Even if you're not a full-time 'nomad', growing your own herbs, spices & possibly some veggies not only adds a bit of convenience to your travels or lifestyle generally but can also help make your 'home on wheels' feel more like home.

Brian caught up with Garden & Sustainability guru Adam Woodhams to find out how we might be able to grow a few of the basics as we travel this great country of ours.

 And yes - we bought the Aldi Special Price herb garden recently - will give you an update soon :-)

Check out Adam's website here: http://www.adamwoodhams.com.au/

Prefer to read? Check out the transcript below

 

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Read more about Adam Woodhams
Home & garden lifestyle, DIY, horticultural & sustainability info, news & more from multi-award winning multimedia journalist Adam Woodhams.

Life-long gardener, horticulturist by trade and communicator by profession Adam is passionate about taking the message on garden & home lifestyle, sustainability and achievable DIY to the broadest audience.

Based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, Adam is a specialist freelance multi-media communicator working as magazine editor, photojournalist, TV & video presenter, video producer, radio show host, public speaker and consultant.

You may have seen Adam on The Garden Guru’s TV Show, his YouTube channel or heard him across many radio shows and networks. If you’ve read a home lifestyle magazine in Australia or New Zealand in the last 15-years then chances are you've seen his editorial and photographic work in quality magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens, Handyman, Your Garden, Gardening Australia, New Idea, Burke's Backyard and more.

Adam's ever-growing collection of garden, landscape & DIY videos on his YouTube channel have racked-up well over 2-million views from users around the globe. www.youtube.com/user/AGardenersClippings 

Adam has studied across a wide range of disciplines including Horticulture, Sustainability, Landscape, Landscape Engineering and Media & Communications.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Brian:
Now even if you're not a full-time nomad growing your own herbs spices and possibly some veggies not only adds a bit of convenience to your travels or lifestyle generally but it can also help make your home on wheels feel a little bit more like home.

We managed to catch up with garden and sustainability guru Adam Woodhams to find out how we might be able to grow a few of the basics as we travel this great country of ours.

Adam let's talk about gardening now for Food Wine Pets Travel… we're trying to talk to people perhaps who are traveling or maybe who are setting up in a small environment, you know the so-called micro homes small homes and tiny houses and whatever.

As Kaye and I are now travelling in a caravan full-time, she wants to grow some herbs and spices. Any ideas there any secrets you could share?

Adam:
I know some people do but is it difficult you know the funny thing is you kind of almost have to treat them like pets when you're travelling!

The fact is that the vast majority of herbs and even many of the vegetables do take well growing in pots so straight away you've got a plus there, so it's in many respects not different to gardening on a balcony or in a courtyard.

The difference is that you’re going to have to pack them up every now and then and move with them so most of the herbs & most of the veggies as I said can handle all this sort of stuff but you do need to apply the same sort of rules that you would if you were gardening on balconies.

So a quality potting mix,  good pots etc is important but the difference is you're going to have to start looking at things like making sure that instead of selecting a tall pot and terracotta pot and that sort of thing you're going to want to start looking at the lightweight pots instead.

And if you've got bigger veggies and things, you’ll want to use the lightweight composite type pots but you also want to start looking at things that are a bit more squat because if you're going to load all this stuff that you've got outside in the annex when you when you're set up for a week or so and then you're going to load it in the van before you take off you don't want something that's top heavy that's going to tip over!

But you're better off sticking with low troughs and low tubs and those sort of things that have a lower center of gravity so they're not going to move around.

 Now a lot of herbs and veggies can grow with pretty condensed roots so you don't have to worry too much about getting them into a bigger pot then an even bigger pot… the thing is they'll just get thirstier and hungrier you know, so they can tolerate being a bit root bound and bear in mind too most veggies and most herbs are actually annual plants so realistically they're only going to be suitable in in those pots for three months four months five months depending on the on the circumstances and the plant so once they've grown and you pick them - things like rosemary, chives you know… they can keep going for a long time.

Things like mint & oregano they're more perennial type herbs, but a lot of the other the fussier ones like basil and coriander and stuff like that, they're short-term growth so you don't have to worry too much about pot size.

But as I said it might mean that they're going to get thirstier and hungrier so you need to be thinking about liquid feeding them or keeping them fed well with a granular fertilizer.

The real trick is going to be the vast majority of herbs and veggies like a lot of sun, so if you're going to stick them inside the van while you're on the road for two days you need to make sure when you get to the other end that you can put them in a spot where they are still going to get a lot of sun.

Of course sometimes that might mean because of the way you set the van up and you've got your annex out and all that sort of thing, you might actually have to commit yourself to going okay…I 'm going to have to put them on this side in the morning and I'll just need to move them around in the afternoon around the corner to get more sun!

Brian
Hey!... it just gave me an idea there, because on the back of our caravan we've got a new age OZ Classic 20 footer and there were two spare tyres the previous owners took out one of the tyres I think for a weight reasons do you think we could build a transparent greenhouse as it were ?

Adam:
Oh absolutely you could! … you could drive along and it's not going to get blown around because the lid's closed yeah yeah.

Of course you would want to be aware of the fact that they could potentially get sunburned in a situation like that but you could build yourself a transport box effectively where they can they can be living in that for a while as you're moving around.

Of course just as there are restrictions of certain animals you can take into certain states it's same applies to plants.

There are some pretty hefty fines for doing the wrong there not to forget the dangers of infecting local produce so best to check out the various local state government websites and you'll find there is good information about that sort of thing.

Anyway the bottom line is if you want to make sure that you're going to get the best out of all these plants that you're moving around with only ever buy a premium top shelf potting mix don't buy this cheap rubbish you spend the money on a good bag of potting mix and use quality controlled release fertilizers like like Osmocote that are going to last for you know six or nine months because that means you basically don't have to worry about re-feeding all the time and stuff like that all you do is then just give them an occasional liquid feed or a sea salt or something like that

Brian:
So is that a sponsor of yours?

Adam:
No no ! (laughs) .. I would have given you a disclaimer!!

Brian:
Thanks for joining us Adam… if you want to see more from this ‘garden guru’ just go to his website http://www.adamwoodhams.com.au/