Latest / The Shed Organics Show / #35 - Why Weeds Are Completely Misunderstood | Kate Wall

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#35 - Why Weeds Are Completely Misunderstood | Kate Wall · The Shed Organics Show

0:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Shed
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Organics Show. Today is episode 35.
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We're flying through the year and we've got plenty more to
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come this year. There's some big guests lined up
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for the rest of the year. I'm very excited.
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I've decided actually to do about 50 episodes per year, so
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it rounds out the nice 50 number each year.
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And what I'll do on episode 50 is I'm going to bring out a bit
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of a special that's going to highlight some of the fabulous
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conversations that we've had during the year and maybe put
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them together as a little bit of a compilation of the best bits
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of the year. So that's episode 50, but we've
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got a few to go before then. And this one is a special one
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not to be forgotten about. Today we have Kate Wall joining
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us, and Kate is a gardening coach.
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She's also a Brisbane local as well, and I've had the pleasure
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of having quite a few people recommend Kate to come on the
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show this year because she has so much knowledge that can help
1:06
us in our gardens and in our spaces.
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And what's really cool about Kate's knowledge is it comes
1:12
from a few different backgrounds and a science background and
1:17
very much an experiential, I guess, background of being
1:21
through such experiences that you'll hear about in the
1:24
conversation and how that's shaped her view of gardening and
1:28
how she could come and help us see gardening in a different
1:32
light. Now, during this conversation,
1:34
Kate shared so many things with me that I learned and was new to
1:38
me today. And even though I had an
1:41
understanding of some of these things, she's helped me see it
1:44
in a different light. And I'm so grateful to her for
1:46
that. And I'm absolutely sure that
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you're going to be able to get some of that out of today's
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episode as well. So let's let's do it.
1:53
Let's jump straight in. I've got the conversation here
1:56
with Kate Wall, the gardening coach.
2:16
But let's go back to the the flooding event of 2011 and
2:20
working with the community or working in so many different
2:24
situations to bring things back after a disaster.
2:29
Can you talk to me about what you were seeing in those
2:34
initial, you know, consultations, what it was like
2:37
and. Just a little bit of it was
2:41
dramatic, it was overwhelming. It was gut wrenching.
2:46
It was a very raw experience. So to give you a little bit of
2:51
background, I was working at the time in the water industry
2:56
because my formal qualifications are actually in environmental
2:59
biology, right? Though I've been working in the
3:01
water industry in the lead up to that, which gave me a very
3:06
different focus because I knew a lot about contamination.
3:12
So coming into the flooding and the work that I was doing, I was
3:16
working in water efficiency management plans dried up
3:19
overnight when it started raining and there I was with a
3:22
toddler watching my neighborhood go underwater.
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It's. So our house was OK.
3:28
I had small amounts of flooding in the garden, which was
3:31
dramatic in itself, but at least my home was fine.
3:35
The there was a house on the corner of my street that had the
3:39
most beautiful garden. You know, every day I would go
3:42
past and think, what a lovely garden.
3:45
But that went under to the ceiling.
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Oh my goodness, it was very badly flooded.
3:50
The elderly couple never came back.
3:52
The, and I knew as I watched over the coming days as the
3:56
water receded and you're left with the debris and the mud and
3:59
the mess, that if someone could get in and clean it up.
4:02
I knew how to save the garden, but I also knew you cannot go in
4:07
without permission. It's just not fair.
4:09
The, the whole experience has been traumatic enough.
4:12
So I went to the local flood support network that had
4:18
developed in our local school. And this was in the very, very
4:22
early days. This was a community that really
4:24
came together like had never previously happened in
4:27
Australia. So it and there I met with
4:32
another lady who had a mowing business.
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The two of us teamed up and said let's go and fix some gardens.
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That's so amazing. We connected in straight away
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and before we knew it we had people just coming to us from
4:44
all direction. We had the lions sending people
4:47
to us, we had the community sending people to us.
4:50
We built some volunteers and we just went from garden to garden
4:54
to garden, helping in whatever way we could.
4:57
Some of that was just advice. Some of it was getting in and
5:00
doing a whole lot of hard work. Some of it was sourcing
5:03
something as simple as some wood chip mulch to restore the life
5:07
in the soil and to slow down that drying out.
5:11
You've got to deal with that mud.
5:13
So there were a lot of different things, but every single time we
5:17
found that you start with people crying on your shoulders, couple
5:22
of hours of gardening together and you've lifted their spirits.
5:26
We started seeing people who were in absolute despair about
5:31
ever going back to their homes. But you go in and you mow the
5:34
overgrown lawn and suddenly doesn't look as overwhelming.
5:38
You cover the mud with wood chip, put in a couple of new
5:41
plants and they see life coming back.
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And these may seem like small simple things, but it takes a
5:48
big part of the overwhelm out of their picture.
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So while we couldn't help them with their house, we could help
5:54
them just in that keep putting another foot in front of the
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other and it ended up making an insane difference.
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It was really unbelievable. There were a lot of tears over
6:05
the months we were doing that on their part and ours.
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Yeah, I'm sure that that's a beautiful thing that you did and
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just a beautiful example of community as you, as you say,
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just coming together in those times.
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And it obviously has really affected you in a in a, a deep
6:24
way. And then you're able to then
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take that and run with it and help other people.
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So how do you there's a few different directions I'd love to
6:35
go after that because it's so it's so.
6:37
Wonderful. It kind of leaves in more
6:38
questions than answers, doesn't it?
6:40
A little bit, yeah, I want to talk let's let's just talk about
6:44
your your journey personally 1st and then we'll come back to more
6:47
of the gardening focus and what you might do practically in some
6:50
of these situations. So for yourself then, how or why
6:58
do you think that experience LED you into where you are today?
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Well first and foremost it was after doing 6 months of full
7:09
time volunteer work with a toddler in tow it was.
7:14
And you know just going running from garden to garden, giving
7:16
advice, fixing things. Suddenly it was, I really need
7:21
to earn some money. I need to go back to get a real
7:24
job. The second I walked back into an
7:27
office, I knew that I couldn't do it, that that was it.
7:30
I was done with, you know, any sort of corporate office work.
7:34
I had to be outdoors in the garden.
7:37
Yeah. And that led me to just walk out
7:40
and say, no, I'm gardening. Good on you.
7:42
And so that was where it all started.
7:44
That and, you know, I guess it had given me that trial by fire
7:48
that I'd been put on the spot so many times to find a solution,
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but I knew I knew exactly what I was doing.
7:55
Yeah, that's so good. And it's hard to make that leap
7:58
out of something I mean. No, it was so easy.
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It was meant to be. It was, you know, for me, it
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just felt like the most natural thing to do.
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I know what you mean. It's should be hard, but
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actually it kind of felt like I landed where I needed to go.
8:15
I like that because you're right, it shouldn't be hard if
8:19
it's the right decision. Yep.
8:22
And exactly, yeah. I think also though, people do,
8:25
as we say, struggle with that type of thing to just really
8:28
back themselves to go and make that leap out of a bit of
8:30
security to to something that's. But I've had six months of
8:34
volunteering and doing exactly that.
8:36
Yes. So even though I hadn't been
8:38
asking for payment because we were focused entirely on flood
8:43
recovery as volunteers, yeah, I knew I could do the work
8:46
involved. Yeah, wonderful.
8:48
That's so cool. So then that's LED you to then
8:50
sharing a lot of your knowledge from obviously various different
8:54
backgrounds now the like ecology and the, you know, learning from
8:59
flood disaster relief, all of this, your own gardening and
9:03
experiences through that. So now you're running so many
9:07
different things like workshops, you're attending different
9:09
talks, you're you're doing various different things.
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Can you give me a little bit of an outline as what life looks
9:15
like for you now? Chaotic.
9:21
No, two days are the same, but I love it like that.
9:24
Yeah. So yes, there will be talks that
9:28
I'm doing and it's, you know, when friends try and catch up
9:32
with me, they they're just like, are you working this weekend?
9:34
Yes, of course I'm working this weekend.
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No, I'm not catching up on Friday night.
9:38
I've got an early morning. It's so there.
9:41
Or I'll be doing an evening talk somewhere.
9:43
There's something happening at all different times of the day,
9:47
but I'm, I've been lucky. I've been able to structure my
9:50
life in such a way that I can make it work.
9:52
So there will be times that I spend just quietly, me and the
9:55
dogs and the laptop writing. Yes.
9:57
And there's other times that I'm out there busy presenting.
10:00
There's times that I'm working with people in their gardens,
10:03
doing the garden coaching and getting hands on with them,
10:05
teaching them what to do, so it's a real mix of all sorts of
10:09
different things. And that variety keeps it nice
10:12
and interesting and keeps you on your toes and gives you lots of
10:15
new shared experiences with different people.
10:17
Doesn't every time I think, Oh my goodness, I am so tired of
10:21
doing the same thing all the time.
10:23
I realize I'm not doing the same thing all the time.
10:25
What on earth are you talking about?
10:27
Or walk into another garden that's completely different.
10:30
Another person that's struggling and you can solve some of their
10:34
problems and you, you make it easy for them.
10:37
I think that's really important that you bring them back to
10:40
gardening. And as soon as I see that, you
10:43
know, my heart is full again and I love what I do.
10:46
Exactly. It makes it so worthwhile when
10:48
you can just see you've lifted a little bit off their shoulders
10:51
and yeah, given them that kind of the hope or a little bit of a
10:55
spark of. Interest.
10:56
Although I must admit, you know, I did have a client last week
10:59
that I felt the exact opposite. I think I'd put more onto her
11:02
shoulders. She had a new build where the
11:04
developers had done so many awful things in the garden.
11:07
This poor woman thought she'd bought this place with a
11:10
beautiful garden and to point out how everything was within
11:14
weeks or months of being completely dead.
11:17
We need to get in and make some changes quickly.
11:20
It's overwhelming and it's horrible to give people that
11:23
information, but at the same time it's better to give it to
11:26
them with a solution than wait till it's already dead.
11:30
Exactly. Yeah, because then you're kind
11:32
of coming to them and saying, look, I know I'm giving you some
11:35
bad news here, but look, I've already thought about the
11:38
alternative. I'm not passing on the problem
11:40
to you. I've got the solution there
11:43
ready for you. Do you find a lot of problem
11:46
solving in these types of situations becomes naturally to
11:50
you? Do you like, enjoy that type of
11:51
thing? Oh, absolutely.
11:53
Yeah. Yeah, I, I don't even think that
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I'm problem solving. You know, I step into a garden
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and I start with asking the client, what do you want the
12:03
garden to be? If you could have anything that
12:05
you want, what do you want the garden to be?
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And then we just delve into, well, what have we got to
12:10
change? How are we going to restructure
12:12
things or tweak what's already there?
12:15
It's, you know, so the problem solving is just a part of the
12:18
journey. It doesn't feel like problem
12:19
solving. Yeah, I like that and that's
12:21
cool too. And I like the part about.
12:25
So this comes back to what we were talking about before with
12:28
the flooding or I guess practical techniques that we
12:32
could use to reinvigorate gardens or deal with certain
12:37
problems, whether it be contamination or just complete
12:40
wash away of topsoil or the mud that's come through.
12:43
I don't think people realize the amount of mud that a flood
12:47
leaves. If you have never experienced
12:50
that, that flood mud and I, I have this conversation often
12:54
with people all over the world. If you've never experienced
12:57
flood mud, you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say it
13:00
sets like concrete. Yeah, it is insane.
13:04
But you know, for us in Australia, you know, the floods
13:07
we've dealt with, we've got varying degrees of mud which can
13:12
still be deep enough to be significantly problematic.
13:15
But a few years ago I had people contacting me from New Zealand
13:18
who had more than a metre of mud dumped in a garden by a flood.
13:22
Wow. It's so you know, we've got a
13:24
lot to be thankful for. Yeah, it's certainly, certainly
13:27
true. But yeah, I just don't think
13:29
people understand it. But there's there's a few
13:31
different issues that come with these types of things and
13:36
whether these situations happen in nature naturally or not.
13:42
Well, what I'm getting at is if we observe what happens in
13:45
nature, we can often see clues as to how nature likes to bounce
13:50
back from these types of things and what certain situations
13:54
happen. So if there's a complete
13:57
desolation of topsoil and the mud sets in and this type of
14:01
thing, we're often going to see a certain type of pioneer
14:04
species coming. Back see it in nature and I
14:07
think this is a key part of my approach to restoring a garden
14:11
after a flood because after you've had a natural completely
14:16
natural flood under completely natural situations, which I
14:20
might add don't exist anywhere in the world anymore.
14:23
So you know, we're talking hypothetical now, but you know
14:27
it when these floods happened, and they did happen before white
14:31
colonisation, at that stage you've got enough cover over the
14:36
land that you don't get that much silt in the 1st place.
14:39
You do still get silt, but you already have enough vegetation
14:43
cover that you are not getting the extreme levels of silt.
14:47
You're not getting the extreme damage that that does.
14:50
Right, that makes a lot of. Sense see though, is we do see a
14:54
lot of this happen these days in some of the third world
14:58
countries where a lot of those flood plains are your your
15:01
classic farming zones. And so a lot of people say, but
15:05
surely if it floods, it means it's highly fertile?
15:08
Yes and no. It depends on what's coming in
15:12
with that. And yes, flooding does build up
15:14
natural wonderful fertile soil. But what you see in those
15:18
situations is those farmers, and they are all third world kind of
15:25
farmers. We're not talking about
15:26
machinery. They're in on foot, replanting,
15:29
making something happen immediately.
15:32
That mud is not left to dry out and more importantly, it's not
15:37
being driven over by excavators trying to fix the house.
15:42
So what's going on in our gardens is a very unnatural
15:46
situation. If we look to nature, we're
15:49
seeing something completely different.
15:52
We have to work in new nature and that is, you know, a very
15:57
human centric environment. Yeah.
16:00
It's, well, we're certainly having our impact on it, aren't
16:02
we? Oh yeah, yeah.
16:04
Because that's, well, I hadn't thought of it like that.
16:06
And I really appreciate you sharing that because you're
16:09
right, the if it is natural, then usually there's a lot of
16:13
other factors that are working within that to help balance it
16:17
out and create that symbiosis, right?
16:19
So absolutely in this situation when we're throwing it out of
16:22
whack, we are getting an unnatural amount of, of this
16:25
silt and this mud and all of this.
16:27
So what what's your first port of call, I guess with with all
16:32
of this mud, if you've got all this mud, come into your garden
16:35
in extreme. Levels, yes.
16:37
Culture over. Organic matter, anything you can
16:40
get your hands on, you've got to cover it now.
16:43
Yes, organic matter is important because we need the organic
16:46
matter back in the soil to build structure back into that soil.
16:49
Because we've now got very fine silt.
16:53
And you know, too much silt is as problematic as too much clay
16:57
or too much sand. So we do have to add the organic
17:00
matter, but in the very first instance, the day you get back
17:03
to your house after a flood, you need to cover that mud with
17:06
anything you can find, whether that's cardboard boxes, whether
17:10
you've ripped the carpet out because the carpet's ruined
17:13
anything. Lay it over.
17:15
If it's a carpet, don't leave it there, but use it at least
17:18
temporarily to slow down how fast that mud dries out, right?
17:23
The faster it dries out, the more it's going to shrink and
17:26
the harder it's going to be. And then presumably no more
17:30
water penetration through that or it's just going to have?
17:34
You know, you, you have to allow for the, the constant water
17:36
penetration. It's that, you know, we never
17:39
want to stop water penetration. But does that happen with the
17:43
hardening of the silt and all of that mud does that, yeah.
17:46
Because what what happened is you form a crust and that crust
17:50
stops ongoing water penetration. And then?
17:53
Obviously erosion it's, yeah, there's all sorts of problems
17:56
when you get that crust, and that's what we're trying to
17:59
avoid by mulching over it. But the absolute best thing you
18:02
can do is cover it, mulch it with wood chip.
18:05
Yeah, if you possibly can get a load of wood chip and mulch it
18:09
with that. Yeah, OK.
18:10
And that helps because there's a certain amount of, I guess, like
18:16
carbon content and things like this.
18:18
Or is it? Carbon content's critical.
18:19
You need that organic matter, but you need that to be forming
18:23
that humus layer with the soil. Yeah, yeah.
18:26
So you need that contact between the mulch and the soil, and
18:30
that's that zone where everything starts to happen.
18:34
Then as that moves down into the soil, not only is it buffering
18:37
from the surface, we're starting to bring life back into the
18:39
soil. Yeah, cool.
18:41
I really like that. Well, great.
18:43
And then if obviously if people are not able to do this, then
18:47
you're facing maybe trying to turn over some of this or break
18:51
it up. A little bit.
18:52
No, no, no, no, no, no. No, you're not cool.
18:54
Great. Well, that's good.
18:56
That's. Do not dig it.
18:57
It's, I mean, the first thing that's going to happen if you
19:00
try and dig it is you're going to hurt your back.
19:02
Well, yeah. It's way too hard.
19:05
Even if it hasn't set like concrete, the weight in that
19:08
soil now is astronomical. So no, we don't want to dig it.
19:13
OK cool. Really.
19:14
Even if you do nothing, wait until you get the chance to add
19:19
your your, your carbon, your your organic matter on top.
19:24
Hopefully would chip mulch. But if you have let it dry out
19:27
and you have got it that bad, that's when I would be looking
19:30
at adding as well. Something like some rock
19:32
minerals so that you're helping to change that structure a bit
19:35
more rapidly and you're bringing in the microbes, so you're
19:38
bringing in extra life, assuming you're using rock minerals that
19:41
have microbes with them. Yes, exactly.
19:43
Right. OK, cool.
19:44
And then that leaves that whole, you know, soil system intact
19:49
still, and we're not trying to turn over it and dry it all.
19:51
Out and lose more life. No, that's exactly right.
19:54
We still want nature to be working in a soil profile.
19:57
OK, I really like that. Brilliant.
20:00
One thing I was going to mention before is that if you sort of, I
20:05
guess, left an area like this, eventually nature would start
20:11
filling it up with pioneer species, right, Yes.
20:14
Absolutely. And they would be what we
20:15
consider weeds. Yeah, exactly.
20:19
Well, like that's a good nice little segue into weeds.
20:22
Do you want to just share with us a little bit of how your
20:26
perspective is of these plants and what are people?
20:31
I love weeds. I was just out for a walk now
20:34
and walking through a section, I dropped my car off to be
20:39
serviced. And so as I walked home, I'm
20:41
walking through a fairly industrial area and then through
20:43
a couple of parks and I thought, I'm just going to have a a count
20:48
of how many things are in flower.
20:49
You know, flowers are obviously critical for pollinators, and
20:53
this is a whole other section of nature that we've got to start
20:56
looking at in a lot more detail. So I thought as I'm walking, I'm
21:00
just going to have a look at what's in flower around me
21:02
because I keep talking about the fact that not enough people grow
21:05
flowers. But let's actually put some
21:08
numbers to it. So as I walked, I counted 19
21:12
different weeds in flower before I found anything that was not
21:16
declared weed. Wow.
21:18
And that's really telling you a lot about where the biodiversity
21:22
is coming from, where the the pollinators are getting food
21:27
from in our suburban environment.
21:30
It's there was 1 park that hadn't been mown.
21:34
It was lush and green. There was nothing, you know,
21:37
particularly tall and scary about it.
21:40
It didn't make you feel uncomfortable to walk in, but it
21:43
was so teeming with life. Yeah.
21:46
And then the next part that I walked through council have been
21:49
mowing, they've been spraying the weeds and we had a
21:52
biological desert instead and a perfect situation for fire ants.
21:56
There's so much that we're not looking at when we we don't talk
22:00
about the whole picture. And that I think upsets me the
22:02
most about weeds. And it's, this is, you know,
22:07
something that sticks in my gut a little bit.
22:08
I know that my point of view is somewhat controversial, but it
22:12
is entirely backed by science is that weeds are colonizers.
22:18
They have a role to play in nature.
22:19
That's why they're there. Nature has put them there.
22:22
Yes, we as humans have played a role in spreading these things
22:25
around the world, but they have a really important role.
22:29
We have also played a dramatic role in causing the degradation
22:33
that requires colonizers to fix. So what we are actually doing is
22:38
we're doing the harm and then we're adding to that harm by
22:41
taking away nature's attempt to fix the harm.
22:44
Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it.
22:47
I back you 100%. I don't think it's controversial
22:49
at all, I think. I'm so glad to hear that.
22:52
I don't think it's controversial at all.
22:54
Yeah, because you're absolutely right.
22:56
I believe that nature has the perfect blueprint and that every
23:00
single thing that we see is an an attempt to fix something,
23:05
balance something, or something that's working together as part
23:08
of a system. Yes, but I will add to that
23:11
though, that we have this notion of nature in balance and yet in
23:17
reality there's no such thing because nature doesn't have an
23:20
end point. It's on a continual pathway of
23:23
evolution, Yes, we go through periods where things are stable
23:28
and you don't see a lot of evolution, you don't see a lot
23:31
of speciation. Then you have more turbulent
23:33
times and that has always happened.
23:38
This is where at the moment, what we've got to be very
23:40
careful of is as we're seeing climate change and we are seeing
23:44
changes in gardens as well as changes in wild systems, we have
23:51
to allow nature to adapt and change with it.
23:55
We can't be focused on. This is what grew here 200 years
23:59
ago. This is what has to go here now
24:00
because it's not the same place as it was 200 years ago.
24:04
It's not the same climate and it's not the same soil.
24:07
There's so much that's changed. We have to allow some
24:11
adaptation. A snapshot in time is not how
24:13
nature works. We've got to allow some
24:17
evolution. Yes.
24:19
And the constant evolving and constant movement is because of
24:27
the adaptation based on something that's on the further
24:31
end of the scale, right? Something a little bit unnatural
24:33
or or an explosion of a population of something or.
24:36
A It can be what often driven by is a push towards biodiversity.
24:42
So nature will work towards increasing biodiversity and this
24:47
is what that example in the part showed that where it wasn't moan
24:53
and these weeds were just allowed to be in amongst the
24:55
grass, there was a fabulous abundance.
24:58
When I went to the park that was moan.
25:01
There was no diversity at all and we and it lacks that
25:05
abundance. This is what nature does.
25:07
It brings in some diversity. Wherever you see a monoculture,
25:11
it's not a natural system and nature wants to get in and
25:15
change it. Now we do see certain plants and
25:19
people will immediately say what about lantana?
25:22
It's yes, that is a monoculture, but it is still an active
25:26
repair. If you ever pulled out lantana
25:29
and looked at the soil underneath, it's incredible how
25:32
lantana works to build soil. And there's a handful of these
25:36
weeds that if left alone, they build soil.
25:40
Over time, this is causing repair.
25:43
And then as things start changing and they start getting
25:47
eaten, the a fire may come through and damage the lantana.
25:52
That allows space for other things to start growing.
25:55
Yeah, it's not an end point. We mustn't see it as an end
25:59
point. What we've got to do is see what
26:01
we had before that weed took over and what we had was a
26:05
problem. The weed may not be the solution
26:07
we want, but it's nature's way of bringing a solution in.
26:11
And if we don't want the weed as the solution, we need to step in
26:16
and do the job the weed is doing.
26:18
So if we ever attack weed and say this weed is bad, I don't
26:23
want to, I'm going to kill it. Whether we use poison or any
26:26
other method, if we are fighting weeds by just taking them out
26:30
without thinking about the job they're doing, we're never going
26:32
to win. We haven't changed the
26:34
conditions that resulted in that weed being there in the first
26:37
place. That's so true.
26:38
And I love that because that's exactly what I've been saying to
26:42
people with who are struggling with weeds and certain different
26:46
types of things I said. But tell me what you think about
26:49
this. I I like the notion that weeds
26:52
are a signpost for what the soil is lacking or needing or the
26:59
environment might be needing, for example.
27:01
So it's a bit of a signpost to that.
27:03
So for example, you might look at it and it has all the weeds
27:07
that you're finding have large taproots and you might say, OK,
27:12
well they these species are trying to tell us that we might
27:15
need a little bit more deeper water penetration or breaking up
27:18
some of the compaction etcetera. Is that how you see different
27:22
some of some of the different species as well?
27:24
Absolutely. I will walk into a place, into a
27:28
garden that's full of weeds and I can tell them what their
27:29
soil's like based on looking at the weeds because they do tell
27:34
us an enormous amount of what is going on below.
27:37
It's. And the more you get to know
27:40
that, the easier it is to read the environment around you, not
27:43
just in terms of the soil, but climatic conditions, time of
27:47
year, all of these sorts of things.
27:49
And I find often when I'm doing a weed talk, people will say to
27:52
me, oh, I've got such, so much of such and such.
27:55
And I'll start talking about that weed and I'll say my guess
27:59
would be your garden is blah, blah, blah.
28:01
And they look at me and go, how did you know that?
28:04
Because of the weeds. It tells me so much about what's
28:07
happening in your garden. If any weed can dominate, it
28:11
means there's a lot going on. Exactly.
28:14
And it means that that's. Coming in spectrum of weeds, so
28:18
you've got good diversity, it tells you a lot less about the
28:21
soil. Yeah.
28:22
Because you've got lots of different things happening,
28:24
that's a really good sign. Anytime you have one thing
28:27
dominating, it's a very clear message.
28:29
Yeah, OK, cool. And if there is like all of this
28:32
diversity, it might just be as simple as nature just bringing
28:36
in more of this diversity and trying to diversify.
28:39
That and as the diversity builds, so often what happens is
28:42
you start with one or two and over time that diversity builds
28:46
and that's where you start seeing.
28:49
And this is where we start looking at what's called a
28:51
Cinderella ecosystem, where you start seeing more and more
28:54
coming in. The more that comes in, the more
28:57
diversity of flowers, seeds, forms, it creates more and more
29:01
habitat. There's more there for the
29:03
insects, for the birds. You start bringing them in all
29:06
those layers. You're now creating an
29:09
environment where tree seedlings can germinate and nature is
29:12
doing that repair work. And it is that movement towards
29:16
diversity. Exactly.
29:17
And it's this progression, right?
29:20
It's this long term kind of moving from one thing to
29:25
another, one type of environment and you might call it like a
29:29
desert to a rainforest type thing.
29:31
And a few of the, the guests, the wonderful people I've had on
29:34
the show have shared how there's this movement and natural
29:38
progression towards something or, or or another depending on
29:42
where it goes. How do you view this?
29:44
And do you think that it is just moving backwards and forwards
29:47
between the extremes on a, on a scale that we can't even
29:50
imagine? Hey, guys, really quickly
29:52
jumping in. I just want to remind you, if
29:55
you are not subscribed to this show, that is the number one
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thing that you can do to show me your support.
30:00
So if you're finding value from this conversation and you're
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deeply engaged, I would love you to hit the follow or subscribe
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button. All right, back to the show.
30:08
No, I think it's, I don't think it's moving backwards and
30:11
forwards between extremes. I think it's just, you know,
30:13
fairly linear. It is nature working towards
30:17
greater diversity. So it's from that point of view
30:21
nature doesn't really in terms of ecosystems work against
30:28
diversity. It's always pro diversity and
30:31
that's, that's where I see this as very singular rather than
30:35
backwards and forwards. It's often the starting point is
30:38
a lot worse than what we realized.
30:40
It's a lot more degraded, a lot more damaged.
30:43
And, and because of that, it's not as simple as just planting
30:46
some natives and hoping for the best.
30:48
It's because it's no longer a native environment.
30:52
The environment has changed so much.
30:53
The soil's changed. Everything about this has
30:55
changed. It's not a simple are saying
30:57
let's put some natives in and walk away.
31:00
That's very true. And this is where the repair job
31:03
comes in. So you think that they're
31:05
repairing an issue in most cases?
31:08
Yes, absolutely. It's in the vast majority of
31:13
cases, and I think we are fools if we think they're not.
31:18
Yeah, we're missing a big part of the picture if we don't look
31:22
at what's happening around us and try and see the job they're
31:25
doing. Yeah.
31:26
And you can see like you said before, you can see that once
31:28
you start to notice that you'll see it on a greater scale.
31:31
So not just your microclimate of your garden or even the the
31:34
individual microclimates within your garden, but then in your
31:38
area or in Brisbane in general or how?
31:41
Queens in the garden, we want to fast track that process so we've
31:45
got to understand what the weeds are trying to tell us so we can
31:48
change those conditions, but this gets really juicy.
31:52
I love this is they we're finding that yes, they changed
31:57
the soil and they provide habitat.
32:01
All of these things are things that we've known for a very long
32:03
time, whether people wanted to accept it or not.
32:06
This is well known and one of my favourites is the good old
32:09
Cobblers pegs. I know this is a little bit
32:11
wilted, but yeah, that's right. These flowers are absolutely
32:15
adored by pollinators. So this is a very significant
32:19
weed for pollinators. This is a weed that as you
32:22
compost, it improves the soil absolutely off the scale.
32:27
So we know that this is one that builds A healthier soil.
32:32
But what we're also finding, and this is a whole new field of
32:35
science that's really starting to open up, is that some of
32:40
these weeds, including Cobblers peaks, have now been found.
32:43
Not only do they improve the soil by the exudates from their
32:47
roots, building extra life in their soil, they've now been
32:51
found to harbour mycorrhizy that can bond to other plants.
32:57
And these weeds, as they grow, are directly feeding other
33:00
plants connected through that mycelial network.
33:04
That's incredible. Isn't it?
33:05
Isn't that a little bit mind blowing?
33:07
That's crazy. I knew that.
33:08
That weeds can do things like that.
33:11
Yeah, I knew that there was the brilliant mycorrhizal network
33:14
and how they, you know, inhabit and surround all the root zones
33:17
and extend out into the network. But having I thought that was
33:21
more a relationship in the soil that it was.
33:24
Trained in the criteria happening in the soil.
33:27
I didn't realize though that the the weeds though can send can
33:30
take probably presumably atmospheric nitrogen things like
33:34
this and and send them down through the the system.
33:37
So all plants will exude some of what they make from
33:43
photosynthesis into the soil, which feeds the microbes in the
33:46
soil. So that is a really important
33:49
process that we shut off if we're using too much fertilizer.
33:53
It's an important process. I talk about that a lot in my
33:57
second book, Earth Repair Gardening, because I want people
33:59
to understand how to protect the soil and the importance of
34:02
plants. But we can turn any green space,
34:05
including our gardens, into a carbon sink by turning this
34:08
mechanism on getting our plants to pump carbon into the soil.
34:12
But yes, we're finding out it's so much more than just pumping
34:15
organic matter into the soil. It is a two way St. through a
34:20
mycelial network that's not just exerting into the soil, but it's
34:23
going directly into that network and into another plant.
34:27
I'll give you another really amazing example.
34:30
There was a garden I was working in restoring a long time ago,
34:33
and underneath all of this wild Guinea grass.
34:36
It was a flood garden. Too much silk Guinea grass.
34:38
Loves that. I found some heritage roses.
34:43
There were four different roses. One of these roses had a false
34:46
mellow at the base of the Rose. Now I knew the false mellow has
34:50
quite a taproot and I thought, OK, I'm going to leave it there
34:53
or prune it off. But you know, they were neck and
34:55
neck. I'm going to leave it there.
34:57
I also knew that flowers, it brings in pollinators.
35:00
This is not a bad thing. That rose was four times the
35:03
size of any of the other roses. So I knew that this was working
35:07
well and I understood at that point the concept of the mother
35:11
weed. So I knew that this weed was
35:12
doing good things. What I didn't know, and what
35:16
sort of came to light years later when another gardener took
35:20
over and had a a different philosophy and that weed came
35:24
out, the Rose died. Goodness me.
35:27
And that false mellow is 1 now that the studies are finding is
35:31
very good at those mycelial networks that bond to other
35:36
plants and they can do a two way exchange from one plant to
35:41
another completely unrelated plants.
35:44
So it was a true mother weed. That's incredible.
35:48
I've heard say like in the old growth forests when a a tree
35:52
gets felled and it's just a stump and how the mycelial
35:56
network can keep that stump alive from all of its
35:58
neighboring neighboring relatives.
36:00
But but the cross species thing and having the.
36:04
Species thing is much, much bigger than we have any idea of,
36:07
I bet. And weeds are now being found to
36:10
play a significant role. Not all weeds.
36:12
Brassicas for example they're finding don't do it as much.
36:16
So there are some that are better than others without
36:19
question. But isn't this just a little bit
36:21
mind blowing? How can we hate on a plant with
36:24
an ability like that? Well, it just, well, yes,
36:27
exactly right. And it just seems like every
36:29
time we think that we have an idea of something or we think
36:32
we've got it right. We don't have a We don't.
36:35
We. Absolutely.
36:36
We're doing is finding out how much we don't know.
36:38
Yeah, and that's, it's humbling, but somewhat freeing at the same
36:41
time. Yeah, it is exactly.
36:45
Can you tell me then a little bit about a couple of the ones
36:49
that most people might struggle with?
36:51
Let's make it just practical for 5 minutes.
36:56
I'm going to talk about one in particular that I just, I'm
36:59
curious about myself. I'm trialing a solution of
37:05
beneficial anaerobic microbes to try and rid the soil of nut
37:11
grass or or the. Well, let me know how that goes.
37:17
Yeah, exactly. Because nut grass is one that I
37:20
get asked about a lot and you're right, they are doing a lot of
37:22
work on specific microbes to attack weeds as well.
37:25
So this is a two way investigation here, which I
37:28
think is fantastic too. Nut grass loves a compacted soil
37:34
and loves a compacted soil that is low in calcium.
37:37
And you will see your nut grass go mad after we've had a summer
37:41
of very heavy rain, because that rain is bashing on the soil and
37:45
adding to compaction, and it's leaching the calcium out of the
37:48
soil. So my first response to that is
37:52
fix your soil. Yeah.
37:53
If you don't change the soil, you will never break the
37:56
dominance of the nut grass. You haven't fixed the problem
38:00
that the nut grass is exploiting.
38:02
It's there to fix, yeah. That's exactly right.
38:05
So I'd love to know how your experiment goes, but
38:09
unfortunately for the home gardener, having these sort of
38:12
beneficial weed destroying microbes is not a solution.
38:16
It's just not readily available. What they can do, what is
38:19
readily available is add some rock minerals to open the
38:23
structure of your soil that the high silica can really open the
38:26
soil. Add the microbes, add organic
38:29
mulch. You need to get organic matter
38:31
into the soil. Now.
38:32
If your soils not soft enough that you can stick a fork in and
38:36
gently lift out a clump of nut grass, you haven't improved it
38:39
enough yet. So in that case, do nothing but
38:43
keep improving the soil. If this is your lawn, just keep
38:46
mowing without the catcher every time the nut grass gets taller
38:50
than the grass and that bothers you.
38:52
Mow without the catcher and you're doing constant.
38:55
Feeding. Yeah, you're feeding.
38:57
That exactly right. That is where you get the
39:00
benefit of the improved soil and eventually you can break the
39:04
dominance of the nut grass because you can dig it out
39:06
easily. Then you can put it into weed
39:09
tea and deal with it that way. But it's, you know, we're
39:12
looking at that combination not just of getting rid of the nut
39:15
grass, but of improving the soil to a point where what you want
39:18
to grow will grow better. Yeah.
39:21
And is there any, I guess, say for example, it was popping up
39:25
in all your garden beds, is there something that you could
39:29
replace it or sorry, replace its job with, with another plant?
39:33
Is there some other things that we can do?
39:35
Deep rooted plants will be good because of that soil compaction.
39:40
And would they crowd it out eventually and crowd out the
39:42
need for it and do the job and if as long as we're.
39:45
Improving the single, the 30 centimetres, if it's in your
39:48
garden beds, you grow things taller than said 30 centimetres,
39:51
you'll shade it out. Yes, you won't actually kill it,
39:55
except that you know the longer that it can't photosynthesize,
39:57
the weaker it gets. But you shade it out.
40:01
But you can't see it because underneath everything else.
40:05
And if you can't see it, it's not a problem, is it?
40:07
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I really like that because
40:10
so many people I've seen turn to the chemical sprays and, you
40:14
know, it's just, it frustrates me because I understand where
40:19
people are coming from, where if they've got this somewhat very
40:23
unnatural manicured concrete space with some plants in it,
40:28
you know, they're going to have problems because it's not a
40:31
natural space. And I think this might be going
40:33
back to some of the things you were talking about, this having
40:36
to share with this lady about how people are building these
40:39
spaces and gardens and throwing in just, you know, terrible
40:42
quality soil in in terrible locations and blah, blah, blah.
40:45
And they're expecting things to grow and then getting seriously
40:49
disheartened and losing the passion for getting out in the
40:52
garden when it does turn to. You know, yeah, absolutely.
40:56
But so there's a number of things that go wrong with this
40:58
and it, you know, this comes into so much of what I try and
41:01
teach people is that we go and buy a plant from the garden
41:06
centre most of the time. And every time I do a talk and I
41:10
say who read the label before you bought the plant?
41:12
You'll get a couple of hands, but most people didn't take it
41:16
home. Did you read the label before
41:18
you planted it? Maybe another hand or two?
41:21
The majority of people haven't even read the label, let alone
41:23
gone a little bit further to understanding what conditions
41:26
that plant needs. Now you've taken a plant that's
41:29
been bred and bred and bred. It's not wild, it's not
41:33
resilient, it needs certain conditions, and it's not going
41:38
to like being stuck anywhere. And yet they go and put it where
41:42
they think it's going to look nice, not where it's going to
41:44
want to grow. And then they wonder why the
41:46
weeds are doing better because the weeds could put themselves
41:49
where they want to be. The plant got stuck where you
41:51
wanted it to be. If you put that plant where it
41:55
was going to do well, gardening is transformed completely and
41:59
you reduce the need for any sort of pest control, and all of
42:02
those problems magically disappear because you've paid
42:06
attention to the conditions your plant needed in the first place.
42:09
That's right. And I often reflect back at
42:12
people that we know that plants are living things and living
42:15
beings, but we treat them as if they don't need food, water and
42:19
environment and looking after you.
42:21
You got someone who's going to get a brand new puppy.
42:23
They're going to be thinking about, OK, what do I need to
42:25
feed it? How often does it go to the
42:27
toilet, blah, blah, blah. And when you get a plant, as you
42:31
say, the majority of us are not even checking the label to see
42:34
how can I care for this the best way?
42:36
I've known people who've spent hundreds of dollars on plants
42:39
and just stuck them outside and forgot about them and wondered
42:42
why it was dead. It's crazy.
42:44
Yeah, it really is. And then also the fact that, you
42:48
know, we're trying to inspire more people to actually get out
42:53
there and and try and grow things.
42:55
And if you're going out there and just, yeah, throwing things
42:59
out there and hoping for the best, it's really not, yeah,
43:03
it's not manageable. And that comes down to similar
43:06
thing where someone might get really excited by the fact that
43:11
they've got a garden. And I'm so guilty of this
43:13
because you know, I will get a space and my creativity will
43:16
just run wild and I'll go, I can, I have a bit of all of this
43:19
and I have to rein myself in and go, OK, let's start looking at
43:24
what nature's wants to put here and then try and put some of
43:27
those plants and slowly. We are all plant lovers so that
43:32
we are all trying to fight the temptation to put in all sorts
43:36
of things that really shouldn't grow in that spot.
43:39
So it is a constant battle with our own passion.
43:42
I get it. But you do have to, yeah, you do
43:45
have to make that sort of realism.
43:47
And going off what you said before about how all of these
43:50
plants are in these climate controlled environments and and
43:54
grown specifically for sale at the garden centers there.
43:57
They might even have been travelled from a different part
43:59
of the country, which is just, it's crazy.
44:03
Can you talk to the benefits of going and asking someone down
44:09
the road for a cutting of that same plant rather than look?
44:13
You know, we rely on having a thriving nursery industry that
44:18
is really important. I don't want to diss the nursery
44:21
industry by any means, unless we're talking about the big box
44:24
stores. They've got a lot to answer for,
44:26
but we do need all of this. But really, I do want people to
44:31
buy local as much as possible. Just from a sustainability point
44:34
of view, it's not sustainable to be bringing things any further
44:38
than we need to, particularly if it's something that grows
44:41
locally. But more than that, we're
44:44
bringing plants from a different climate and wondering why
44:46
they're not growing here. Whereas if we were to source all
44:49
our plants as locally as possible, we know they suit our
44:52
climate. So there's huge advantages that
44:55
way. And they've been adapted to it,
44:57
haven't they? Yeah, yeah, most definitely.
45:00
Even if they're not a native plant, they've been growing here
45:03
for generations and they're in a climate that suits them.
45:07
Yeah. And I found that, for example,
45:11
I, yeah, I did this with a rose. Actually I bought a rose from
45:17
it. Wasn't from any big chain store
45:19
or anything, but bought a rose, came and put it in the garden
45:23
and it really just struggled. It just couldn't stand the heat
45:27
or anything like this. So it was within two weeks I
45:31
think. And then I went and got a
45:33
cutting because I said I was complaining about it saying oh
45:35
I've just got this beautiful rose, you know, bought this one,
45:38
it looked fantastic and now it's gone completely downhill.
45:41
So I said, you know, has anyone got a cutting or something?
45:45
Has anyone got one? And there was one locally,
45:47
literally just the other street away from me who has similar
45:51
soil, who we have, you know, similar climate and sun exposure
45:55
for the day. Got a cutting and, you know,
45:57
nursed it up and, hey presto, beautiful.
46:02
So your cut and grown rose is doing much better.
46:05
Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
46:07
Leaps and bounds. And because it's, it's locally
46:09
adapted and. That is exactly right.
46:11
And too often with roses, I mean, roses is a big group and
46:14
it's one that there's a a lot of emotion around, Yes.
46:17
And there's not a lot of understanding that, yes, roses
46:20
do grow in the tropics. You know, the national flower of
46:24
the Maldives is a rose. Yeah, but they are different to
46:27
the roses that grow in temperate climates.
46:30
Exactly. So we really need to look at
46:31
which rose we're growing. Yeah, well, it was supposed to
46:35
be a tropical rose anyway, so, but that was years ago.
46:38
So I'm now, I'm not, I'm not a rose grower at the moment, but
46:43
can you tell me about maybe some of the things that we could do
46:47
at home for ourselves to protect ourselves from a inundation of
46:55
flood water in the garden? So I'm thinking, are there ways
47:00
in which we can, I mean, obviously there are certain
47:03
extensional. Jordan, are you a little bit
47:05
worried that your property might flood?
47:08
I think look, I've I've had some flooding quite a fair bit when
47:11
it rains a lot and we get maybe I mean this, this is going to
47:15
sound not very much compared to some of the things you've seen,
47:18
but we will get at least a foot or two of water underneath our
47:21
Queenslander. So it covers a.
47:23
Lot. It covers most of our most of
47:26
our house and most of our property and stuff.
47:28
So luckily the house is OK. But what it does is it brings a
47:33
lot of contaminated mud and water and just rubbish from
47:38
around suburbia through the gardens and things like this.
47:41
But I was hoping that some of the plants and things that I
47:44
have in my garden can drink some of this or allow some of that to
47:48
soak through a little bit. First, there are.
47:50
Some certain strategies, and I do include these in gardening on
47:54
after a flood. There are definitely strategies
47:57
there that will help. I would start with earth repair
48:00
gardening though and look at the way water is moving through your
48:02
property. Right.
48:03
Yes. Because you've got to deal with
48:05
the overland flow, which is a little bit, I mean it
48:08
contributes to the flooding, but it is a different way of dealing
48:11
with water. That what we see a lot of
48:15
happening now is that the town planning is all for getting rid
48:20
of excess water. And therefore we're creating
48:23
situations where we've got bigger houses, smaller
48:26
properties, there's no infiltration spaces.
48:29
So we're getting these larger volumes of stormwater that then
48:33
move very quickly. Stormwater systems aren't big
48:36
enough for, you know, escalation of problems.
48:39
So, but we can have drought and flood at the same time because
48:43
that water can't penetrate. Yeah, exactly.
48:45
Yeah. But we've got to create a
48:46
situation in our gardens where one, the water can penetrate and
48:50
plant choices and our soil improvement are critical for
48:53
that. But too, we've also got to look
48:55
at water management so that we can put in drainage systems, for
48:59
example, that trap water and only let excess water escape.
49:06
And this is a concept too that is not being talked about
49:09
enough. Everything is about getting rid
49:10
of all water. We're going to go back into
49:12
drought. That is a given.
49:15
I hope that's a long way ahead. I don't want to have to deal
49:17
with it, but it is a given. That is the nature of living in
49:20
Australia. And when that time comes, we're
49:23
all going to be very sorry when we see every drop of rain out in
49:27
the gutter instead of soaking into our gardens.
49:29
Yeah. So we need to instead plan for
49:33
that at the same time as we plan for flooding.
49:36
That's really, really important. So you would need to set up some
49:42
drains around your place that will get rid of excess water but
49:47
allow water to soak in before it becomes excess water.
49:51
Certain plantings definitely help.
49:53
You need trees. You need the deep roots.
49:56
They cycle water through a system.
49:59
You need things like lamandras to create that little bit of a
50:03
wall that holds the soil together and slows water flows
50:07
down because you don't want the scouring.
50:10
So there's a number of different ways of using that water.
50:14
And then you want to channel that excess water towards a spot
50:18
where you're OK with the water being there.
50:21
And then down in that point, that's where you plant your
50:23
bananas, you know, things like that.
50:26
You work with it as much as possible.
50:29
And you're, you're using some of these, I guess, permaculture
50:32
techniques and things like this Where, where looking at the land
50:36
and the flow of the water and, and trying to slow it down,
50:39
allow it to catch in different areas.
50:41
And you can also, I've seen some really creative ways of
50:45
channelling off into little pools where they kind of sit on
50:48
the hills or swales and things like this.
50:51
And I've tried to because I've, I've now transformed part of the
50:56
front lawn here in, in the garden to, to a garden and to
51:01
show people how to turn it from a lawn into a productive,
51:06
healthy, soiled space and hopefully very diverse as well.
51:11
Yeah. And, you know, doing this online
51:14
and doing it publicly, I want to try and show as much of the ups
51:19
and downs of this whole process because it's not going to be
51:21
simple. I don't have all the answers.
51:23
And I'm trying my best to observe what we've got, you
51:27
know, prepare for events like this and balance what I also
51:31
want in this space as well. So.
51:34
Yeah. But there are some strategies
51:35
there that make it a lot easier than other ways.
51:39
True exactly. Right.
51:40
And some of those keys are looking at how the water flows
51:45
and how it moves and how to work with that.
51:48
You know, if it's on a slope, you need to do trenching.
51:51
We need to get the water to drop in.
51:53
There's little things like that, which is similar to your Swale
51:56
system, except that it can potentially handle larger
52:01
volumes. So that's all we're looking at.
52:03
That's why there's a whole chapter on that in Earth Repair
52:06
Gardening, because it's critical whether you're growing food or
52:09
anything else. And you have to do that in
52:11
conjunction with soil improvement and growing things
52:15
with deep roots. And so that works together.
52:19
And this is where my approach to gardening is a little bit
52:22
different to most people because I come at it from an ecologist
52:26
point of view, is that it's everything together.
52:28
It's never just this or that. It's different things together.
52:32
And if you look at anything in isolation, you're limiting how
52:35
well it's going to work. Yes, Yeah.
52:37
Well, I really love that approach because it brings
52:39
together so many different facets that we're not often
52:43
seeing put together or things that were thought about
52:46
together. And you're right, everything
52:48
impacts everything in in a way that probably more so we don't
52:51
understand. Yeah, and this is what
52:54
permaculture is about. But permaculture is just focused
52:57
on food. But if you take those principles
53:00
and you extrapolate it out to any garden, you start seeing
53:04
that you've got to build systems and connections.
53:06
Otherwise everything is working in isolation and everything is
53:10
limited in its success. Yeah, that's very true.
53:14
Well, I, I really want to encourage everybody to check out
53:18
your books because there's plenty more of these answers
53:22
that you've gone through with us in this book, and I know that
53:26
they're an absolute wealth of knowledge.
53:28
Can I talk to you just briefly here at the end about writing
53:33
books and the process of that for you?
53:40
Did you ever perceive yourself as a as a writer?
53:42
Did you ever want to write books?
53:43
And then how has that experience been for you from start to
53:49
finish? An interesting one, I remember
53:53
being at a party and saying to a friend, oh, I might write
53:58
gardening books and you know, just having this spark of an
54:02
idea and then thinking, oh, later clearly you've been
54:06
drinking too much. Why do you think you were going
54:07
to do that? And then as I got on my weed
54:10
journey, thought realised there's a lot that needs to be
54:13
communicated here. I need to put this information
54:16
together to communicate it. And that sort of led me into
54:19
writing a book. So for me, it's everything that
54:25
I've written in a book is not just nice, it actually has a
54:31
level of this is important information that I really think
54:34
is going to help people, but the Earth as a whole needs people to
54:39
start getting this. So that's kind of where I've
54:41
come from that if I don't have some mission, you know, I'm not
54:46
going to sit down and write a book because there's other
54:48
things I could be doing that's a lot more fun.
54:51
But it's it's being driven and going down a rabbit hole of
54:54
exploring a topic in so much detail.
54:57
I end up doing such a huge amount of research that which I
55:02
absolutely love. That's that, you know, that
55:06
scientist in me that's just got to get into the, the nuts and
55:08
bolts of it all. But it's for me, it is very much
55:12
about there's important information to share, but it's
55:15
not just taking important information saying here's the
55:19
information. I feel it's really important to
55:22
make it digestible and appropriate for anybody to pick
55:27
up and use in their garden. So you don't have a science
55:30
degree like I do. That doesn't mean you this
55:34
information isn't relevant to you and shouldn't be presented
55:37
to you in a way that is very usable for you.
55:40
Yeah, exactly right. I, I would imagine that it would
55:44
be difficult, especially when you're passionate and you are
55:48
always researching as well as a scientist.
55:50
Like you said, you're finding out new things all the time.
55:53
It's is it hard to put a bookend on the book and wrap it and
55:57
package it? Absolutely it is.
56:00
It is. I get to a point where I just go
56:02
stop. That's it.
56:05
Yeah. Otherwise I would never finish
56:08
it. I, I can relate to that.
56:10
I used to write music. I still write a bit, but I used
56:13
to write it quite a lot and just just saying stop or setting
56:16
yourself a bit of a deadline to kind of go look OK, you need to
56:19
just put it down and whatever we can do Round 2 later on or
56:24
whatever, or move it into something else.
56:26
But I imagine that's quite difficult with all sort of
56:29
creative arts. Yes, of course it is.
56:32
And you know, you're putting your heart and soul.
56:33
It is difficult, yes. Yeah, very, very cool.
56:37
Well, what I would like to do just at the end here is for you
56:41
to let everybody know where the best place is to go and find
56:44
you. I know your website has an
56:46
absolute wealth of knowledge, but can you just run through a
56:48
couple of the things that you have on offer and where people
56:52
might find you? Yes, certainly it's well, if you
56:56
want to know more about weeds, I do have a Free Library talk
57:00
coming up at Browns Plains Library on Saturday.
57:03
Oh cool, it's coming Saturday. So and you can bring a weed
57:07
along to that. I do have also a weed workshop
57:11
at the Billeron Community Farm coming up in September.
57:15
Again, you can book into that one and bring your weeds along
57:18
to. So I can talk directly to the
57:21
weeds that you have and are trying to deal with.
57:23
That's another one that is that's a bit longer, that's a
57:26
lot more involved that as a workshop, but it's going to be
57:29
really getting in there with those weeds.
57:32
So. Bring what you've got.
57:34
So you really learn about that, but there's always things going
57:38
on. There's I think I've got another
57:40
talk coming up in September at the Hyperdome Library on easy
57:44
organic lawn care. Cool.
57:46
It's that's really important as well.
57:49
I think lawns are a space we forget that need to be
57:52
sustainable and organic and they can be it's so, you know, trying
57:58
to teach that one as well. But I have for those people who
58:01
can't get to any of these talks, there are the books.
58:04
You can find the books through my web website.
58:07
There are the online courses, there's a whole range of online
58:10
courses there that walk people through this process so it can
58:15
hold your hand through learning some of these different things
58:18
and how to apply it to your garden.
58:21
Because my mission, I'm a gardening coach.
58:25
So it's not just about me coming and telling you what to do to
58:27
make your garden better. I want to do it in a way that
58:30
makes you a better gardener. Yeah.
58:32
So that whatever I teach you once, you can apply and use that
58:36
over and over. That's what I want to do with my
58:40
courses. And this is where I go to with
58:42
my coaching packages, is this is not about you just do what
58:45
you're told. This is about understanding the
58:48
reasons why things work in the garden, why they don't work.
58:51
So for you, gardening becomes easy.
59:10
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to that
59:13
conversation. Quickly, before you go and do
59:16
not shut off the episode just yet, I wanted to make sure that
59:19
you go and check out those links that Kate suggested at the end
59:22
there because on her website there is so many things that you
59:26
can find value in. And as she said, there's this
59:29
flood or gardening for a flood book and it's free.
59:34
It's a free ebook. So go and check it out.
59:36
Go and actually grab that Gardening after a Flood and you
59:38
can get yourself some of the very vital knowledge, especially
59:42
if you're living in an area like this in Australia where we face
59:45
these types of floods. But I'm so grateful to Kate for
59:48
her time. So thank you to her and please
59:52
go and say if you enjoyed the episode to her, that would be
59:54
wonderful. Remember, as always, a review is
59:58
so greatly appreciated. Just jump on and do it now.
1:00:01
You know it's the end of the episode.
1:00:02
You can just go and quickly click a review, type in a few
1:00:06
thoughtful words or leave us some stars and that'll help us
1:00:09
spread the episode to more people.
1:00:11
That's it, that's it from me. Thank you again.
1:00:14
For listening and watching and I'm very excited.
1:00:17
We're going to be back again next week with another epic
1:00:19
episode. So we'll see you then.
1:00:21
Take care and bye for now.