Answers to your gardening questions (by those in the know!)

Do you have space for mums, Ms. Olga? Mine seems to
want to live forever, like, this one's in its fourth year already:

Both the mum and Oldtimer here, thrive
set in straight bagged Black Earth, a blend
of compost and a silty topsoil, purchased at
the supermarket.

By "mums" you mean chrysanthemums, neko? (That's what they look like in the photograph.)
Actually, I've never planted them before & my garden is a bit over-crowded. What are their requirements .. re space, food, watering, etc ? (Yours seem very happy in their pot!)

Nice autumn garden shot, neko. Particularly that critter on your footpath.

mums (yes chrysanthemums) are low light blooming perennials. They grow in a nice fragrant bush (good for green borders) all summer and then, as the days get shorter, they burst into bloom and fill the fall garden with lotsa color. We like em a lot and use them as big area fillers in front of large pwerennial grasses or burning bushes.

Oh,"mum" is a contraction for chrysanthemum, MsO, and here's a closer look
at that beauty.



And Miss Molly preps herself at her scratching-post for
a chance encounter with the resident chipmunk.

Thanks farmer & neko.
OK, I will give "mums" some serious consideration.
Though they will most likely have to live in a pot, like yours neko. Not a lot of space left in either my front or back gardens.
(I think they're associated with Mothers Day here in Oz.)

But I thought those two were on friendly terms these days?

Ive found that mums can winter over in their pots by just keeping them on the south side of the house where I pile some straw around their bases. I withhold ANY water that is not nat rainfall, and NO food. Then, in the spring,I plant them and they grow huge by the next fall flowering.

Mums are a boon to the fall garden here in the NE US. That and perennial asters(Thee are a deeeep purple)

I bought a bag of mulch yesterday, intending on spreading it around the roots of the newly planted rose bushes and pomegranate tree so they'll have a good chance of surviving the winter here.

Today, I opened the bag and discovered that a good portion of the mulch is covered in a white, sticky mold. My instincts are to not introduce this into the garden because it will spread mold spores onto my plants. Is this correct? Can the bag of mulch be salvaged at all by spreading it out in a barrel and letting the stuff dry out, or should I just trash it and get another bag?

Hey Dadpad and Farmerman,

Just wanted to let you know they were definitely brussel sprouts. They are finally developing sprouts. Yesterday I picked half a dozen large ones (about an inch and a half in diameter) and there are more that will be ready for picking in a few days.

I guess they just needed the freezing temperatures we had last month to get started. They're about 4 feet in diameter now with some of the main stems being larger than some of the tree trunks in the yard.

So, what should be my plan for them come Spring time? I assume I should lop off the tops of them and thin out the bottom branches a bit. I'm leaving the straggly branches on the bottoms for now to help protect them from the snow and freezing temps we're still to have here before Spring. I'll also refresh the compost around them and give them a good feeding of fertilizer to help get them started.

Thats a nice looking plant of sprouts. I like em boiled in chicken broth and served with a bit of Balsamic vinegar

Cabbage worms discourage me
from trying to grow any brassicas.

I wont give you the chemical control but, if you wish to keep organic , I have very good luck with a plastic mesh that I lay overtop of the young plants . Just let the cover "float" as the plants grow, it discourages the moths from laying eggs. Using a Bt spray also is effective around here.
Ive always done crop rotation and dont allow ANY brassica in the same spot consecutively.

I grow some pretty good broccoli raab using the organic means. Ive tried cauliflower and didnt have as much luck because there would be a little worm that lived as a commensal in between the florets.
When Id pick em, Id put the entire head in a salt water mix and the worms would let loose and float on top. THIS WOULD GET ABOUT 90% and someone would still be surprised withan extra treat in theoir cauliflower. SO, we quit growing cauliflower and I dont wnat to engage in chemical warfare on my brassicas.

I have several veggie garden patches that I keep for rotation. Tomatoes need to be rotated because of these imported blights. I want to grow peanuts as an intermediate crop . I understand that peanuts are a good legume and fix nitrogen in the soil. Has anyone had any good luck growing peanuts? AND, if yes, Whats a good method to grow and nurture these plants?

Yeah,like, the challenge can discourage any fair-weather gardener from even dreaming of raising award-winning kohlrabi -my favorite- in his subdivision lot backyard garden.

I confess to gardening as pleasure...

I've had quite a problem with the moths too. What worked for me is neem oil. I just sprayed a light film of the stuff over their favorite munchies. They didn't like the taste of it and stayed away. Luckily I caught them at it in time before they were able to lay many eggs. Only found 2 worms which got picked off and smashed between two rocks.

My garden's big problem this year were what looked like grasshoppers, maybe locusts. Those things fear nothing and not much deters them.

Locusts! Ay yi yi.

(I haven't been gardening lately, but still interested)

Any citrus experts out there?
I have a question about my mandarin tree. I could Google, but I'd be more interested in what our gardeners have to say.

Mandarins are an early winter fruit in my part of Oz.
Late last year & early this year year the flowers & fruit were exceptionally prolific ... & early, due to unusually heavy rains over spring & summer.
I would have expected to have lost some of the developing fruit because there were so many of them, but ....
Now (autumn) heaps of the immature mandarins (smaller than golf balls) are falling off the tree.
I sit on my back veranda & they're plop, plop, plopping all over the decking ... constantly.
I am (obviously) not expecting much of a crop this winter, but do any of you know why this is happening?
It is a really healthy tree, apart from the fruit loss.

Thanks,
Olga

Im no expert but I worked in orange groves that were next to our Phosphate mines in Florida. We hadda assure the growers that we werent stealing the water table by lowering it. I know that, in an area we dewatered pretty severely, an entire half section of groves dropped fruit due to low water, and they didnt get the drip lines in fast enough, so the fruits were dropping GREEN.

Could that be something that is contributing to fruit drops? I was told that ornages are like blueberries, theys uck up lotsa water before they ripen.

Don't citrus trees go through a dropping stage every few years? Seems like I remember the lemon trees that were in the backyard of the house I lived at in Richmond, Ca doing that every two or three years.

Someone once said it was the tree's way of ensuring it could handle feeding the quantity of fruit. Sometimes they drop blossoms when there are too many and other times they drop the fruit if there hasn't been enough rainfall.