Don's Tips


Fresh mushrooms

Don’s Tips: Mushrooms

Have you ever thought about growing mushrooms at home? Well it’s very easy and lots of fun for both adults and children. With all of the toadstools and wild mushrooms around at the moment, it’s pretty obvious that now is a good time to grow your own. Home mushroom...

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garden troughs

Don’s Tips: Vertical Gardens

Vertical gardens are all the rage at the moment.  These are basically pots or long troughs that hang against walls to make a green wall. You can grow vegies or herbs in your vertical garden or you can just green a wall with ferns, philodendrons and grasses. Vertical...

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tomato seedlings

Don’s Tips: Heritage Seeds

Remember the old days when tomatoes tasted like tomatoes?  When grandpa grew superb tasting beans and chillies. Well, you can grow many of these superbly-flavoured vegies at home. The home varieties fruit over a longer period too, which is ideal for home use. That is,...

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blue flowers

Don’s Tips: Blue Flowering Plants

Nothing looks better than blue flowering plants and to quote Oscar Wilde: “nothing succeeds like excess”. So why not consider a blue selection for your garden – or better still, an entirely blue-flowering garden! Right now the King of blue flowers, Plumbago ‘Royal...

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gum blossoms

Don’s Tips: Tree Preservation

I am a deadset tree lover and I adore the Aussie bushland.  I am also a qualified tree surgeon and arborist. However, some trees should be chopped down.  The tree that fell on and killed little Bridget Wright and injured several others at Pitt Town public school is a...

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herbs

Don’s Tips: Coriander

One of the best of all herbs is coriander, yet it is often a disaster for many gardeners to grow.  Why? Well during the warm months it bolts to flower and seed and then dies.  Since we mostly eat the leaves, this is a disaster.  So what do you do? Well, during autumn,...

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daffodils

Don’s Tips: Bulbs

You can’t beat the stunning displays that daffodils, jonquils, hyacinths, tulips etc. make in spring gardens. Bulbs make the end of winter a magic time as spring arrives. And bulbs are dead easy to grow.  You’ll find them at nurseries and hardware stores now and most...

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hairy caterpillars

Don’s Tips: Processionary Caterpillars

At this time of the year, you often see congo-lines of processionary caterpillars moving across lawns, up trees and fences and in paddocks.  They are following each other as they look for a safe spot to pupate into moths. These caterpillars are usually covered in...

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Don Planting

Don’s Tips: Autumn Is For Planting

This is a wonderful Autumn for planting.  This is THE time to plant most trees, shrubs & flowers. In the rest of the world, Spring is the planting time since it is a gentle period followed by an equally gentle Summer. In Australia, however, the Spring periods can...

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Watering can

Don’s Tips: Fertilising

It’s autumn, but we still have time left for some growth in most plants. A light fertilising NOW will help roses, citrus and lawns a lot.  It will strengthen them up for the winter and spring ahead. Use liquid feeds such as Seasol Powerfeed now since liquid...

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