. It's my pleasure.
Diagnosis To Digging: Why Gardening
SPEAKER_01I'm really eager to learn more about how you grow and to share this wonderful knowledge that you have with our listeners. You've been quite the popular member on our community group on Facebook, the Seed Collection Community. And obviously that's how we initially met, Doug. But before we go into some of the wonderful things you've been sharing in that group, could you please tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start gardening and what kind of land you're gardening on?
SPEAKER_02Sure. My wife and I live in an 800-meter block on the Southern Gold Coast. We moved here 30 years ago this year, actually, when our daughters were about midway through primary school. Pretty much the only gardening I had done in the first 27 years of that anyway was using a mower and a whippersnapper. And uh being on the Southern Gold Coast, we thought it'd be nice to have some palm trees in the place. So we planted lots of golden canes because they didn't need a lot of maintenance. They're self-cleaning pretty much. You'd got to get rid of the rubbish. And uh we liked the look of them. But uh they'll come into the story again a bit later on. So around three years ago, uh pretty close to being exactly three years ago, uh, not long after I'd retired, I had a prostate cancer diagnosis. As you can imagine, the next few months were pretty hectic and they involved lots of tests and things and surgery. As we're getting towards the end of the year, I was recovering pretty well and starting to get itchy feet because I'm not a sit-around sort of person. And I'd had to do a lot of that for quite a few weeks. And my daughter suggested to me, why don't you try growing some vegetables? You know, you've mentioned before that you'd like to try that. She's a vegan, so she's got a vested interest. So I thought, yeah, why not? I'll give it a bit of a try. And the first challenge that I came up with was I really didn't have any garden, much gardening stuff at all. The second challenge was I didn't really have any gardening knowledge. So my very helpful daughter again pointed me towards YouTube. So I started doing a bit of browsing on YouTube and uh I stumbled on a channel from a guy, uh an Australian guy called Mark. He lives up on uh the Sunshine Coast or just south of the Sunshine Coast, I think, uh about 60 kilometers north of Brisbane, in a very similar climate to mine, probably a little bit cooler at night, a little bit drier because he's further inland, whereas I'm right on the coast. His channel's called Self-Sufficient Me. I found it really interesting and really inspiring just looking at how he was growing his vegetables. Um he uses primarily raised beds, which also appealed to me because uh I'm a 69-year-old grandfather now, and my back and my knees are really up to too much ground level gardening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so those raised garden beds are really ideal for that.
Early Experiments And First Harvests
SPEAKER_02They are. Not to mention we live on the edge of a canal estate, so our yard's pretty much sand, which is great for digging, but not so much for growing, and it drains really well, also. So uh that was really where my inspiration came from. I thought I've got all this grey hair, so I might as well put it to some good use. So I sat down and thought about it, and I thought, well, I shouldn't dive in and start setting up raised beds all over the place just in case I don't like it. I found a few um foam boxes that I poked some holes in the bottom of and set them up on uh some bricks and besser blocks in some nice sunny spots around the yard and thought I'll have a go growing some things. Went down to Bunnings and bought a few packets of seeds, various things, and thought I'll try growing some things, and then we had the wettest summer I can ever remember. You'll probably remember that one. It was a couple of years ago, and yeah, yeah, it was just it rained pretty much constantly right through the whole summer.
SPEAKER_01Oh, not the best year to take up the hobby.
SPEAKER_02No, it was a bit of a disaster, but I the first thing I learned was that foam boxes and just ordinary soil aren't really the ideal thing to try growing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what did you find with them?
SPEAKER_02I found that they were very heavy for starters. Well, the soil didn't drain well, it became very glugy and didn't dry out well. Most of the plants didn't like sitting in wet roots, so it wasn't that successful, but I I had enough success from it to realise that I really enjoyed doing it. I was really excited when we could sit down and eat our first lot of homegrown produce.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wonderful. What was the first thing you grew, Doug?
SPEAKER_02I think it was silver bead.
SPEAKER_01Ah, lovely, nice and versatile too.
SPEAKER_02We managed a couple of cucumbers. The uh tomatoes didn't fare so well.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Oh, the cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes did okay, but uh the other tomatoes not so much. Yeah, I I found that I really enjoyed doing it. I really enjoy doing this, so I'll start planning about setting up uh something so I can do it a bit more effectively and a bit more enjoyably. The first thing that got in my way was that when I sat down and looked at thought about my yard and where the sun comes from and all that type of thing, the prime growing spots were currently occupied by big stands of golden cane palms. Funnily enough, I'd been watching some of Mark's videos on his Self-Sufficient Me channel and he'd done a couple on uh Ugel culture. Are you familiar with that?
SPEAKER_01Well, could you explain to us what that is, please, Doug?
SPEAKER_02It's a German concept where you build up your garden beds with organic matter, up to and including tree trunks. So what Mark was suggesting was you can save money filling up your your raised garden beds because he had a lot of raised garden beds. He pointed out that you really only need the top 12 to 15 inches of soil to grow your vegetables in. The rest of it you can fill with any sort of organic matter. And being on three acres, his had a lot of tree trunks in them, which will gradually break down over time and become compost in the bottom of your raised bed.
From Palms To Raised Beds
SPEAKER_01Ah, fantastic. It's a bit of like preemptive composting, if you will.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So I sat down and I thought, well, I've got all those golden cane palms out there, they're organic. So um I went through a process of clearing them. I went to Bunnings and got a little reciprocal saw, a little Ryobi battery reciprocal saw and a rough cutting wood blade. And I started working through the golden canes, just chopping them down, chopping the stems into manageable size pieces and uh stacking them and stacking all the fronds. I started in the backyard. We had one stand there that was in the prime growing spot in the backyard. So uh once I'd finished them, uh then I bought a raised bed. I get the ones that are 800 mil high. I've I find I'm quite tall, I'm about six foot two, and I find it a good working height. I filled the bottom two-thirds of it with with the cut-up stems, and I chopped up the fronds and filled the bottom two-thirds of it with golden canes, golden cane bits and pieces, basically, and then ordered in a load of uh bulk load of veggie mix soil from a local landscaping yard that makes up a nice mix and topped it up and away I went. And then over the next 12 months or so, I I went through the same process in the front yard in both corners. Each corner had a very big stand of golden canes, actually. So I chopped those down in one corner and I've set up three raised beds there. I think I sent you a picture of those.
SPEAKER_01Ah, yes, yeah, they were fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, that used to be uh a big stand of golden canes. So uh now it's uh it's a prime uh raised bed growing spot. It was a big job.
SPEAKER_01It would, yeah, it would have been. So having done that and then planting things in them, did you find straight away the difference with the soil quality, or did it take some time to see the benefits of having done that, that oogle culture?
Hugelkultur-Inspired Bed Building
SPEAKER_02Well, I used good quality soil to top them up. As I said, we have a local landscaping yard here that makes up a veggie mix. Uh they incorporate a sandy loam, uh, some green compost, some mushroom compost, and some phosphate and some other things. They mix it up themselves with their front-end loader, and I think they sell it for about$95 a cubic meter plus delivery. A couple of times a year before the start of the cool weather and the warm weather growing season, I'll get in a meter or two of it and use it to top up the beds. Because the thing I find with the Ugal culture is your bed will drop every year, every season. As the organic matter, yeah. The palms are quite soft, so they probably break down quite quickly in comparison to the hardwood stumps that the self-sufficient me guy was using. So uh yeah, I do a fair bit of topping up, but no, I was growing stuff quite effectively pretty much straight away from the time I set them up.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, that's wonderful. So, what's currently growing in there, Doug?
SPEAKER_02I'm just in the process of transitioning to our cool weather crops at the moment. Um, we don't get a very long cool weather season here on the Gold Coast, and particularly last year, it never really got cuddled. But as a norm, uh we don't get a very uh very long cool weather season here, and we love our snow peas and our brassicas. So uh I try and get them going as soon as I can. I tend to start the seeds probably when it's still too hot for them, but I I keep them uh under shape cloth in a in a small greenhouse and grow them using pots so that when the weather does become cool enough to plant them out in the beds, um I'm ready to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and they've had that head start as well, so you can hopefully get a full season out of them, even if your cool season isn't quite full.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. I'm trying a different cauliflower this year that I got from you guys, actually. Uh I forget the name of it offhand, but it's uh it's an S something or it's got numbers in the name.
SPEAKER_01Oh, is it a purple purple Sisley?
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, it's just an ordinary cauliflower.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Look. I'm very impressed with it because uh it's handling the heat much better than I thought it would.
SPEAKER_01Oh, fantastic.
SPEAKER_02The broccoli seedlings have struggled a bit with the heat, but I've got three types of cabbage. One of them's struggling a bit, but the cauliflower's loving it.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wonderful. So, what are some of the signs to look for? Like, how do you tell that the broccoli is struggling, Doug? Just to help other people identify what that might look like.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it tells you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's uh it will a little trick that I use. Uh I've got a few milk crates and uh those plastic bread crates. And often when I plant a seedling, uh you can put a milk crate or a plastic bread crate over it, which will just break out the sun a bit and take some of the heat out of the sun until they get established. And even doing that, I found the broccoli was struggling. So this starting to come good now. The the weather took a long time to cool here this autumn. It's only been the last week or two that we're starting to get some cooler days. It's still been up around the high twenties with a lot of heat in the sun for this time of year.
SPEAKER_01And that certainly would make the cool season planting uh a little bit more confusing than it than it would normally be.
SPEAKER_02And I think that the forecast seems to be indicating another mild, short winter and an early spring again. So uh I wanted to get them going. As I said, we love our brassicas.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, delicious. Well, I hope you get plenty of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I was given last year, it would have been either for Christmas or my birthday. I was given a uh a fermenting croc as a present. So I had to make my own sauerkraut last year once with my cabbage harvest.
SPEAKER_01Oh, lovely. How did it go?
SPEAKER_02It went really well. It was super easy.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really? Could you explain the process for a start?
Cool-Season Crops In A Warm Climate
SPEAKER_02Sure. I I was using uh sugarloaf cabbages, my wife's favourite. Basically, you chop the cabbage up. I try and get it about strips about a quarter inch. And uh I was using probably three or four kilos of cabbage at a time. It's a three-litre crock pot, so it's sort of a medium size, it's not a huge one, but it's not a little one. And then you add salt to it, uh non-iodized salt. I was using sea salt at uh 2.5% ratio. So you weigh your cabbage and use your calculator to work out how many grams of salt you need to get a 2.5% ratio. Then you add the salt to it in a big bowl, and then you get your hands and your knuckles in there and you scrunch it up as much as you possibly can. And when you think you've got it all done, then you go away for half an hour and you come back and it's shrunk by about half. And the water started to come out of it, so you do it again. And you do that two or three or four times as many times as you think you need to, because the better you can scrunch it up and break it down and bruise it, the more access the probiotic bacteria have to get into it. And then when you're finally happy with it, you just load it into your croc, you save a couple of the outside leaves from the cabbage. Once you've loaded it into your croc, you put those couple of outside leaves over the top to cover it all and help keep it under the water that you've generated. Generally, I I can get enough moisture out of the cabbage that I don't need to top it up with brine. But if you do need to, you can mix up a little bit of brine and top it up a little bit. And uh, my croc came with a couple of weights that you then sit on top of the leaves. That ensures that the cabbage stays under the water level. It can't have any air get to it, so it stays under the water level. And the croc itself has a little water seal around the rim. So you need to keep an eye on that. Every two or three days you need to top that up a little bit as it evaporates because it's quite warm up here, you know, even in spring, late winter and spring, it's it's still reasonably warm up here. And uh I had read that the sauerkraut can take up to uh some people leave theirs for six, eight, ten, twelve weeks or more. But I had also read that the warmer the climate, the less time you need it to leave it to ferment. It's also a taste issue. I like my sauerkraut a bit milder and still crunchy, whereas some people like theirs less crunchy and extremely sour. And the longer you leave it fermenting, the less crunchy and the more sour it will become.
SPEAKER_01So how long did you leave it?
SPEAKER_02Around three weeks, give or take.
SPEAKER_01Oh, and that was enough?
SPEAKER_02That was perfect. As soon as you put it in the fridge, it dramatically slows down the fermentation rate. So it'll still keep fermenting, but very slowly. I I I remembered reading on um a fermenting group that I joined, a very experienced lady mentioned that the best sauerkraut she'd ever made was one that she lost in the back of a fridge for 18 months.
SPEAKER_01Oh well, a fortunate accident then, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So when you're happy with it, you laid all it out of your croc into jars, sealed jars, and you just transfer it to the fridge and use it as you want. I've just finished my last jar last week, actually.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. So how long does it last generally? Once you've put it into the container in the fridge, how long do you have until it's no longer? Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as I said, that lady said the the best one she's ever made, she lost in the back of her fridge for 18 months, just forgot it was there. And she said it was absolutely the best. She said, I I can't usually let them wait that long. I like it too much.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02But it's uh it's it's full of probiotics. So it's not only tasty, but it's really, really good for you. And uh my wife and I, we quite regularly do a small lamb roast or a silver side for a meal, and then we have cold meat for a few days for our lunches. And I really enjoy my cold meat and sauerkraut sangers, and they're good for me too, because they're they're full of probiotics.
SPEAKER_01Yes, indeed. It's always good when something delicious is also healthy.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is what I tell myself about potatoes, Doug. So you mentioned, Doug, earlier in our conversation that when you started out, you didn't have any really any gardening tools other than the mower and whipper snipper. Or pots. Or yeah, even pots. So is there anything along the way that you've picked up, like a gardening tool that you've found really indispensable?
SPEAKER_02You know, the uh I I use the hand tools mostly because I'm working in the raised beds. And, you know, if you've got little little scrapers and you know, little prong hand prongs and things like that, I use a fair bit. But my favorite one is one that I I got um only only a few months ago. I was seeing people advertising these power planters that you you uh put on your battery drill. They're basically an auger. So I had a look and uh I was able to buy one locally at Bunnings. It's like a big drill, except the blades are about three inches across. And you can get them ranging from I think I got an 18-inch one. You can get 12-inch ones, 18-inch ones, 24-inch ones. It just screws into the chuck on your battery drill, and you just use it to dig your garden over or your ground over.
Sauerkraut Made Simple
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. So could you use it for digging out holes for transplanting as well?
SPEAKER_02Well, that's exactly what I use it for. Um, excellent. My wife absolutely loves sunflowers. So I've got in the habit every summer. I I don't really have space in the garden for them. And as I mentioned before, my yard is is sand. I go around and just dig holes in all the all the spots I think I think they'll work. This thing makes a nice hole, you know, three to four inches across, and you can make it deep enough. I put some compost and some fertiliser in the bottom of it and plant my sunflower seedlings in there. And uh right through summer, you know, we've just got sunflowers all around the place.
SPEAKER_01Oh, beautiful. That's lovely. Really nice, really nice gesture for your wife, too.
SPEAKER_02Brings in the pollinators and keeps my wife happy, and on the downside, it also attracts the cockatoos once the sunflowers uh seeds are developing.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it can be quite devastating, and the cockatoos can just take the heads of the flowers clean off, can't they?
SPEAKER_02Oh, they do, they do, and they bring all their mates too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_02But it's part of nature, so I I live with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's it. Enjoy the work.
SPEAKER_02My granddaughter was up visiting over Christmas and she was fascinated by them. You know, they're such cheeky little things. They come and sit sit right on the fence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they've no shame. They'll they'll destroy them in front of you.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. I'm thinking next summer, hopefully, I won't need to worry about seedlings. They should just start self-seeding everywhere, the number of seeds the cockatoos have scattered around the place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hopefully. That'd be nice. So, Doug, some of the things that uh you've been posting in our community group on Facebook have garnered a lot of attention. Uh, there's two in particular that I'd like to mention. We'll start with the first one that you shared with us, which was how you grow sweet potato. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that, please?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Well, we love sweet potatoes, and I've read that they're also um absolute chokers full of nutrients, far more than potatoes, actually. As well as being very tasty. But I'd also read that even if you have ground that's suitable for growing them, and then they tend to take over your yard. They're very invasive, bit like mint. So I I did a lot of reading up on them. And when I'm wanting to have a go at growing something, MO is I'll I'll go to YouTube and search growing sweet potatoes in containers. As I wanted to see if it was possible to grow them in containers. And I I found quite a few videos, including one from my old mate, self-sufficient me. And there's also a chap over in the US, who's about my vintage, who does a lot of growing in pots and makes up his own container mix, which got me thinking as well. So I did a lot of research and realized that it was possible to grow them in containers. So I did some more research on container mixes because it was going to be pretty expensive to fill a 160-litre container with uh bags of potting mix. But I'd found actually five of those big 160-litre plastic pots. They're about 800 mils across and 500 mils deep. I think the nurseries use them for big shrubs and small trees and things like that. I'd found five of those on locally on Facebook Marketplace, quite cheap. Marketplace has really been my friend this last couple of years because, as I said, I started out with you know very little in the way of tools or pots or anything. So uh I've picked up an enormous amount of stuff off Marketplace, sometimes for free, uh usually quite cheap and usually not far from home. And I basically keep an eye out for anything I think I can use and recycle that'll fit in in my little RAV4.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. I was just about to point that out. It's also part of the reuse, reduce and recycle concept, which is fantastic. It certainly ticks that box.
SPEAKER_02I use a lot of pavers too, that are second-hand pavers that I've picked up off Marketplace 2 to get my pots and grow bags up off the ground. You can make a little platform in it out of the pavers.
SPEAKER_01Ah, I like it. Very resourceful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it just gets them up off the ground. So I did some research and and I started playing around with some formulas for mixing up my own container mix or potting mix because uh I grow a lot of my stuff in pots, even though I've got the four big raised beds and got an in-ground bed in one corner of the front yard that I it's basically my pumpkin patch, but I had to build that up with some soil. But I grow a lot of things in pots, they take up less space, and you can move them around. Uh in I I spend the summer here trying to hide things from the sun, and I spend the winter trying to find the sun for them, so it gives you a lot of flexibility. I tried a couple of mixes, you know, just from watching what other people do, and I've come up with a mix that I've been using for about a year now that's working really well for me. Uh, I found a a guy on the Gold Coast who was supplying uh hundred litre bags of Perlite and Vermiculite for about$40, 200 odd litre bags of Canadian peat moss for a reasonable price, and if you bought enough stuff, he delivered for free. So I yeah, I got in a lot of stuff and started making up my own container mix because it's lighter than just filling a pot with soil. It's a lot lighter. So if you're needing to move them around, it makes a big difference. It drains well because of the perlite and the vermiculite, but it also retains moisture and nutrients because of the vermiculite and the peat mice. So you've you've got water and nutrients there for your plants, but their roots aren't sitting in it, so it's a lot easier because pots can dry out very quickly.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a wonderful idea, Doug. And uh wondering if you're keen to share your ratios with us.
SPEAKER_02Sure, I can do that. Uh I think I shared it on a post on your group just a few days ago. Oh, excellent. I mix it up in a wheelbarrow. I use a margarine container as my measure, just one of those the olive margarine. That comes in a square container. I just see you can use any size container you want. I just find that works well for me. I use uh six parts of soil, four parts of heat moss or coconut coir, whichever I've got at the time, two parts each of amiculite and perlite, and I buy the uh the large of each rather than the small ones. If I can find the large, I think I started off using medium and found the large worked a bit better. I use three parts of compost and a good handful of slow-release uh organic fertilizer pellets.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. And you just mix that through and that's complete?
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's it. Uh and once you've used it, you just have to add some more compost and some more fertilizer, and you can reuse it over and over because the the peat moss will take, I'm led to believe, will take about five years to break down. And the vermiculite and the perlite never breaks down. It's always there.
Tools That Make Growing Easier
SPEAKER_01So just replenishing it with that compost just in case it's uh dropped in any nutrient levels along the way, and obviously from what's grown and drawn nutrients out of the mix as well.
SPEAKER_02Now I found a fertilizer too that I'm really happy with. Uh it's an organic blood and bone. It's called terra firma. It's made locally to me here at Bow Desert, but they I think they they supply it Australia-wide. I buy a 20 kilo bag of it. The thing I like about it is they're very small pellets. It's chook manure-based and it's got a lot of calcium in it, which is great for a lot of the plants that I grow. It's a much smaller pellet. A lot of them are the size of chook pellets. And when you're mixing, like I grow a lot in 20 centimetre pots too. I grow more lettuce and and a lot of things in 20 centimetre pots. And I find this it's a much finer pellet, so it mixes really well through your container mix.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, so you're not getting a huge chunk in the smaller pots either.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. I think I get three batches with that measure that I'm using per wheelbarrow load. I just mix up a wheelbarrow load and then I wheel that out to where I'm setting up my big pot and I fill up the pot. You know, I I set up a trellis above the pot for the sweet potatoes. I found that the key to growing them successfully in a pot is you need a lot of foliage to generate the energy for the sweet potatoes to develop.
SPEAKER_01Yes, for the tubers underneath.
SPEAKER_02But the other thing is you need to stop the vines from growing over the side and into the ground and taking root because that'll divert energy away from growing the sweet potatoes in the pot. So I go around once a week with a pair of scissors and I just trim any that are growing over. Initially, I just keep turning them up and tying them up onto the trellis and keep them going over the trellis. But you reach a point, you get so much growth on the trellis that you just start clipping them off so that they don't reach the ground and take root. It just keeps diverting all the energy of the plant back into the pot.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. So you're growing the leaves up the trellis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they don't grip. You you'll need to tie them to it initially, but once they get a bit longer, you can weave them in and out of it, and they'll sort of self-support.
SPEAKER_01Ah, excellent. Okay, so vertical sweet potato. I'm liking it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I rigged up quite a simple trellis. There's lots of ways you could do it. I found these little galvanized things at Bunnings. I think they were about 1.5 metres high by about 600 wide. They're about$20 each. They've got legs on the bottom that you can stick down into the pot to help stabilize them. So I put one of them on each side of the pot and then joined them at the top with cable ties.
SPEAKER_01And then just put a like a teepee.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and then just put a state through them to stop it from tipping. I found last year that once they got a fair bit of growth on them and we can get quite windy here, we're close to the coast. It started tipping to one side a bit. I put a post in just to hold it up, and uh that works really well for me. I keep the water up to them. They love warm weather. Uh, one of the processes I've been going through here is trying to identify what I can grow through our summer because it really gets hot and humid here.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So, what have you found to be most effective growing there in those conditions?
Container Sweet Potatoes At Scale
SPEAKER_02Well, sweet potatoes for one. Sweet corn grows really well here, especially in the raised beds because they drain so well. It needs a lot of water, but it doesn't like sitting in it. Once you've eaten home grown sweet potatoes, sweet corn, you'll never buy another, you'll never buy the store-board stuff again. So uh I plan on growing a lot of sweet corn through the summer and going forward. I can plant quite early because it gets warm here and get one crop in that I harvest around Christmas time and it stays warm for a while too, so I can actually get a second crop going.
SPEAKER_01Oh, lovely. And uh with the sweet potatoes, Doug, how many would you say you harvested at the end of the season? Did you weigh them or?
SPEAKER_02No, I didn't. I posted a picture. I had two of those pots set up and I harvested them both. And I posted a picture of them, but I I don't have a scale that would have handled it, to be honest. There was way too much, way too much weight in them, but I I got a pretty good harvest. I was more than happy with it.
SPEAKER_01That was. It was very impressive. There was quite a few sweet potatoes there. That was fantastic. And how do you store them, Doug?
SPEAKER_02I found that uh they taste far better and store better if you cure them for seven to ten days in a nice warm, humid spot before you put them away for storage. We're quite lucky here because it's warm and humid enough just under our back patio just to put them there out of the direct light for their seven to ten days.
SPEAKER_01Lovely. So why would you need to cure them? What does it do for them?
SPEAKER_02It does two things. It helps the starches turn into sugars and sweetens the taste. If you eat them straight away after you harvest them, they can taste quite starchy. And secondly, when you first harvest them, their skins are very delicate. You shouldn't wash them when you first harvest them because their skins are extremely delicate and they won't store well if you damage the skin. So you leave the dirt on them and cure them. And then you can brush the dirt off because their skins harden over that seven to ten days. You can brush the dirt off then and store them. And for storage, I just use uh a big foam box with a lid. Yeah, you can get them at uh fruit and vegetable shops or uh aquarium shops, have some good size ones as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, excellent. Are they discarding these and you just ask if you can uh help out by taking some off their hands or are they selling them?
SPEAKER_02Usually. Sometimes the aquarium shops will want a couple of dollars for them, but often depends on how many they've got at the time because uh they get charged for them when their fish are delivered, and um they they don't really have a use for them, uh many uses for them themselves, so uh often they're quite apt to just get rid of them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wonderful. It's a win-win.
SPEAKER_02And they have the added advantage of if there's any rats or possums around, they protect your uh sweet potatoes from the rats or the possums, too.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's definitely a win. Have you had any issues with any pests in particular in your garden, Doug?
SPEAKER_02Well, we talked about the cockatoos.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02Probably the the biggest one up here I've really got to find a way to deal with before next summer is the fruit flies. They're terrible up here. And they were getting into my Kent pumpkins. They were getting the pumpkins as soon as they develop before the skin hardens. When they first flower, their skin's very soft. I actually saw them stinging them. And then a couple of days later the little things had turned brown and die, even though I'd manually pollinated them. So I started looking around to see what was going on, and I caught one of the little buggers stinging one of my pumpkins. Yeah, they played havoc with my pumpkins and tomatoes and capsicums mainly this year. So I'm I'm gonna have to find a way to deal with them. Yeah, I don't worry about pests too much. One of the things I liked about Mark on self-sufficient meat is he's got a chilled attitude. Like at this stage in my life, I don't want to have too many things stressing me by being unrealistic about my expectations about things. So I sort of go with the flow a bit. You know, if something's doing well, I go with that. If it's not, I go with that.
SPEAKER_01It's a great method.
SPEAKER_02One of his philosophies was you try and develop a garden space where you've got a good balance between bad insects and good insects. Because they will balance themselves out eventually if you've got the right plants there to encourage the good guys. I've got a lot of French marigolds and nasturtians growing around my place. They self-seed everywhere now, and if they don't, I spread the seeds to help them do that.
SPEAKER_01And they look pretty too.
SPEAKER_02They do, yeah. It's lovely spatial colour. The nasturtians struggle during the summer up here. They sort of hold on in shady spots and then they come back when it cools down. But the French marigolds, they they powered on right through the hot summer. But his philosophy is you do that, plus you grow enough for their menu.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. A bit of sacrificial planting.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. So I try and manage it uh as best I can. This time of year, uh the caterpillars can be a real menace because it doesn't get really get cold here. So we've pretty much got constant cabbage moths and white butterflies flying around and things like that. So I I pretty much every morning have to go around all my brassicas and just check for caterpillar poop. And as soon as I find it, I find the little little so-and-so's and squish them. If I know they're there and I can't find them, a good trick is to go out after dark with a torch and hold it under the plant, and you can see them through the leaves.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And could you share with our listeners, Doug, who might not be familiar with what to look for in this instance, what you actually look for to identify them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I just look for their poop. It'll usually slide down the leaves, so you'll find it in around the base of the plant, like on the inside of the base of the plant. They call it the crown. You'll find them in there, they're just little soft-looking balls. You'll you'll look at them and you'll think, are they caterpillar eggs? But they're not, they're actually caterpillar poop.
SPEAKER_01So how tiny are they, Doug? And what kind of colour would you look out for?
SPEAKER_02They depend on the size of the caterpillar.
SPEAKER_01Ah.
SPEAKER_02If they're quite large, then you know you've got a big caterpillar. If they're quite large, you'll probably find quite large holes in the leaves of your leafy greens as well. But if they're only very tiny, because when the eggs first hatch, they're like a thread of silk. And if you come back a few days later, they're two centimetres long and quite thick. If you come back a few days again after that, they're as big as your little finger. And your plants go, they just grow really quickly. So uh if you're seeing stuff at the bottom inside your leafy greens, it looks like it might be eggs. The odds are it's probably more likely caterpillar poo, because the eggs themselves are very tiny and they lay them on the underside of the leaves. You can find them too and scrape them off if you look for them, but I do that sometimes. Bit of prevention.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Doug, you've mentioned brassicas and your sweet potatoes. Is there anything unusual that you've grown?
SPEAKER_02I grow my own uh turmeric and ginger. I'm getting a bit of arthritis in my old age. I'm an old footballer, so I've got dodgy knees and aches and pains, and I find the turmeric really helps. And uh, one of the things we do, we drink a green juice every day. We've got a Vitamix and we mix up a week's supply at a time. Once a week, I'll go around the garden and at the moment I'm using a lot of pumpkin leaves. I'm just starting to add the odd brassica leaf now as the brassicas are growing. You can take off some of the outside leaves and put them in it. But I use the pumpkin leaves this time of year, sweet potato leaves, nasturtium leaves, radish leaves. There's so many leaves on things that you can beetroot leaves, just add all of those, a big lump of turmeric, a big lump of ginger, some fruit in it, just to sweeten it up a little bit, apples, oranges, pears, whatever's on at the good price down at the uh fruit shop. And we just mix it up and I use those 500mm jars that you buy your stir fry sauces in. We just make up enough of those once a week to do us for a week. And I drink one of those a day. I just keep it in the fridge and go in a couple of times during the day and drink it.
SPEAKER_01It's a really good way to ensure you're getting a wide range of vitamins and nutrients as well, isn't it?
Summer Winners: Corn And Curing
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And uh as we were talking about the other day, uh my daughter pointed out to me that research shows that cancer doesn't like an alkaline environment. And so drinking green juices is a very good way to help keep your body in an alkaline state.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because uh the cancer doesn't like the acidic environment. It likes acidic, it doesn't survive in the acidic, yes.
SPEAKER_02It can't survive apparently, or it can't grow in the uh alkaline environment. So it helps with that as well as overall health.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, yes, and energy levels too. And like you say as well, Doug, the uh arthritis pains, ginger and turmeric are quite well known for assisting with those things in the right proportions, of course.
SPEAKER_02And those two are on the list of things I've discovered that grow really well during our summer here.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. That turmeric was actually one of the other things that I was going to ask about that I've seen you share on the community group. Uh, could you tell us a little bit about how you grow the turmeric?
SPEAKER_02Sure. I'll tell you, I'll combine the turmeric and the ginger because I grow them both the same way. I use 50 litre pots. They're about 50 centimetres across and about 35 to 38 centimetres high. I think you get them at Bunnings for about$11. So I fill those with my container mix, and to get started, you just need a rhizome. It works the same way for both of them. They're both like the summer, they'll go dormant during the winter. So your best time to start them is as the weather's starting to warm up. So you just try and find yourself a rhizome. You're better off finding an organic one because a lot of the supermarket ones they spray them to prevent them from sprouting. They do the same with their potatoes. You can remove that coating by soaking them. But if you've got a fruit shop near you that uh an organic fruit shop, you don't need very much. You just plant it um quite shallowly. You don't need to go awfully deep, no more than an inch down. Keep the soil moist, they'll come up when they're ready. You've got to be patient. The ginger will tend to take a bit longer than the turmeric, but once you've got them going, they're basically a set and forget. The thing I have found is the turmeric likes the sun more than the ginger. They both like the hot, humid weather. The ginger doesn't like the scalding midday and early afternoon sun as much. So I've still got one stand of golden canes left alongside the pool. So I grow the ginger in front of them, up against the pool fence. I set the pots there where they get all the morning sun, but from about eleven o'clock on, any sunlight they get is dappled through the palm trees. Whereas the turmeric I just set up next to the pumpkin patch out in the front yard where it gets baked all day, and they absolutely love it. The turmeric, you can water as much as you like. They'll take as much water as you want to give them. The ginger likes to be moist, but it doesn't like to be stopping wet. So just those two key differences, and they thrive. We've got more ginger than we can use at the moment.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Well, it's better that than the opposite. And just for any of our listeners who might not be entirely certain of what Doug means when he says rhizomes of turmeric or ginger. That is a portion of the underground stem or root, if you will, that just grow very close to the surface there that you can replant. So they will consist of nodes, which will eventually develop into roots and then shoots that will grow upwards once you've planted these rhizomes in the ground. And we actually do sell these seasonally here at the seed collection too, that are free of any chemicals at all.
SPEAKER_02Oh, excellent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's just good to know.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, they're very easy. They're one of the few things that you don't have to keep checking for pests and everything. They look after themselves pretty well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, even better. I saw your photos in the group, Doug. The turmeric looked absolutely thriving. And having personally not grown turmeric myself before, I was quite surprised to see what the top portion of the plant looks like.
SPEAKER_02It's quite an attractive plant. A lot of people actually use them as a decorative plant. There's quite a few different varieties. The the one I have grows big white flowers on spikes. The flowers flowers are very impressive too when they're flowering.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. And uh, what's one of the indicators, Doug, that the ginger or the turmeric is ready for harvesting?
SPEAKER_02Well, generally, depending on where you're growing them, here not so much because it never really gets that cold here. And if it does, it's only for a week. So they don't go dormant for very long. But in most growing areas, when you see the leaves die back, that's a sign that it's finished growing and that it's going dormant for the winter. If you leave it, it'll come back on when the weather starts warming up again and start growing further. But that's normally the best time to harvest them. I'm hoping to get a continuous supply going with by staggering my two pots because they'll keep growing here. So when I harvested one pot and I still have another one there, we got enough from the first pot. It's still in the dehydrator. When it's finished, I'm going to grind it up into a powder and store it in airtight jars.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you is the dehydrating a requirement of being able to do that to grind it and store it?
Pests, Balance, And Beneficials
SPEAKER_02If you don't, it'll clump. If you don't get all the moisture out of it, your powder will clump. You have to really get all the moisture out of it. Um depends on how long you want. Some people just freeze it and then take it a piece out and graty it when they want to use it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, grey it like fresh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is my first time dehydrating it and drying it. It was an idea I found on a YouTube channel. This came from uh lady called Mourag Gamble. She's a permaculture expert with a lot of your root vegetables, including your ginger and your turmeric. If you just get a bucket or a box and some play sand and store them in that, they'll last much longer than they will anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01Ah, that's a clever trick. Just bury them under the sand?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you just bury them and put a layer of sand, put some pieces of turmeric or ginger, have them not touching, put another layer of sand on top, put some more pieces and just keep going until you've filled it up. I just used the play sand from Bunnings and it it worked well for me last year with the turmeric. I just thought this year I'll try my daughter had a dehydrator she wasn't using, so I thought I'll try dehydrating and grinding it into powder this time because it'll last years apparently doing it that way.
SPEAKER_01Well, why not? I'm looking forward to hearing about the progress of this once you're finished in the dehydrator and they're all ground and stored.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we can use the Vitamix for that too, so that should work well.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah, wonderful.
SPEAKER_02I'm constantly experimenting. It's uh you mentioned at the start that I told you that I got into the gardening primarily because I got a bit of a health scare and I thought, oh, well, I should probably start eating better. And my daughter said, Well, if you're gonna eat better, why not grow it yourself?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And like you mentioned with the sweet corn, once you eat produce that you've grown yourself, you can taste the difference between that and the supermarkets. It is very hard to go back to supermarket fruit and veg.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the other thing I've noticed, and uh my daughter pointed this out to me, the the stuff you grow yourself, particularly if you're growing organically and using organic fertilizers instead of chemical manufactured fertilizers, is there's much more density and nutrient levels in homegrown stuff. She's a vegan, so she eats a lot of leafy greens. And I try and grow enough vegetables for my wife and myself and for her because she lives quite close to us. Our other daughter's eight hours drive away. She tells me that she only needs to eat about half the amount of my homegrown leafy greens to get full, as she does with ones she buys from the store. They're just far more nutrient dense.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, and fuller, and on top of that, you have the added benefit of being more delicious.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, this this time of year we're gorging ourselves on homegrown pumpkins and sweet potato. We're having them roasted, steamed in soups together. Pumpkin and sweet potato go together and make a lovely soup. We've got a little uh electric soup maker, you just put all the pumpkin and sweet potato in, and we add a little bit of just a tiny bit of ginger, and I add turmeric to everything. And you put the lid on and turn it on, and it it makes the soup for you. It makes all sorts of noises. It'll frighten you because it'll go quiet for a while and then it'll come on and rev away for a while, and 20 or 30 minutes later, there's hot soup waiting for you.
SPEAKER_01And it's all completely smooth?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. You just cut your veggies into chunks and put them in there and then set this thing up and away it goes.
SPEAKER_01And so it heats and blends?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, heats and blends.
SPEAKER_01Hmm, okay. Sounds good on the team.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, no. Our daughter put us onto that one too. She eats a lot of soups, a lot of veggie soups.
SPEAKER_01I love a good veggie soup.
SPEAKER_02So, yeah, we're we're gorging ourselves on uh sweet potatoes and pumpkins at this time of year. We we sort of have seasonal favourites. It wasn't that long ago we're orging ourselves on homegrown sweet corn. Won't be long now, and we'll be gorging ourselves. At the moment, too, I I I go out and pick some nice cherry tomatoes for my wife's breakfast every morning. I'm growing the uh, I think they're called yellow honey cherry. They're quite a good size, actually, probably about three or four centimetres across. Super sweet. Another few weeks and the black cherries will be producing and uh it won't be long, and we'll be into the snow peas and the sugar snap peas and the brassicas. I had never realized how good broccoli could taste until I grew my own. I go and snip a piece off the plant and munch on it while I'm walking around the garden. It's just so oh, it's just so good.
SPEAKER_01Nice snack for while you're doing the watering rounds.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01So, Doug, do you have uh a favourite tip or trick you'd like to share? And that could be something quirky or unusual, or it can be something much more common, but something that you've found you don't think a lot of people may be aware of?
SPEAKER_02I honestly don't think there's any major secret trick to being successful with growing veggies. I mean, the best factor for success I've found is just persistence. Don't view anything as a failure. View everything you do as an experiment and a learning experience. If something doesn't work this time, have a think about why it might not have worked. For example, I'm struggling a bit with growing potatoes in grey bags. I've had a couple of goes at it and just haven't had the harvest that I want. And I'm starting to think it comes back to my climate. It's so hot here. I'm starting them too late. I should be starting them earlier. I'd normally start them uh around August, and by the time the plants are up, it's getting quite hot here, and it's just getting a bit too hot for them.
SPEAKER_01So it's trial and error, really, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So that's my working theory at the moment. I I mentioned that I do the gardening to keep active mentally and physically. Yeah, the physical side of it's easy, but the metal side of it is just thinking about what you're doing. Now I love to hand water, haven't even bothered looking into setting up watering systems because I love to go around and I've got the time to do it, luckily nowadays. It's one of the flip sides of being older, I guess. Balances things out a bit. But I've got the time to go around and hand water. And it helps with my learning experience too, because I'm looking at the plants, you know, regularly and seeing how they're going and seeing what they're doing, checking how how they're responding to things that I'm doing, uh, seeing what pests are around that I may need to look at, treating and that sort of thing. And it it keeps me thinking about okay, that's not doing so well. So how could I do that better?
SPEAKER_01Yes, good problem solving.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't seem to be a set and forget hobby. Apart from the ginger and the turmeric.
SPEAKER_01Oh well, we've got to have winds somewhere, don't we, Doug?
SPEAKER_02Or the potato.
Daily Greens And Garden Nutrition
SPEAKER_01No, it is. It is really good to keep active and and healthy mentally, physically, and some people find spiritually as well, that the garden is quite a peaceful place to be. And there's so many benefits on so many levels, you know, that science has proven too. And especially with people as they age, they have found that people who garden tend to, for instance, if they have a fall, that they're less likely to sustain a serious injury when they're already a bit more mobile, the muscles are stronger, the joints are more flexible. That's all of those physical benefits too. But it's the mental benefits that you know you just don't quite realize until you're experiencing them when you're out in the garden. It's very therapeutic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I do a lot of my gardening barefoot. Another idea for my daughter, it's all about grounding and connecting with nature. So and the climate here allows it apart, you know. Sometimes it's just we get a few weeks where it's too cold to get a barefoot. And and I have to be a bit careful um in spring leading into summer when the clover's up because there's a lot of bees around on the ground.
SPEAKER_01Yes, true. Yeah. So that's good though. We want to see more bees around.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. So whenever I can I I do that. And uh I I agree with you totally. It's good for your soul when you're working on the gardens, working on you.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I really, really love that. That's very true. And the grounding, like you mentioned, it's said too that that actually discharges electromagnetic smog and buildup from our bodies too. And humans wear bare feet animals, just like the rest of the animals on the planet. And I think, yeah, it's really important to make that connection with Earth sometimes, as often as we can.
SPEAKER_02I'm I'm definitely felt a difference in myself over the last two years or so while I've been getting involved in it. I can't see myself not doing it uh until I'm just not physically capable of doing it anymore. So I'm I'm hoping that's quite a few years away yet.
SPEAKER_01Well, the more you do it, the longer you'll be physically capable of doing it for.
SPEAKER_02Touche.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's fantastic. This has been wonderful, Doug. I really appreciate you having taken the time to chat with me today and just like to say a very big thank you. It's been wonderful.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you're welcome. It's been my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to How I Grow, a podcast produced by the Seed Collection in Melbourne, Australia. It's our aim to make gardening more accessible to more people, and this podcast is one of the many ways we're doing that. If you don't already know who we are, jump online and visit www.theseedcollection.com.au. You'll find a treasure trove of gardening information as well as a huge range of seeds, gardening supplies, and accessories. If you have any questions or you would like to discuss this topic or any other garden related topic, then please connect with us and many other garden enthusiasts in our Facebook group, the Seed Collection Community. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you again in the next episode.