a
program that will help you 
grow food, shelter your home from the
sun
and wind, 
create homes
for local wildlife, use water wisely
and recycle wastes.
COVID-19 - we're here for you
My Smart Garden partner Councils (Hobsons Bay City Council, Maribyrnong City Council, Moonee Valley City Council, Brimbank City Council, Wyndham City Council, Stonnington City Council, Moreland City Council and Yarra City Council) are taking a precautionary approach to the coronavirus (COVID 19) spread and we have cancelled all non-essential face-to-face external programs. The health and safety of our community members is our number one priority.
While our face-to-face events have ceased during the pandemic, we are stepping up our online support and offering free online workshops and our newsletters will continue so you can still access reliable, free sustainable gardening advice tailored to Melbourne, and to connect with other local gardeners.
Missed a recent online event?
No worries, you can check out our past online events HERE.
resources
Food
Ideas tips and tricks on what to grow and when.
Shelter
Use trees and vines to make your home more comfortable all year round.
Water
Be water wise! Learn about ways to be a water warrior.
Habitat
Birds and the bees. How do you make sure they have a happy home?
Waste
Your waste is another worm's treasure.
events
Connect with us for seasonal advice, tips and tricks. Get your questions answered and share garden pics with our community.
Oh hello little tomatoes! 🌱🍅 These babies have germinated indoors and will now get outdoor daytime excursions in the sunshine while keeping cosy indoors at night 🌞 In warm inner-city Melbourne you’ll get a month of extra tomatoes if you start them early in a warm microclimate, plus they are more robust by the time summer pests take hold 👍 (NB: this is for indeterminate, continuously fruiting types rather than determinate that crop all at once)
A lovely green cauliflower ready to be harvested. We’ll cook up the young tender leaves too, and large old leaves will go to our very appreciative flock of quails. Got any more tips for making the most of your homegrown veg? We’d love to hear them 🥦🥦🥦
Did your peach or nectarine suffer from peach leaf curl last summer? Now is your last chance to spray with a copper or sulphur fungicide. Once these buds have burst it’s too late! As usual a preventative approach is best, so keep your trees strong by focusing on soil health (hint: good soil moisture, compost and mulch!). Check out the recording of our popular Know Your Soils workshop on our website - link in profile ☺️🌳🍑
Clear, sunny days in winter are perfect for pruning, so the cuts can dry out and reduce the risk of fungal infection, but remember that pruning at this time of year tends to stimulate growth in spring. So when your trees are filling their allocated space, try to do most of the pruning in summer after harvest. That’ll calm the trees down and encourage production of more fruit and less unwanted branches and shoots 🌱🌳🍎
How’s your winter patch? (Are you sick of kale and chokos yet? 😁) At our place the caulis finally emerging, daikon and cabbages sizing up. What’s your best winter brassica recipe?
Love these DIY wicking buckets! Get to know some local restaurants and you’ll probably have a free lifetime supply of these food grade plastic buckets. They’re a good size for one or two silverbeet plants. Easy to move around - either into sun and shade at your place depending on the season, or to your next rental property! 🥗🌱👍
Need to empty a worm farm but *every* layer is full of worms? 🙄 You can empty the contents onto a tarp in the sun, then gradually scrap away 5-10cm layers. The worms (most of them anyway!) will slowly move away from the sunlight and you’ll end up with a seething mass at the bottom ready to be gently ushered back into the box..
Now that the weather is getting cooler it’s tempting to stop watering your food garden, but just because there are droplets on the leaves doesn’t mean there’s enough water down in the soil where it counts! Check by poking your finger in around the root zone and if doesn’t feel damp then it’s time to water 💦
Last chance to get your garlic in! Shown here with a mulch of autumn leaves and last season’s capsicums. I also plant the teeny tiny cloves around the edges of the bed to pull up and use as green garlic through the winter months 🌱🥰
Have you discovered maggots in your homegrown fruit, tomatoes or capsicums this year? 🍅 Queensland Fruit Fly has become established as a destructive new pest in Melbourne suburbs. We’ve organised a free online seminar for home gardeners with entomologist Dan Papacek at 12:30pm on 3 June. He’ll help you confirm identification, delve into their lifecycle and behaviours and look at the management options most suited to home gardeners. Get your questions answered by an expert so you can make a plan to keep fruit fly under control in your home food garden ✅
This event will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. Spread the word! 🌱
Bookings via www.mysmartgarden.org.au, link in profile 👆
Alyssum is such a hardworking little plant. All these little flowers to keep winter beneficial insects around, a sweet honey scent and mustard-flavoured flowers to add to salads. All in the smallest of spaces. Winner! 🥇
Winter’s wild edible greens (aka weeds) are probably popping up in your veggie patch right now! Shown here are some of the most versatile and tasty: chickweed (use it like lettuce) and dandelion (use it like radicchio/chicory), and of course stinging nettle (use like spinach) which loses the sting when cooked, blended or wilted. Obviously make sure you’ve Identified them correctly and avoid harvesting from soils that may be sprayed or contaminated. 👍🌱
Indigenous plants can reduce maintenance, create habitat for wildlife and sometimes grow some food for you as well. Here’s a lovely mix of dianella, poa, pigface, myoporum and warrigal greens. These low-growing plants are perfect for nature strip plantings - check with your local council to see what’s allowed in your municipality 👍🌱
Choko vines used to be common in Australian gardens. Their epic production was a real budget stretcher and helped many families through the Great Depression. The mild flavour (think zucchini) blends into curries, soups and stir-fries etc, and they make pretty good poultry fodder if you can’t get through them. We like them best picked young (about cricket ball size). If you have a garden shed, trellis or a deciduous fruit tree for them to scramble over, get hold of one from a friendly gardener (or buy one from a green grocer), wait a few months for it to shoot and half-bury it so the point where it’s shooting is only just above the ground. Then stand back! Warning: thinking of foraging chokes around the neighbourhood? Watch out for a lookalike plant called the Moth Vine (Araujia sericifera) that is a common weed in Melbourne 🌱
Show us your smart garden to win...
We're celebrating the amazing growth of the My Smart Garden community with a photography competition! We want to see all the resilient, smart, adaptable and fruitful gardens you've lovingly laboured over in the past year. 🌱🌱🌱
Share an image of your garden with us and enter our competition to win a $125 gift voucher from your local nursery! 🌳🌻✨
Simply post a 📷 of your garden on Instagram and tag us @mysmartgarden and include #yoursmartgarden in you caption. No Instagram? No worries, simply email your pic to contactus@mysmartgarden.org.au to be in the running. 🌱🌱🌱
Entries close Sunday May 12 with winner announced in our May newsletter. Entries may be featured in our newsletter and on our Instagram. Check our website for Terms and Conditions.
