Category: Gardening Tips

No Dig Garden

When space is limited, or your soil is really compacted or you are renting and a vegetable garden is on your ‘wish’ list than this is perhaps the best way to achieve that goal. Since 1975, Esther Deans’ classic books No-Dig Gardening  and Leaves of Life have inspired thousands of people to grow their own vegetables and flowers at […]

Want a body workout? Get Composting!

Three bin composting Making compost is the best activity for getting a good body workout! (Stretch both before and after this activity.) Layer fallen leaves, grass clippings and weeds (no seeds) and dynamic lifter, making sure there are balanced layers of green and dry material. Moisten well. How to get your body workout: Turn the […]

Please Don’t Grow Me

For further information about weeds of the North Coast please refer to this booklet – Link for the above publication. The real cost of weeds to the Australian environment is quite difficult to calculate, however if the agricultural industry spends around $4 billion a year combating the spread of weeds, a very conservative estimate would be […]

Blue Billygoat Weed – Ageratum houstonianum

A native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean this plant appears on the ‘Bushland Friendly Nursery Scheme’ list of environmental weeds for Coffs Harbour. It is an annual or short-lived perennial herb growing to around 1 metre and is a widespread weed of disturbed areas. Blue billygoat weed has been widely cultivated as a […]

Hay Bale Gardening

There are many expert gardeners who extol the virtues of using hay bales for the garden. There are many benefits of using them – especially in the vegetable patch. Hay bales are grasses that have been dried, then baled. One minor drawback is there may be some seeds which fall from the bale and germinate, […]

Salvinia molesta

This South American perennial free floating aquatic fern with slender stems, floating leaves and a root-like structure forms dense mats with multi-branched horizontal stems. Individual plants are 5-30cm long and invade still or slow-moving water bodies. Salvinia has the potential to spread to much of Australia and is regarded as a very serious threat to […]

Miconia calvescens

Doesn’t this plant look gorgeous? This is Miconia, the velvet tree or bush currant and is a species of flowering plant from the Melastomataceae family. It is native to Mexico and Central and South America and it has become one of the world’s most invasive species. Miconia is a serious weed that has the potential […]

Japanese Sunflower

Currently (late May) there are abundant yellow flowers growing up the steep slopes where banana plantations at Korora and other places along the Coffs Coast. This intrigued me when we first moved up here to Coffs Harbour – just what were these plants? This question led me to ask the Coffs Harbour Landcare group about […]