Julinka Arden

Hello there reader,

So I want to grow A LOT of blueberries, and I just so happen to have acidic soil, perfect right?!

Well, since planting my blueberries, I have top dressed with compost and mulched well with straw and woodchips. The blueberries that I have done this too are thriving, covered in berries, putting on good growth each year.
The ones I haven't done this with a slow and have some die back.

The free draining red clay soil I planted them in, is notoriously acidic. Yes I checked.
So yesterday I wanted to have a dig and do some pH testing, as I know that improving soil and adding organic matter neutralizes soil pH.
I dug deep down beside three of my thriving blueberries bushes, three separate tests, all came back neutral pH.

So my question is, or rather pondering.... Does anyone else out there have thriving blueberries in soil that isn't acidic?
Am I actually doomed and improving the soil will ultimately result in poor crops in the near future?
Or, is the local soil full of the microbes and fungi that blueberries love and I don't have to worry either way.

Oh, and the tests I did on straight red clay, that had no organic matter mixed through it. So it does show that microbes absolutely change soil pH in the soil.

Anyway I thought it was worth starting a discussion, interested to hear other people's thoughts and experiences.

I'm located in Tasmania, Australia if that matters in any respect. Ta!

Hi there fellow grower of asparagus!

I want to start a thread for tips, tricks and observations of what works for growing good asparagus.
Fails are also welcome of course.
Let's learn from each other's successes and failures.

I'll start.
Location Tasmania Australia, on a cool mountain with mild summers and cool winters (some snow).
Soil is deep free draining red clay, over a metre in some areas.

Any asparagus I planted directly into the clay, without improving first with compost, stayed alive but essentially hasn't grown in three years.

Where I have enriched with compost, it has grown much larger and I have started to harvest my first spears.

I have over 50 plants to move (I over planted them) and am trying to decide where to move them to, hence this thread.
I'm thinking some in my future food forest area, which has poor soil but will be improved as the years go on with organic matter and mulch. I would prep each hole before planting by digging through compost and then mulch the plants.

I also have natural springs on the property and some wet areas, and was thinking about naturalizing some asparagus in those areas, not right in the sodden parts but on the outskirts.
Then I'm thinking some through my more mixed ornamental/edible gardens surrounding buildings near paths so that you can snap off a few spears as you walk.

My issue is I don't have a whole lot of experience with what they grow well with. Do they compete too much with fruit trees? Can I interplant them with medicinal flowers like echinacea to look meadow like?

And my biggest question, how much water do they need when they are no longer cropping (during summer and autumn). Their foliage looks like it hardly transpires, so I assume not much, but I am not sure if it will affect the next years harvest if they are starved of hydration in summer.

I know of early Italian and Greek migrants in Australia naturalising asparagus in grasslands that they would then forage, so I know it's pretty tough stuff.
But I swant those tender thick shoots if possible, rather than spindly stuff.

What I've learnt so far about asparagus.

-It prefers neutral soils, and dislikes acid soils.
-It needs plenty of organic matter and mulch to get it going. Loves sheep manure!
-When harvesting leave some spears to turn into plenty of ferny foliage that must not be cut back to store energy for next years spears. Keep this in mind as it gets a bit tall and 'messy' and can harbour snakes etc in a wilder garden setting.
-The male/female plant thing is nonsense and both can produce very good spears, there's no need to keep one and discard the other.

Excited to hear anyone's input.

Your turn! 🤠

'Safer Garden's by Lesley Corbett is a great resource, she actually compiles flammability of many different plants.

Here in Australia the information is very mixed and one department will say something is non flammable when another will say it's highly flammable.

I like to do my own little tests on fresh and dried foliage with a lighter during the cooler months to check the info in Lesleys book.

I've planted a lot of oaks to protect buildings from ember attack, poplars are quite literally put many fired out and saved homesteads here in Australia during the most tragic fires in horrific conditions.
Apricots are very similar to poplars in that sense too.

Nina Surya wrote:

Julinka Arden wrote:Dear readers,

...sheep sorrel...
...an indicator of acidic soil.

Thanks for your input 😩

First of all, welcome to Permies Julinka and congratulations on your baby and your new gardens and orchards!

We also have clay soil here and had a lot of sheep sorrel.
Last June we got three ouessant sheep for keeping the grass short. I haven't spotted nearly as much sheep sorrel at the end of last summer as the summer before, now that I think of it. But I also didn't really investigate, I'll look more precisely into it this season! Perhaps the cure is in the name?
Could you let a few sheep graze over your terraces? Protecting the plants you've so carefully planted - my ouessants are a very small but primitive breed and they love to nibble at the bark of fruit trees, I've had to cage my trees.
Also, as sheep sorrel is an indicator of acidic soil, you might try dumping a handfull of chalk lime at the foot of each plant - and cut off any seed heads.
I hope these suggestions work for you.

Hi Nina,

Unfortunately I can't use sheep for this issue as there are many hundred plants to protect which is close enough to impossible, I did however already do this on the very bottom bank where I set up electric fencing and they did chew that right down for me (it has since regrown). But yes using animals is ideal, thanks for that suggestion.

I have also tried lime, to no avail.

Though very good recommendations.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Julinka, I think sheeps sorrel might be quite variable since mine doesn't tend to spread much, but I have a neighbour who cursed it. To be honest I quite like it  - I often pull a few leaves to munch on as I'm wandering round, and add a few to a mixed salad. If you could find a way to use it in quantity (not recommended in a diet due to Calcium lockup) that would be the ideal solution.
Interesting that it is more effective at surviving in a drier climate as mine is really wet! What a plant! Wow! your soil is even more acidic than mine! I suspect that the sorrel is just so much better at thriving in the acid soil that it has a big advantage over the plants you actually want. I think you may need to modify your expectations as to what you can manage.
I looked at garden organic and they say:

Control on arable land is through removal of the roots during cultivation combined with hoeing and hand-pulling to prevent seeding. A dressing of lime has a good effect.

According to garden organic it is quite happy in full shade growing even under bracken stands, so it is logical that is spreads under sheet mulching. It can root a new plant from a fragment as well as whatever seed banks are in the soil. If you are digging and leave a few bits you will end up with several few plants rather than just one. I think your best bet might be to select a small area where you keep it under control by digging every little bit out, and just chop and drop the rest when it is bulky enough to do that ('doing the work of the sheep' to paraphrase the great Sepp). The sorrel biomass ought to help the soil structure too in time. You'll hopefully find most of your wanted perennials will still be there when you have time to get round to them. You're at the tail end of the summer now? so you might get a bit of a respite from urgent gardening for a bit.
Is there anyway to recruit help for you at this time? I can imagine that trying to do too much and worrying about it is not good for you. There are a few permies threads on gardening with babies and toddlers:
https://permies.com/t/173004/Gardening-Baby
https://permies.com/t/63694/Favorite-Gear-Gardening-Babies-Kids
https://permies.com/t/172954/Garden-Baby-Explore
I hope this helps.

I believe it is very variable as I've seen a plant of two in alkaline soil and it really struggled and doesn't spread. I think it thrives in acid soils, and where nothing else is thriving it overtakes and get mega strong.

I'm half in the mind to move my blueberries and other acid loving berries to these sections of my terraces so that at least there's more diversity. Then plant ground covers and hope they balance out the sheep sorrel in time.

I read that sheep sorrel is every possible place in the world it will ever grow (nearly everywhere but Antarctica) because it is so successful at spreading, there's no where new for it to go, it already is everywhere that is climatically possible for it 😂.

I thinks it turning the soil sour and keeping it sour, so perhaps diversity in plants and trying to establish them as quickly as possible may help.

It is Autumn here now, so yes I've nearly planted out all my cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower and then I can focus purely on sheep sorrel removal haha.

Thanks for your input and for the other baby related threads!

Anne Miller wrote:As Phil suggested, the sunlight has to be blocked in order to kill it.  If one leaf sees sunlight then all the cardboard and wood chips are in vain.

Sheep sorrel looks like something I might have seen on my property.

Have you tried eating sheep sorrel?  It is suppose to have a delicious sour flavor.

I have read that it contains beta carotene and is also used as a treatment for inflammation, diarrhea, fever, etc.

Sheep sorrel is also used as a dye because it is high in oxalic acid.  

I hope you will find the solution to your problem.

I have tried eating it, infact I've been eating it ever since I was a little girl. Yes very sour which I like, extremely high in oxalic acid so should be eaten raw in moderation, I don't even like to give much too my goats.

It basically regrows overnight from rhizomes, so if you pull the tops off, come back a week later and they have renewed. Being such a large area is what's making it an impossibility for me.

Thanks so much for everyone's responses so far.

Just to clarify, I have in the past dug every bed and removed every single tiny fibre of root (or so I thought) only to have missed a few and it comes back. Not exaggerating, it would take me about 8 hours per bed to do extremely thoroughly with my finger tips and tools. Now I don't have that kind of time, and knowing I'll miss a few anyway means I know it's a waste of my time, so I typically spend about 2 hours on each bed and plant it out at that 90% done point.
I have spent a few thousand hours at least doing this, yet I am still losing the battle 😫

For context, there are three terraces, each about 5+ metres wide, and between 45 and 80 metres long!
It's A LOT.
I do have some beds that haven't been infested yet.

I currently have mountains of cardboard, newspapers and mulch which will have to do for the infested banks where it looks to be struggling because it's dry and hot but no, it is trillions of roots with hardly and leaves.

I feel like I'm going to have to learn to live with it and chop and drop it, which I have already been doing in some areas. Hopefully ones day the microbiology changes to favour it less.

I have many hundreds edible plants in already so sadly cannot use animals to manage it for me.

I want to start more gardens but am scared to because of the sorrel.

I would absolutely love to have woofers to help, but we currently don't have spare accommodation to house anyone else here (still yet to finish out own cottage and kitchen buildings as we are building from out own milled timber).

Thanks to all those giving input and for the warm welcome, I've been listening to podcasts for some time but never posted on permies before so it's lovely to see other people in the world are doing similar stuff!

We have an amazing life, and love and eat incredibly well, are so healthy and strong, as is our young son who was born here. 100 acres is a lot of work without kids, I'm glad we both love hard work!
Honestly the sheep sorrel is my greatest stress and worry 😅

Dear readers,

If you know what sheep sorrel is, then I hope you haven't grown to know it as intimately as I have.

I'll make a long story short. I'm on 100 acres, yes the soil is acidic. Not too acidic, at the surface (maybe 5.5pH) but very acidic in the subsoil, around 3pH.

Our soil is actually the most beautiful clay, hardly believable that it is clay as it's loose, friable, free draining and red brown.

I didn't realised that there was sheep sorrel/Rumex all through the grass here, and we proceeded to excavate some large terraces which we have planted out with fruit trees and perennials to the east, and annuals to the north (we are in Tasmania, Australia).

I would have never started such an enormous garden if I had known about the sorrel (lesson learnt!) And it was already escaping me before having a baby.

Now I have a 6 month old and only manage about an hour of gardening a day (I was doing up to 8 hours a day before) and the sheep sorrel has infested everything. Yes I know it's an indicator of acidic soil.

I have spent quite a lot on the best possible compost I could buy, as well as us making our own and have been trying to balance the soil but nothing seems to help. I've layered 5 layers of cardboard with thick wood chip mulch but it just grows through.

Digging the soil over and over to remove the sorrel roots is destroying the soil and making it hydrophobic. It is so vigorous that it sucks up water from the plant I am actually trying to grow (and I assume nutrients too).

I've never hated 'weeds' until this.

Please someone help. I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience at all with this plant, or recommendations for what I should do.

The whole point of these terraces was meant to be lower input (in the perennial areas) and it's taking all my time. It takes forever to prep one garden bed.

I'd like to move on to other projects and just feel soo stuck!

Thanks for your input 😩

EDIT: Location is Tasmania, Australia.

Hiya,

I'm wondering what are the best perennial food plants to grow nearby, or even under fruit trees?

Perennial vegetables preferred, but open to other plants too.

I have created terraces with an excavator, and intermittently planted them out with fruit trees, with garden beds of perennials underneath. There is plenty of space between trees (about 8metres) and I am keeping the fruit trees very small.

Stupidly, I put sunchokes under an apricot tree (I disturb the tree roots every time I harvest), and asparagus on the bank where it dries out (I'll be moving that to a wetter location this winter).

I have an entire terrace dedicated to berries already, so I'm not looking for berry recommendations really, though I am eager to hear any perennial food plants that you have successfully planted under or in near proximity of fruit trees.

Thanks for your input!

Hello from the Upper Derwent Valley in Tasmania.

We are Julinka & Lionel, and Laddeus our four month old son who recently joined our homestead.

We haven't met any permies or homesteaders yet down this way.

Setting up on 100 acres from scratch, milling timber, building, growing veggies, fruits, nuts and raising meat.
We ferment, preserve, cure, dehydrate.
Soon to add dairy into the mix!

Been at it for nearly four years, with 6 years of prior experience in a rental. We are debt free and hardly ever leave for work.
Our life is endless jobs, but we love it and wouldn't have it any other way. Yet to generate income from the property but that will come in time.

If anyone else is in Tasmania we would be keen to meet.