Bulleen Art & Garden -

Summer in your Garden

Dec 012019

Long summer evenings, friends over for dinner, weekends reading outside in the shade, gardening with the radio on…..finally summer is here.

I love Christmas because I don’t stress over it. I can always grab a plant from work for a last minute gift, and the current preoccupation with indoor plants and decorator pots has made it soooo easy. You can tailor the choice to the person’s personality: sleek modern, folksy rustic, quirky handmade, its all available. Just slip a plant into the appropriate pot – job done.

BAAG at Malahang Festival, Sunday 17th November 11am to 4pm

Tagged with: mobile, Your Community

Nov 132019

BAAG will be participating in this year’s Malahang Festival, celebrating the local community and all of its colour and vibrancy. Come and find us, we will be celebrating the local lizards and all that they do for us and we will be sharing some tips on how you can live in harmony with lizards in your garden. Come and visit our stall and pot up a lizard friendly plant that you can take home with you. For more info on the festival head to banyule.vic.gov.au/malahang. This is a free event.

Sunday 17 November, 11am-4pm
Malahang Reserve, Corner Southern and Oriel Roads, Heidelberg West

November in your garden

Tagged with: mobile, This month in your garden

Oct 312019

This is probably the busiest month of the year for gardeners. Warmer temperatures and the recent rains make for perfect planting conditions. As you can see from the pic above, it is also Tomato Time! Cup Weekend is traditionally the ideal time in Melbourne to get your tomatoes into the ground. In the rest of your garden, plants are either busily flowering or pushing out new growth. Birds, spiders, lizards and ladybirds are feasting on aphids, whiteflies and other sap sucking insects that love to feed on new spring growth. Allow predators to thrive in your garden by reducing or eliminating spraying, planting lots of flowers and creating a diverse and nature friendly garden.

New Gallery Exhibition – ‘Trio Creative’

Tagged with: Gallery

Oct 302019

25th October to 25th November 2019

An exhibition of textile art by Cary Leech, baskets by Jeanette Carter and glass by Jenie Yolland.

These 3 friends met at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre and have decided to pool their talents for this exhibition.

More pictures and info at http://gallery.baag.com.au/?p=4231

Cucumbers

Tagged with: Vegies

Oct 012019

When selecting the right cucumber for you there are a few things to consider. Regular or burpless, small or large, long or round. The regular cucumbers generally have a bitter skin that requires peeling, whereas you can eat the skin of a burpless and remain indigestion-free (probably best in front of the Queen). The skin is very good for you!

Basil

Tagged with: Herbs and Spices, Vegies

Oct 012019

Basil is one of the best known herbs in the world, and with good reason. It’s tasty, attractive and very easy to grow. With over 100 different species to choose from, Basil is never faulty!
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October in your garden

Tagged with: This month in your garden

Sep 302019

The soil is warming, and plants are loving it. Enjoy spring with its blossoms and fresh new leaves, and go out and get your hands dirty. The nursery is now fully stocked with plants for every situation, and as far as months go, they don’t come much more ideal than October for getting into the garden.

Tomatoes

Tagged with: Vegies

Sep 242019

Who doesn’t love a tomato? Delicious home grown tomatoes are easy to grow, taste great, and you control what gets sprayed on them, if anything at all. Many different varieties are available including heritage varieties, from which you can collect your own seed to sow next season, and dwarf varieties suitable for growing in pots. Tomatoes are great for kids to grow, as they grow fast and produce lots of delicious fruit, especially cherry tomatoes. So even if you only have a balcony for a garden, you can grow delicious fresh tomatoes. You can raise tomatoes from seed or as seedlings, however to grow from seed you will need to have planted them by mid-September.

Please be aware that we stock tomatoes from late September due to customer demand for them, however late October to early November is the perfect time to plant your tomato seedlings. Tomato seedlings planted before this will need to be protected from cold temperatures and frosts.

Vegepod Raised Garden Bed Kits

Tagged with: Edible Gardening Info, Herbs and Spices, Vegies

Sep 102019

Vegepod Raised Garden Bed Kits give you the best of both worlds and more. You get the size of a raised garden bed with all the benefits of container gardening. Not only that, you also get the benefit of an Raised Garden Bed Cover that extends growing seasons and accelerates plant growth.

Garden maintenance is minimal and watering is only required during the early stages of plant growth. Vegepod Raised Garden Bed Kits are simply the easiest way to grow your own vegetables.

September in your garden

Tagged with: This month in your garden

Sep 012019

September is a magnificent month to be out in the garden. You can smell spring in the air and the soil is starting to warm up, just like us. Spring is the turning point for planting options… the variety of plants that are happy to hit the soil in spring is huge, no matter what type of garden you like. After a cold winter there is nothing better than waking up to a sunny Saturday, throwing on a T-shirt and getting stuck into some gardening. We all have loads of jobs that have been neglected all winter, get started today!

Healthy Soil is Easy

Tagged with: Soil Health

Aug 062019

Soil… most people just think of it as dirt, something to grow a few plants in, and maybe something to play in when you are young. However, (healthy) soil is a living, breathing organism, vital for the health and well-being of our precious plants out in the garden. And just as we feed and nurture our plants, so must we feed and nurture our soils. But what determines a healthy soil, how do we achieve it, and how will it benefit us as gardeners?

Companion Planting

Tagged with: Companion Plants, Edible Gardening Info, Factsheets

Aug 032019

Many vegetables grow well with other plants in the garden and, using a few basic principles, organic gardeners can really have nature on their side in the biological control of pests.

The most commonly documented companion plants help to repel pests when planted alongside vegetables. Other plants attract pest predators to the vegetable patch. Some plant roots secrete substances that repel pests or provide nutrients to the plants around them. These plant interactions can work in specific ways between two or three types of plants or species.
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August in your garden

Tagged with: This month in your garden

Jul 312019

Well, the last weeks of winter are finally here, with the scent of Wattle signalling the promise of spring just around the corner. The first Magnolias are in flower and the gold and purple of Acacias and Hardenbergias create a dramatic floral display. The cold, frosty mornings are a prelude to the burst of new growth that heralds the coming new season of life. We have already had our fair share of frosty mornings and more are likely, so continue on with those frost damage prevention measures for a few more weeks yet.
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New Gall Wasp Preventative Treatment – ‘Overhaul’

Tagged with: Citrus, Fruit Trees, mobile, Plant Problems

Jul 282019

Photo by NSW Department of Primary Industries

Finally we have a new preventative for the infuriating gall wasp that has been decimating our citrus, lemon trees in particular, across Victoria.

‘Overhaul’ is an organically* rated kaolin clay (used in papermaking and ceramics) and has been used in broad-acre agriculture to reduce heat stress and sunburn in tree and horticultural crops (e.g. tomatoes) for 18 years; in that time an unexpected secondary benefit has become apparent: the fine coating of clay resulted in less insect damage to crops. It is hypothesised that the clay works in a variety of way depending on the insect: repelling, reducing egg laying, impeding grasping, restricting movement, altering behaviour, inducing paralysis and mortality, and camouflaging the plant. Whichever way it works, trials by the NSW Dept. of Agriculture in the Riverland and Sunraysia have found it significantly reduces the incidence of galls (from Citrus Gall Wasp) in their citrus trees. Both number and size of galls are reduced (70-90%).

July in your garden

Tagged with: This month in your garden

Jul 012019

Winter can be a challenge, but it sure puts a rosy hue in your cheeks when you rug up, brave the elements and go about doing some of those winter gardening tasks which have been beckoning from outside. Enjoy a warm drink – and the satisfaction of a job well done – when you come inside.

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