Lemon Balm

The most amazing thing happened to me yesterday. I was admiring our beautiful Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) and I gently agitated the foliage. The scent that was released was so delicious and soft but with such a strong bite I just had to do it again.

As I leant my hand down to swish the foliage I saw about six European bees and a number of native bees swarming the foliage looking for nectar.

It was like the scent of just the foliage alone (no flowers) sent out a calling card to all the nearby bees.

Here’s where the story gets even cooler.

Melissa is the Greek word for "honey-bee." It was traditionally used by the ancient bee keepers. They used to rub the crushed leaves on the beehives to encourage the domesticated bees to return to their hives. They also believed that the lemon balm would also bring new bees to the hive.

How cool is that.

I love how random bits of information make sense.

Melissa naturally occurs throughout Europe to central Asia. It is widely cultivated today for its essential oil, practical herbal uses and as a great bedding plant.

Lemon Balm is a lemon-scented perennial with a 4-angled stem and ovate, toothed dark green leaves. It likes to grow in moist soil in the sun or partial shade. It provides a nice thick ground cover. It can grow well in a pot (we have ours growing in an old saucepan), hanging baskets or the garden.

After flowering it is recommended to prune back to produce a fresh crop of leaves.

There are so many uses for lemon balm and I think I am going to have to see if I can get this plant growing at home.

Dried leaves can be added to potpourri and herb pillows.

You can use it in cooking – soups, salads, flavoured oils, sauces.

You can use it to make a tea to help with nervous disorders, indigestion associated with nervous tension, depression, anxiety, gout.

It can also be rubbed fresh onto the skin as an insect repellent and to soothe insect bites.

Lemon Balm essential oil is one of my favourite oils and is also very precious and very expensive. So I have to be careful not to use it in every blend I make.

It has been said that it is the ruler of the brain, strengthening memory and removing melancholy. Fischer-Rizzi said it helps us find inner contentment and strengthens ‘wisdom of the heart’. It is one of the best essential oils to help with down in dumps can’t move depression.

I was in love with this herb just from its scent.

Now I know no garden should exist without it!

Go find some lemon balm and lift your spirits and give your heart some contentment.

What is Companion Planting?

Companion planting is all about plant diversity - putting together crops that enjoy each other's company and require the same light, soil, water conditions and insect deterrents. In our climate however, I don't think companion planting is highly successful in regards to deterring insects. Instead, it's about planting plants that are either sacrificial plants, end trap plants or plants that attract good bugs to eat all the bad ones. Companion planting is also about planting crops together to help each other along, give out nutrients to each other. One plant can release certain nutrients while the neighbour plant absorbs them and vice versa. This give-and-take process can significantly enhance your plants’ health and create a more harmonious garden as well. A great example of this is the Three Sisters.

Sacrificial Crops

Beneficial insects are any insect that performs a valued service like pollination and/or pest control.

Sacrificial crops, or trap crops, are grown around or amongst crops. Their purpose is to attract the attention of significant pests away from the primary crop. Certain pests prefer the taste of the sacrificial crop, so they leave the crop we like alone.

The sacrificial crop will also, hopefully, reduce the need to spot spray pests.

In the past, people believed sacrificial crops to be more of a breeding grounds for pests, as pest numbers can be quite significant amongst the sacrificial crop. Large numbers of pests also attract bio controls, like parasitoid wasps. Biological control is a method of controlling such pests using other living organisms, which also limits any need to spray even organic insecticides. Organic farmers find that when pest populations peak, so do the bio control insects.  

End Trap Plants

Beneficial insects are any insect that performs a valued service like pollination and/or pest control.

End Trap Plants are crops that you plant in your garden to attract certain moths and butterflies. The moths and butterflies lay their eggs on these plants, instead of on the ones you actually like. Once the caterpillars hatch, they take a bite out of the leaves and ultimately then die of toxicity. On Gardening Australia, Jerry Coleby-Williams spoke about an end-trap plant that will help save your cabbages from white moth. He recommended we plant Barbarea vulgaris amongst our cabbages. During the cooler months we have this plant in stock and we usually always have them in our Eden Seeds Packs.

Beneficial Insects

Beneficial insects are any insect that performs a valued service like pollination and/or pest control.

Beneficial insects are any insects that perform a valued service, such as pollination or pest control. We need to plant more plants that flower, so that we can attract these beneficial insects to eat all the pests ones. The beneficial insects are usually attracted to the pollen or nectar on small flowers. Sometimes, we don't even need to plant more plants. For example, just allowing your herbs or lettuce go to flower once in a while is enough to attract beneficial insects to your garden.

We also now stock Eden Seeds' Beneficial Insect Seed Mix. It is a colourful mix of flowers and herbs, annuals and perennials used to attract insects like lace wings, lady bugs, hoverflies, wasps and bees. It is also a fantastic mix that helps promote natural biodiversity in your garden.

Companion planting is more than just planting some marigolds around your vegetables but marigolds are all you have, they are a great place to start!

Gardening is a Discovery! Always remember that just because it worked for Susan doesn’t mean it will work for you. Susan’s soil and micro climate may be entirely different to yours.

I love this pictogram from Avant Garden that shows some great benefits of companion planting

We can't always think 'if we can't eat it, we can't grow it!'

Soft and Delicate Native

Phyllanthus cuscutiflorus or pink phyllanthus

This is a glorious native with the softest most delicate foliage and dainty flowers.

At the moment ours are all in flower and it looks like dainty fairy lights hanging off the stems.

This plant has soft green foliage and pink new growth that has a slight weeping habit. It’s not an exceptionally dense grower but that’s so you can see the little flowers that form like tassels along the stem.

I adore this plant and was very excited to use it as a lose hedge in my last house.

Phyllanthus cuscutiflorus grow into a lovely Christmas tree shape naturally. Mine was near the trampoline and it got trimmed occasionally, this made them really dense and even more fantastic than I originally planned.

These plants can grow to around 3m high and wide. It can grow in full shade to full sun and can handle most soil types. I found it can stress if left for a long time without water (may suffer leaf drop) but it can handle some neglect once it’s established.

It can handle humidity and can handle the cold but it doesn’t like heavy frosts.

As a word of warning and not to scare you off as I think this is a great all round tree. Perfect for hedges or as a small feature tree in your garden. The flowers can have a fairly unpleasant smell at night to attract insects.

One of my favourite native trees.

Coriander actually has a purpose!

WHAT? Coriander actually has a purpose?

Coriander actually has two purposes, making your tastebuds zing, I’m team coriander and attracting beneficial insects to our garden.

Did you know that coriander flowers actually attract things like PARASITIC WASPS. Yes, you do want these wasps in your garden. They are stingless and so small that most of the time we don't even know they are there!

But they utilise caterpillars, beetles, flies, scale and other insects even aphids to house and feed their developing young.

So the bad bugs actually turn into a maternity ward for the good bugs. Which, in theory, decreases the bad bugs you have.

What else can coriander flowers do? Attract hover flies!

Adult Hover flies feed on the nectar as they pollinate flowers. The female lays her eggs near aphid colonies. When the eggs hatch the larvae begin feeding on the aphids. After spending several days eating aphids, the hover fly larvae attach themselves to a stem and build a cocoon. After ten or so days adult emerges and cycle begins again.

Coriander can also help protect potatoes, eggplant and capsicums from Colorado potato beetles.

Planting coriander around tomatoes can not only protect the tomatoes from pests but also improve their flavour.

Just because you can’t eat it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a huge impact in the garden. Start creating a mini eco system in your garden and discover the new beneficial insects!

But how do you successfully grow coriander?

Plant your coriander in cooler months, plant a few plants. You can never have too much coriander !

Use as much coriander as you can in cooler months. It grows really well at this time. Now as the weather heats up all this plant wants to do is bolt and flower. Perfect. This is exactly what you want one plant to do straight away.

Let one plant flower and self seed everywhere. Don’t forget coriander flowers attract good bugs.

Water the area surrounding your self seeded coriander and wait for lots and lots of little baby coriander to appear. There should be lots. So use as needed. Let some grow up big and strong so you can repeat the process and use others while they are small and delicious.

With your other plants that you didn’t let go to flower. Keep trimming the flower stalk out for as long as you can (coriander starts to taste a little funny) at that point your baby coriander should have sprouted and you can let these ones go to seed.

Now coriander hate humidity. So don’t over water your coriander and if you plant your coriander in winter it should be well established by summer not to easily wilt with a little sun.

Most common cause of death is steaming to death. Meaning, we over water them and they boil to death in the ground.

I find coriander grows well in large terracotta pots too. The terracotta helps the soil breathe.

Just remember coriander is annual that just wants to flower and have lots of babies in summer. We can try and slow down nature but we can’t change what a plant intrinsically wants to do. We can try to tame Mother Nature but we will never have full control.

I hope this helps and we can have a long enjoyable coriander season with enough flowers to create a mini eco system.

Honey

We all know bees are crucial for pollination and food production, but there’s another incredible gift they give us: Honey.

I was lucky enough to grow up with grandparents and an uncle who kept beehives. Thanks to them, I learnt early on that bees weren’t something to fear, and that fresh honeycomb is one of life’s greatest gifts.

In fact, it wasn’t until I moved out of home and tried store-bought honey that I was genuinely surprised by what other people HAD to eat. Not only did it taste very different (like terrible), but it never crystallised. Not once.

If you've only ever had supermarket honey (even if it’s labelled ‘organic’), you might think honey is always a golden, runny liquid. But raw, real honey, the kind that comes straight from the hive, does crystallise, harden. And that’s completely normal.

Honey naturally contains two main sugars: glucose and fructose. The ratio of these sugars depends on the flowers the bees have been foraging on. The higher the glucose, the faster the honey will crystallise. Even though honey is low in water (usually under 18%), some of that water separates from the glucose over time. As glucose loses water, it starts to form crystals. Once one crystal forms, more will follow, and soon the whole jar of honey is set hard or crystallised. If there’s pollen, propolis, or wax in the honey, which there always is in raw, real, honey, these particles act as anchors that help crystals grow.

So if your honey goes hard or crystallised, that means you have real honey. If you want to return it to liquid form, just pop the jar in a sunny spot or sit it in warm (not boiling) water.

Why Doesn’t Store-Bought Honey Crystallise?

There are a few reasons. Most commercial honey is blended, meaning it’s mixed from multiple sources, usually from all over the world, usually from unspecified sources. It includes honey from bees feeding on a wide range of flowers, the glucose-to-fructose ratio becomes more balanced, slowing crystallisation. Blending also smooths out seasonal flavour changes, which might be good for consistency, but not for character. The biggest change happens during processing. Store-bought honey is ‘almost’ (always) heat-treated (pasteurised) and ultra-filtered. It’s heated to such high temperatures, usually between 60–70°C, that it dissolves any forming crystals and delays crystallisation.

This process comes at a cost.

Heating honey destroys many (all) of the natural enzymes, antioxidants, and aromatic compounds that give honey its character, complexity, and health benefits. The delicate floral notes disappear. The living goodness, like the antibacterial properties, immune support, and soothing effects, is gone. What’s left is a product that looks the part but lacks the soul.

In all cases, commercial honey is also diluted with glucose syrup or other sugar-based additives to bulk it out, which further reduces crystallisation and alters the taste.

The end result? A smooth, syrupy product that’s stable on the shelf but a far cry from what comes out of a hive.

Taste the Flowers

My grandfather’s honey never tasted the same twice. Each season, the flavour shifted with the flowers. When the tea trees (Leptospermum) were blooming, the honey was dark, bold, and almost medicinal (disgusting). When the ironbarks flowered, it became light, floral, and delicate (delectable).

As with most foods, unprocessed is best. Raw honey not only tastes better, but it also contains more beneficial enzymes, pollen, and antioxidants. Buying local honey from trusted beekeepers supports small producers and helps protect healthy bee populations in your area. So, please stop buying honey from the supermarket.

Now that you know what’s really in most supermarket Sugar Syrups, because let’s be honest, it’s not real honey, don’t pretend it’s the same thing. If it’s been heat-treated, filtered, blended, or cut with glucose syrup, it’s not real honey. It’s just a sweet imitation.

When you buy that kind of product, you’re not supporting beekeepers. You’re supporting a system that values shelf life and profitability over bee health and ultimately our health.

Choose better. Support real honey.

All about Bees

Bees.

Just the word alone, can strike fear into some people. But did you know they are an essential element in the circle of life?

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Albert Einstein

Bees pollinate over a third of the food we eat. Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in the reproduction of plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and reproduction, or in layman’s terms, bees help the flowers turn into food.

Unfortunately, bee populations all over the world are declining, which in turn is affecting the availability of our food.

The three main causes are believed to be Genetically Modified Crops (GMOS), chemical pesticide use and habitat loss.

Without getting into a huge debate on GM crops, it is believed one of the main reasons GM crops are leading to colony collapse is that the flower pollen on GM crops is sterile, thus causing the bees to become undernourished and die.

Bees generally travel as far as they need to get food. It is believed that the highest rate of return is between 6 to 7kms away from their hive. Therefore, if a hive is surrounded by GM crops the hive will die out.

The same goes for pesticides. If pesticides are being sprayed in an area, there is a high possibility that the bees will become infected and die out. Home gardeners should note that toxic pesticides meant to kill the bad bugs in our gardens can actually harm the bees which are so important to our environment and survival. Fortunately, Australia has banned many of these harmful pesticides in home use and luckily for us gardeners, there are alternatives. These alternatives are completely organic and don’t harm bees or any other good bugs, but do harm the bad bugs.

The third reason for decline is loss of habitat. This is brought about by development, abandoned farms, growing crops without leaving habitat for wildlife and growing gardens without flowers, or flowers that are not friendly to pollinators.

The larger honey bee (left) shown with the smaller stingless bee (right) on Citrus. Credit: (c) Tobias Smith

In Australia, we have some amazing native bees. There are over 1700 native bees and about ten species of small black stingless bees. They are only about 4 mm long, compared to 12 to 16mm long of the honey bee. The best thing about Australian native bees is that nearly everyone can have a hive or two in their yard. 

Many years ago, I visited Melbourne and it seemed most of the suburban garden centres had a native bee hive in their centre. It was fantastic.

Why do we want a native bee hive in our yard?

Australian stingless native bees can be excellent pollinators of certain crops in Australia. They are particularly useful for macadamias, mangoes and watermelons. Also, they are not as prone to the colony collapse disorder that has decimated honeybee populations.

If we can increase the amount of Australian stingless native bees, we might be able to help reduce the loss of food production. Additionally, we might be able to assist the pollination chances in our fruit and vegetable patches.

Australian stingless native bees only produce small amounts of honey - less than one litre per year, particularly in warmer parts of Australia. However, it’s worth the effort as this honey (known as Sugarbag) is delicious.

Anyone can get a Native Bee Hive, as they don’t need as much attention as commercial honey bee hives and akin to the commercial honey bees, have an interesting social behaviour. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to only have native flowers- I've seen Australian stingless native bees in a buzzing in a frenzy over camellia blooms. Furthermore, it’s worth knowing that increasing the number of Australian stingless native bees will NOT lead to a reduction in Honey bee population. The two can work in harmony.

If you’d like a hive go to the Australian Native Bee Association or Aussie Bee and see if there is a reseller near you. The ANBA promotes the conservation and sustainable use of all Australian native bees.

Do I have bees?

Take a walk around your garden early in the morning. Do you see any bees, native or European? What are they feeding on? I bet it’s not your beetroot leaves or agave leaves! 

Growing your own vegetables is a brilliant idea, but don’t forget to mix it up and include some flowers in your edible garden! If you are completely against flowering plants, get some fruit trees, or let some of your vegetables go to flower or plant vegetables that flower, like pumpkin.

We all need to do our bit to keep the bees happy!