WOW WHAT A LITTLE GEM THE CUCUMBER IS.
Posted by Phytopath on Apr 27, 2011
I received this as an email and thought you might enjoy the read.
1.Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.
2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.
3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.
4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminium to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.
5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite.
Works great on wrinkles too!!!
6.. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!
7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.
8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don’t have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.
9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!
10. Stressed out and don’t have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber with react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.
11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don’t have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemcials will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.
12. Looking for a ‘green’ way to clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won’t leave streaks and won’t harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.
13. Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!
Pass this along to everybody you know who is looking for better and safer ways
to solve life’s everyday problems..
Crop Rotation
Posted by Phytopath on Apr 18, 2011
Crop rotation is practiced by some home gardeners in their vegetable patch. Other people think that it is a lot of ‘hogwash’.
The idea is to rotate the types of vegetables grown in any one vegetable bed, so the same type of plant is not grown in the same ground too often.
To follow this idea you need to know which family each vegetable belongs to.
For example, tomato, chilli, eggplant, capsicum and potato all belong to the family Solanaceae, so these plants should not be grown in the same bed or piece of ground over consecutive years.
Commercial vegetable growers know that certain soil-borne pests and diseases can reduce yields, especially in potato crops and other root crops.
Scientific research has found that Brassica plants leave behind a residue that can kill or suppress unwanted soil organisms.
Tests on many different Brassicas, have shown that the volatile substances in Brassica plants can kill or suppress such diseases as Rhizoctonia and Fusarium.
The volatile substances found in Brassica plants are isothiocyanates (ITCs).
The concentration of these ITCs can vary from plant to plant and also vary from different plant parts i.e. roots, leaves and seed.
It makes sense then, to plant a Brassica crop as part of a crop rotation plan.
Crop rotation can be practised with just one vegetable plot or a three bed system or a four bed system. If you have the space there is no limit to how many vegetable plots you use in a rotational plan.
Some rotations are based on the nutritional requirements of the plants. The thought being that tomatoes are a hungry crop and root crops are not: so you would follow a crop of tomatoes with a crop of carrots, beetroot or radish for example.
If you borrowed four gardening books on crop rotation from a library, I am certain you would find four different suggestions for crop rotation.
My thought is, as long as you do not grow vegetables from the same family in the same place two seasons in a row, you are well on your way to breaking the breeding cycle of soil-borne pests and disease.
Here are a few rotations that I have come across.
- Legumes (peas and beans) followed by alliums (onions, chives etc) followed by brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower etc) followed by everything else.
- Legumes followed by leafy greens followed by fruiting crops (tomatoes, corn etc) followed by root crops followed by a fallow season over winter.
- Legumes followed by Brassica followed by root crops followed by cucurbits (cucumber and melons) followed by Solanaceae family.
- The Royal Horticultural Society recommends legumes followed by alliums followed by leafy vegetables plus tomatoes followed by root crops and then fallow with manure.
As you can see, there are many variations. I suggest you pick one to start with and see if it works for you. If not, pick another one.
If you have a different rotation from those listed above leave a comment below.
Low Maintenance Gardens
Posted by Phytopath on Apr 10, 2011
I am sometimes asked “how much time do you spend in the garden?”
Unless I quote the exact number of hours, it is all relative.
Not much time for me (a keen gardener), may be quite a bit of time for a non gardener.
The same could be said for low maintenance gardens.
Most people I speak to, think that deciduous trees are high maintenance: all those leaves you have to rake up.
I believe they are low maintenance.
If planted in a garden bed, instead of the middle of a lawn or next to paving or guttering, their leaves gently fall to the ground returning any nutrients that are left in the falling leaves, back to the soil. Nutrient replenishment at work, with no inputs from the gardener.
An evergreen Australian native that has been planted extensively in backyard gardens in the past is the gum tree.
Eucalyptus sp. is one plant I would never recommend for the suburban garden. It is messy all year round. They drop the operculum (the ‘hat’ part of the flower before it opens), the many stamens, the staminophore (stamina ring), gum nuts, twigs, bark and even large branches.
It is a well known fact that you should never camp underneath a gum tree. Being the ‘Drama Queen’ of the plant world, they are not satisfied with dropping a few twigs – no – they have to drop fully mature, large branches. Large enough to kill a person if you are underneath.
Another piece of advice that is frequently given to seekers of low maintenance gardens is “don’t plant a lawn”
I recall as a child, my father’s idea of a garden was a piece of lawn the size of a postage stamp surrounded by concrete paths (he is not a gardener).
It took him only 20 minutes per week in summer to drag out the lawn mower, start it up and mow his little square, then pack the lawn mower away. In winter the mowing frequency was much less.
Now that, in my opinion is low maintenance. No fertilising, watering only when I was playing under the sprinkler, no coring or thatching, just mowing. Twenty minutes per week in summer, twenty minutes per fortnight in winter. I spend that much time brushing my teeth.
Of course, if your lawn is larger and well manicured, it can take up quite a chunk of your time.
Another myth is that of the gravel garden.
Gravel is not low maintenance. Weeds appear in gravel on a regular basis and have to be hand pulled or sprayed. Birds and children scatter the small gravelly bits around the garden. It sometimes gets stuck in the soles of your shoes and to look good, needs regular raking.
Annuals are also a lot of work, but worth it if you can eat them (vegetables).
Hedges, standard plants, espalier and topiaries also require constant maintenance.
So what is a low maintenance garden?
I would look for plants that have a tight compact shape, that do not need pruning, plants that do not produce a plentiful supply of fruit (like gum trees and lilly pilly), unless you are going to eat the fruit.
Other suggestions are strappy plants like Mondo grass, Liriope, Dietes, Clivea, Bromeliads and Lomandra.
Many conifers are also low maintenance if you have a climate that suits them.
Plants that are not susceptible to pest and disease attack on a regular basis would also be a good choice.
Use mulches and groundcovers and install an automatic irrigation system.
Don’t over-fertilise your plants: it will only make them grow faster and bigger and then you will have to supply more water and nutrients. Over fertilising has the potential to also attract more pests and diseases to the plants.
Make use of mass planting to cover the soil and help prevent weed growth and also look for self cleaning plants. The ones that drop their spent flowers so you don’t have to prune them off.
But after all is said and done, “how much time would you like to spend in the garden?”
For some of us, a whole day is not too much time in the garden.
Propagation Problems
Posted by Phytopath on Apr 1, 2011
Do your seedlings fall over and die? Or your newly taken cuttings turn brown and rot?
Losses can occur when propagating plants: many of these can be avoided if you are aware of the conditions that trigger or encourage disease.
The problems that can occur during plant propagation can be divided into two broad categories; soil-borne diseases and air-borne diseases and pests.
Therefore good hygiene should always be practiced in the area where you are propagating your plants.
Today I will cover the soil-borne diseases of fungi and nematodes.
Microscopic fungi can infect seed within 24 hours of sowing. The seed simply rots in the soil; this is known as pre-emergent damping off.
Rotting of the stem at ground level, commonly called damping off in seedlings or collar rot in established plants, is usually caused by a soil-borne fungus called Rhizoctonia. The plant sometimes falls over and at other times remains standing.
Root rot is another fungal disease where the roots start to rot from the tips and then travel upward toward the stem. One of the fungi responsible for root rot is called Pythium which can occur in both young and mature plants, the other is called Phytophthora.
Rhizoctonia
Rhizoctonia is most active in warm humid conditions, so ventilation is important.
The young roots of plants are particularly prone to attack and visual cues to look for include; a mass of mycelium threads that look like fine spider webs, on the surface of the pot and infected tissue often has a reddish-brown colour.
The fungus can survive on plant debris, weeds and in the soil, so keeping the area free of old plant material and weeds is important. 
Pythium
Pythium is a water mould and occurs when the rooting medium is over-wet. There are a number of different Pythium species which attack soft, young tissue. Softwood cuttings and newly germinated seedlings are particularly susceptible.
The fungus can penetrate the stem and enter the cells causing rotting of the tissues. It also has the ability to survive in soil without a host plant therefore is able to infect subsequent plants if the potting medium is re-used.
Phytophthora
Phytophthora prefers warm, wet conditions. These fungi grow rapidly when the temperature is between 20°C and 30°C.
Other favourable conditions include: poor aeration and drainage of the potting medium, excessive irrigation over a long period of time and cool, wet weather.
The spores are spread via irrigation water, tools and equipment and can overwinter for up to nine or ten years in the soil.
The root system and stem base of cuttings are prone to attack. Lesions can be seen at the base of the stem when the bark is removed.
Visible symptoms include foliar wilt, yellowing or dying back of foliage and eventually death.
Nematodes
Nematodes look like teeny weeny worms, not that you can see them with the naked eye.
They are spread by transferring soil already infested with adult nematodes and/or eggs, or in water or infected plant material.
They feed on plants causing swelling on roots (galls) and stems. Leaves can die and plants can show signs of stunting or poor development.
Different species of nematode can attack different parts of the plant.
As you can see from this short list, hygiene becomes extremely important when working with not only propagation material but general gardening practices.
