1. Good Organic Gardening - January-February 2016

GARDENING FOLK | Danny Summers
Native bee
Bee home
Danny’s
gardening tips
1. Don’t do more than you can handle.
2. Keep away from high-growth
fertilisers with lots of nitrogen unless
you can supply enough water to trees
for growth and nutrient uptake.
3. Create bird and insect habitats, for
bees especially, to pollinate your garden
and reduce pests and diseases.
4. Use lots of worm juice on your trees
and garden and compost what you can.
5. Seaweed tea is a valuable mineral
resource that does wonders for
growing plants.
6. Good-quality mulch is essential.
Micro-bat box
Permaculture
principles in action
Danny experiments with permaculture
principles. He has a row of olive trees given to
him by an Italian friend that he planted eight
years ago. They serve as a windbreak against
westerlies and create a microclimate. Danny
is quite observant when it comes to how
nature works in the habitats he provides.
For instance, double-barred finches like
to build their nests close to wasp nests for
safety against attack from bigger birds.
Danny appreciates the pest control the
finches provide. His 26 ducks eat fallen fruit,
preventing fruit flies breeding, while the
duck eggs are a significant food source for
the dog. Bella skilfully punctures the shells
and laps up the contents.
The native bees and wasps pollinate
the figs and olives. Danny has installed a
microbat box with some shadecloth for
them to climb into the box. He explains,
“Microbats can eat two-thirds of their own
weight in mosquitoes!”.
The garden
& fruit trees
Most of Danny’s beds are bordered by old
railway sleepers and he tops up the soil with
horse manure from Carolyn’s horses. He also
feeds worms with horse manure through a
downpipe inserted into the beds.
He likes to grow different garlic and leek
varieties, including elephant garlic and the really
hot varieties such as ‘Early White’, ‘Early Purple’
and ‘Italian Red’.
Danny adds crushed basalt or granite
to remineralise the soil and creates his own
biodynamic lifter from rice husks: “Rice husk
contains silicon and potash. You can burn it and
mix the ash with water to produce biodynamic
lifter. It also makes fantastic bedding for chooks,
good garden mulch and it aerates the soil.” He
adds. “Peanut hay is a great nitrogen source —
and there’s plenty of it here in peanut country.”
Danny grows a great selection of fruit trees
Danny finds out about
selective clearing events
and goes there beforehand
to inspect the site for
native bee activity. He then
removes any logs inhabited
by the tiny creatures and
takes them home.
Fruit-fly traps are recycled milk bottles
painted orange and filled with boiled
apple cider vinegar to attract the flies
32 | Good Organic Gardening