Episode: 8
Title: Carmelo’s Garden
Broadcast: Sunday Jan 1 2016
Presenter: Steve Wood

Gardening in WA’s poor sandy soils can be challenging to say the least but Steve shows us a garden that not only survives but thrives in what was originally very difficult conditions.

• This stunning garden is a passionate result of Carmelo Arto, CEO of The Breast Cancer Research Centre of WA. Steve discusses the projects taken over by the Research Centre and what they’ve done to support awareness.

• This garden is situated on the Perth sand plane but it feels like a tropical environment. This means some serious work has gone into enriching the soil.

• The philosophy of the garden is “if you can’t eat it, don’t plant it”. So it’s quite fruit tree intensive, the soil is built up with organics and clays, he has two worm farms, a composting bin, chooks out the back (readily available fertiliser), slow release fertiliser, seaweed solution, trace elements if required and mulched heavily once a year and topped up if required.

• One of the best ways of growing salad greens is in an aquaponics system and today we take a look at Carmelo’s system. A fantastic way to make the most of one of the worlds most valuable resources: water.

• The overall water use in this garden is significantly less than the average home because of the bore water, heavy mulching and a lot of the reticulation is below ground, which means minimal evaporation and water use.

The Garden Gurus
W: www.yourlifestyle.tv