Lily Rose tends to the Veggie Garden

Upside Down Tomato and hanging strawberries

Quick update on the upside down tomatoes. You'll recall that the UDT eventually rotted at the base and dropped dead.

Well - you'll be happy to know that it actually lives on - the roots from the UDT had travelled all the way to the other side of the bucket from which a new plant developed - it seems the tomato has some sort of fear of hanging upside down - this same plant has now started developing fruit and continues growing right way up

But my determination didn't end there and another plant that had started developing quite nicely was flipped on its head - interestingly, the overall quality of the plant deteriorated - the leaves thinned and have gone yellowish but still flowers grew and fruits have started - see bottom left. Still this plant strives to grow right way up and the stems have all bent upward. - In short, seems Upside Down Tomato is not a great success for me - will try again next year but using tiny tom (cherry) tomatoes instead

Something that has taken well to be hung - but not upside down - is my strawberries - the yield is still quite low (only 1 strawberry every 2 or 3 days) but Lily enjoys the wait and gulps them down in a single bite - YUM! - I'm expecting the yield will increase next year after the plants are more established but I do still have a good stock in a Styrofoam tub which I'll use to make up some more hangers - lots of berries next year!

Zucchini

Again, reviewing my garden calendar, the veggie garden out the front was planted 25th September - this is only 2 months ago

Already veggies are just about ready for harvesting - first up is the zucchini. Lisa wanted to know when the zucchini was ready to pick - for those of us in the know, please don't sneer at my wife's naive-ness - Zucchini can be picked as soon as it is a size that you'd like to eat it at - generally this is about 15 to 20 centimeters. The longer you leave it, the bigger it gets - the bigger it gets, the tougher, but they're still very edible

A problem I've been having with these zucchinis is that shortly after a "fruit" starts to develop, the ends turn yellow and brown, eventually shrivelling up and dropping off. Some casual observation sees that there are no bees in my garden and hence the problem.... no pollination.

Zucchinis will grow male and female flowers. They're easy to tell apart since the female flower will have the actual fruit under it, whereas the male just has a thin stem. Taking matters into your own hands, pick the male flower and peel the petals off to reveal the middle bit (pistol) - dab this around in the similar area of the female's flower (stigma) and you've now hand pollinated your zucchini and put a bee out of a job.

Incidentally, there is a world wide bee shortage which is severally impacting the farming world - to the extent that many commercial farms are having to build their own bee colonies or hand pollinate! Many blame this shortage on genetically modified (GM) crops whose time of introduction is coincidentally aligned to the start of the bee population decline

Anyway - here's the zucchini that was lucky enough to be picked first

Beetroot!

Reviewing my calendar, I'd planted some silverbeet from seed back on 22nd June 2008 (6 months ago). This week I've harvested some of this crop - however it is actually beetroot - not silverbeet

This is what you get for buying cheap seeds from Go Lo!

Anyway, the beetroot is massive! Note the size of the peg on the bottom left and no! Its not some magical miniature peg....

BTW - what can you do with beetroot? After some research on the net they can be boiled, pickled, eaten raw in salad or baked

I pickled mine and they taste great - not many steps involved - boil the beetroot till soft (mine took over an hour and the house took on a very earthy smell!) - make a mix of vinegar, water, sugar, cloves, bay leaves, Cinnamon - slice the beetroot and chuck in the mix and voila! you have pickled beetroot

more detail here - http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Pickled-Beetroot-L257.html

And not to forget - Buddy was amazed by the size of the beetroot too but kept calling them beet-woofs!

Mary Mary Quite Contrary...

Well!... 

The garden's growing - its growing well. MOST of everything has taken well, however 1 tomato plant and a few corn stalks had a not so good start to life because I started mulching with the gumnut tree leaf litter which apparently doesn't agree.

So i bit the bullet, opened the wallet and bought some sugar cane mulch. Incidentally, Sugar Cane Mulch is a by-product of the sugar cane industry. It is the thrash that grows on the cane which is generally burnt off. It is a very soft and rather sweet smelling mulch that composts quite quickly. It is also reasonably expensive....

I have a mate who grows sugar cane in Queensland, so it seemed reasonable that I ask him for some sugar cane mulch. He had no issues in me taking some - really as much as I want in fact....  The issue is transport and hence the reason most QLD farmers simply burn it off and also the reason that I won't take him up on his offer... 

Anyway....

The tomatoes are above knee height now and some are starting to flower and even develop some very small fruits. At the advise of my dad (a seasoned tomato grower!) I've dusted them with veggie dust to prevent grubs getting in the tomatoes from the very onset

The zucchinis are flowering and actually have a few very small fruits developing. I'd expect these will be ready over the next week!

The corn is about waist height and mostly looking thick green and luscious - maybe we'll see some corn at Christmas??!!

Only 1 pumpkin plant survived the snails. This is growing well and looks nearly ready to start flowering too - YUM! I've actually tried planting some more seed, but no more want to take.

Here are some pictures for you - the last one is a picture of my strawberries.  A very lovely and wise lady from Canberra suggested I hang them to prevent the snails/grubs eating my fruits - so i did, and it's worked a treat!

Upside Down Tomato Plant Has Gone Belly Up!

Well, the upside down tomato plant apparently had a single but lethal flaw. Where the base of the plant is sitting against the soil, it seems to have gotten soft and  possibly some rot due to always being damp (this is afterall where the water comes out too!)

Anyway, in the recent winds, the combination of the soft stem, coupled with the continual swaying back and forth at that same pivot point led to the stem eventually being severed. The result was a very sad and limp looking plant that was/is being held by little more than a thread.

Not to be discouraged, the next plan of action here is to give the other 2 plants growing in tubs the right way up a few more weeks to develop and turn them upside down

But for now, the UDTP has gone belly up!

An upside down tomato

Why would anyone grow a tomato upside down? 

This is a question I keep getting asked after recently boasting my latest endevour to turn tomato growing on its head. 

The first answer is simple - It's different. 

Couple this with the expectation of a crop that is more resistant to soil-born disease, fungal diseases due to increased air circulation, pests such as snails,, slugs and dogs and then there's no need to stake the tomato plant. The question probably should be why would YOU grow a tomato any other way BUT upsidedown?

So here's the first picture of my UDT - I'm as curious about its progress as I'm sure you are, so I'll keep updates coming. 

Wish me luck!

Another Veggie Garden

I've learnt the Bunnings is not the best place for buying seedlings. For some reason they feel that $3 for a single seedling is acceptable. I was after some tomato seedlings due to leaving my run to grow from seed too late. After much digging, I found a punnet with about half a dozen tomatoes in it. Some for the garden and some to try upside down tomatoes! I decided to go seeds for the remainder of my crop...









So back at home, it was time to give the front garden another turn and weed. The soil is nice, dark and rich so fingers crossed that it's good for the veggies this year.









I've planted about 4 tomatoes plants (went for grosse lisse this year as the Roma were duds last year!), 2 rows of corn, some zucchini and some golden nugget pumpkins the latter of which are a small individual serve pumpkin about the size of a large fist. I've grown these before with much success in both growing and eating!









This picture below is the first of the garden - look closely to the left and you can see the itty tomatoes -

The back garden continues to grow but the problem with broccoli flowering early continues to frustrate. This is most likely due to irregular watering or overcrowding, both very likely in my back garden! - I've started watering regularly and will hope for the best, but I think their season is over. After some recent rain, Another row of broccoli has emerged from previous seed plantings. These have been thinned out and will hopefully give me another chance at broccoli this year!

The silverbeet that was planted some time back has turned out to be beetroot - the first of which is just about ready to harvest- i guess theirs a lesson to be learnt here about buying cheap seeds from Go Lo! The lettuce continue to amaze. It does seem to be a breeding ground for slugs, but interestingly they are doing no damage. I'm yet to see any full grown slugs, but if they turn out to be leopard slugs, then this is good as they eat snails! Other slugs as are bad as the snails though but control will be difficult given the dogs in the same yard

Anyway, Will finish up here with a picture of Buddy and Scruff enjoying the recently weeded and sprayed lawn out the back - it is coming back nice and green and I've decided that is very likely due to the beer tonic that I'd put on it a month or two back (beer, seasol and fabric softner)

Spring!

So, we're 3 weeks into spring and not a single posting has happened - what sort of a farmer am I?

Well, its not that I've been doing NOTHING in the garden, just not much - the recent arrival of twin babies seems an appropriate excuse for that...

So lets see..

Remember the Anniversary Orange Tree? Well, I've finally got it in the ground. After hours of digging through rocks in the first chosen location, I gave up and decided to chop down the ugly shrub out the back and replace it with the orange tree. The piccie below shows the action. On the far left, you can see the remainder of the truck of the ugly shrub and on the right is its carcass. The was all eventually run through the mulcher.

You can also see the baby orange tree with a wire cage around it to keep it safe from the dogs. It may be a little close to the house, but hopefully this will be someone else's problem in a few years when we move out to a larger house!

The vegie garden out the front has been turned over and is resting before I get some summer crops started. I'm running out of time very quickly to get these going and may need to get some seedlings rather than wait for seeds to grow

The back vegie garden continues to grow. The broccoli is nearly waist height but seems to flower too quickly and the heads that form are nice and tightly packed - I'll need to do some homework on why this is!

The lettuce just doesn't stop growing and provides a constant supply for salads that are now being made as the weather warms up

I spent the other day in the front yard cutting grass and picking weeds. There was apparently about 3 or 4 different types of weed in the lawn, bindii, some sort of weed with burs and some other junk - all was painstakingly pulled by hand as I'm pretty sure the bindii sprays kill this lawn

Oh yeah, and I've also pruned all the roses including the standards out the back. These are all now getting new growth and so far looking quite healthy.

Other plants that are now flowering include the orange pigface (I'll have to thin these out soon!), the azaleas (white and maroon) the large shrub on the corner out the front (need to get a name for this!) and some other bulb plants out the front (jonquils??)

Well that's about it for the minute - Will aim to keep posts a bit more regular as some more routine starts coming back to our lives and as I get more time for the gardens

Seeya!

Broccoli!

The broccoli planted a few months back is starting to get itty bitty heads - the one shown below is about the size of a 50cent coin

So far, the bugs are leaving these alone - the bugs being slugs, snails, dogs, caterpillars and so on - I've been using some Yates Vegetable Dusting Powder to keep pests away, but tend to think its more the cold that these pests don't like




The picture below shows the broccoli across the back and the lettuce across the front - these lettuce grow very well in winter, but it seems that noone has an appetite for lettuce at this time!

I've been trying to get some other seeds started as you can see from my calender - but the only seedlings that are taking are the silverbeet - There's now a plant about 40 cm tall and another 4 or 5 seedlings on their way.

I turned over all the soil last weekend as it had packed down very firm - Guess I need to get some more sand and organic matter into the soil to help with this! I then planted some more broccoli and lettuce - seems that at this time of year, should stick to what works! The lettuce even doubles as an edible garden border!

Finally, I was going to do some work to the little garden out the front which I've not touched since the failed roma tomatoes (I'll never grow these again!!) - oops I mean "Lisa's" garden"... I was very surprised to see that the beetroot and silverbeet are taking again - may need to give the garden a little more time to establish itself

Anyway, that's about news from the patch for the moment outside of mentioning that I'm getting the odd pigface flower blooming out the front - spring on the way???

Happenings...

I've finally planted a pineapple. It's meant to be simple and yet I've never tried it until now. They say you simply chop the top of your pineapple, leave it for a day or so to dry and then plant it - will keep you all updated on it's welfare as time goes by!

I also planted some Photinia cuttings at the end of last May. For those who don't know, this is a large and quite common hedging plant. It flushed with new and bright red growth making for a stunning display. I got my cuttings from Gloria Jeans near work and had dipped them in honey and baby formula before putting into pots covered with some 2 litre bottles to keep them toasty and warm and without too much water loss. A month on and they seem to be all growing well with some even developing side shoots! Will need to get some more cuttings on my next visit for coffee.

Farmer Brown has a cold. It couldn't be a co-incidence that Lemon trees bear fruit in the cold and flu season. More of that scrummy Lemonade coming up!

Questions? - Ask Farmer Brown

This post will be used to answer your questions - so please ask your questions as comments and feel free to comment on other people's questions and asnwers too!

FB

---

Long Awaited Updates!

OK OK... so I've been slack - after all, it is winter though.





The vegie garden under the roses is growing well - well at least the half that has not been attacked by a pair of apparent vegetarian dogs!

Of the first lot of seed planted, the lettuce is nearly ready to start picking but the broccolli probably needs another few weeks yet. Only 1 silverbeet has taken. The peas that were grwoing have been eaten

Of the second lot of seeds, nothing took - trampling and digging by dogs appears to have taken it's toll!

So last weekend, another round of seed planting has taken place. Some iceberg lettuce across the front left, some butter beans on the left back and some more silverbeet across the center.

Worth noting also that the zygocactus is in full bloom but most other plants are starting to slow down due to winter - even the lawn is ony needing a light trim every few weeks

Vegie Garden Growing

The vegie garden is growing well under the roses as shown on the picture taken last weekend. Across the front is the lettuce which is now nearly double this size and across the back is the broccoli. These will need thinning as their meant to be about 50 to 60cm apart!
The roses are benefitting from this too ,probably becasue they get watered and fed more often now. The bed on the left hand side where the peas are is starting to repel water. Not sure why and will need to do some investigation. It's almost as if the top is covered with oil!
Any ideas, pelase let me know!

Lemon Tree and Lemonade!

The Lemon Tree is in full fruit. I harvested about a quarter of the fruit a few weeks back which filled a 10 litre bucket. So what do you do with this many lemons?
Well half of these have gone to people at work - the other half have made a delicious Lemonade Drink - well actually about 5 big lemonade drinks!

Interested in making fresh lemonade? here's the recipe i use which is a refreshing and tasty treat - best of all, serve it hot or cold!

You need about a cup of lemon juice - this is about 4 to 5 largish lemons.
A cup of sugar (yes i know it's alot but use less is you add honey)
Some honey if desired
about 2 litres of water

Squish out the lemon juice - easiest way is to put them all in the microwave for about a minute, chop them in half and squish and squeeze with your hands and fingers - you get twice as much juice this way then using one of those useless hand orange juicers! Don't worry about the pulp or seeds - trust me here!
After you've squished about a cup (a tad more is better than a tad less) run it through a colander. Some light bits of pulp getting through won't kill you, but not too much - set this juice aside

To a pot, add about a cup of water and a cup of sugar. Some added honey is really topping on the ice cream, but my wife didn't like it, so don't be afraid to try half and half. If adding honey, reduce the sugar by probably about equal amounts and don't add the honey until last. I personally wouldn't put more than 2 or 3 tablespoons of honey though
So... heat the water and sugar mix while stirring (the sugar will stick pretty bad to the pot otherwise). keep stirring until the sugar dissolves. The water will suddenly turn from cloudy to clear when this happens. nows the time to add the honey, stir a bit more and you're done

Finally pour the strained juice, sugar water into a jug and bring upto 2 litres with plain old water

Serve at any temperature, hot, icy cold or anywhere in between.

The Anniversary Orange Tree

My loving wife has bought me a Washington Orange Tree for the garden as a present for our first anniversary. Now some may say there's some symbolism involved in planting a tree, especially one that is a 1 year old fruit tree that's given to mark the first anniversary of a happy, happy marriage that has already bared 1 happy, happy baby. Some may question whether there's hidden meanings in such a token gift, especially given the tree does already have one single fruit already on it!

Well... not me! Can't see ANY symbolism here.... not a single reference to little family......

The tag says these trees can grow to 8 to 10 meters. Now that's a preeeety big big tree! Guess there'll be a fair few oranges produced....
- but that's only AFTER getting it in the ground!


So... on a small block, where do you put a tree of this splendour? Note the daisy bush shown below in the back left corner - won't be too hard to move the daisy bush, dig a hole and shove the tree there... right? - Note the little orange tree sitting expectantly at the front right of the daisy bush below - look close enough and you'll see the little orange. Putting this little, growing tree here means it's close enough to the mature lemon tree to the right, but has enough room to grow and become it's own tree
















Yup! just dig a hole and take out that old daisy bush - roots and all....

















Now, if you've ever dug a hole and hit a rock, you'll empathise with me here. Buried under the daisy shrub is not just a rock or two but a whole rock garden! and not just rocks, bricks, rusty tin, broken roof tile and fibro remains. The picture below was taken after about an hour of rock harvesting. After 4 hours or so, the pile had tripled in size but the hole for the tree would possibly bury my feet and not much more - expect that this will take a few more weekends yet - and so..... the Mighty Washington Orange Tree remains in its pot at this time

Change is on the horizon

Preparing to add a new post and found a strong urge to provide better visibility of WHEN things are happening in my patch of dirt - I've got pictures and things, but the overall WHAT'S and WHEN'S is sometimes a bit hard to piece together! -
So I've added a Garden Calendar at the bottom of this page - its a work in progress, but the aim is to be able to click back and see what has happened and when - this way, I can quickly find out how old my plants are and what I've done when - this should help with the learning process!

anyway... enough about this sort of stuff - better get an update done before it gets too late!

Happy Mothers Day

Hi Mum !

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

Vegie Seedlings

They get a drink every morning and it shows, the seeds that were planted direct into the rose garden are taking well

Seems that nearly all of the lettuce have started growing now - shown below is the biggest. I've got some iceberg lettuce seeds too now so I'll need to find space for these and get them started

The peas are all lined up in a row - so many infact that they'll need thinning out over the next few weeks - Don't want to do this too early though as I'm sure to lose a few between now and then

The broccolli are the tallest of all the seeds planted and by far doing the best of the lot. There's about 20 or more plants all about 1 to 2 inches high - Will definately need some thinning - question will be, where to transplant the thinned plants to???

The silverbeet cannot boast the same growth as the seedlings above. I've been checking every morning, but so far, just weeds. There MIGHT be one plant that looks a little different to the others... Time will tell...

The seedlings planted out the front last weekend have not shown yet. The delphenium is a known slow starter and can take 4 to 5 weeks to emerge. but the shallots???? hmmm..... keep watering and waiting

Below are a few flowery pics taken this morning. BTW, click on the pictures to see larger ones!....

Autumn Chores

Another busy Autumn Sunday in the garden. After the usual "Buddy run" in preparation for mowing the lawn, Lisa and Lily decided it would be fun to grab a picnic blanket and have morning tea out the front. It seemed pointless trying to cut the grass around them so I deiced to weed the garden out the front.
The soil is a nice dark and rich colour - it looked so good I couldn't resist sowing a few seeds in it. This is the garden outside the lounge room window by the way.
I planted some Giant Delphinium (http://www.yates.com.au/GardenCalendar/July_06/XSeedofMonthJul06.asp) seeds and also a few shallot seeds - after all what's the point of having a garden if you can't eat it!
Anyway - finished cutting the grass and then decided it was time to take action against the growing levels of black spot on the roses. I used a concentrate spray called Rose Shield and while mixing it noticed it also controlled rust on oranamentals - Remembering that the leaves on the azaleas out the front were a rusty, bronzy colour, I decided to give them a going over too - OK so I'm not entirely an organic farmer!
All in all, it was nice day that was quite productive - sitting here typing this and feeling a slight tinge of sunburn

New babies!

The vegie seeds planted about 2 weeks back are starting to come up. You may recall that these were planted directly into the soil. There was quite a bit of rain that week , some of which was very heavy, so I was worried they'd rot and not work.

They've had a fair bit to battle through in their short lives! - rain for their first week, drought for their second week and and few attacks from Buddy thrown in there too who must be feeling neglected while the back door is kept closed to keep the warm in the house

But through this adversity, some seedlings have emerged!


It's a bit blurry - but here a 3 peas in a row There's about 10 seedlings in total coming through















A tiny bunch of lettuce coming through, not iceberg but the loose leafy type simply called Red & Green Salad - this area of the garden was hit hardest by Buddy's attack, there are about 3 or 4 of these little clusters coming through - I'll give it 2 or 3 more weeks and start re-sowing the patches to keep a constant suppy when they grow















The brocolli starts emerging too - this is very sporadic in how its coming up, I'd planted the sedd in a line but probably only about 30% has started growing so far totalling about 3 or 4 plants, maybe some were put in too deep?? This is an Italian Sprouting variety according to the packet

Some pictures...

Some misc pictures taken from around the house



Here is one of the plants that Lisa has flagged to have removed. What started as a roughly trimmed hedge about 1.5 meters high as grown to as high as the house. It is pretty ugly and covered on thorns and should make a nice addition to my mulcher






















a pot full of bromeliad that one of my lovely sisters gave me a year or 2 back - it continues to thrive and has been divided into 2 other pots that are about half this size















Some plant that I was given as a bulb. It always had 1 leaf but during the recent rain, the pot (which has no hole in it) filled with water. appears that this plant likes water!














My agave garden out the back. These were taken from "pups" from mum and dads about 2 or so years ago - look closely at the base of the plant and you'll see more pups growing
















My rose garden - it was full of blooms only 2 or 3 weeks ago but the cold has moved in pretty quick. I've planted a new vegie garden under it from seed - peas across the fence on the left, broccoli across the fence on the right, silver beat to the left of the path and lettuce acorss the front right - wish me luck!
















Some fuscha cuttings taken from Sandra's plant took 6 cuttings in total and gave her 2. Note the little flower bud on the top right
















Some butter beans (cherokee wax) growing in a styrofoam container - Note the snail munching on the right. I need to get some sawdust as they apparently hate this
















The nursery... Strawberries on the right - these are about 3 months old and taken from runners. Abelia shrub on the right taken from cuttings about 4 to 5 months ago
















One of the lilys about to come out in flower

Starting the vegie patch and catchup

So, the tomato garden out the front has not been too successful - it is still growing, maybe a bit late in the year for them but the tomatoes are small, still green and not really going that well at all....
So its time to take action - it'll be coming out soon - interesting to note thought that the plants that have not been staked are growing and fruiting twice as well as those that are staked.
In any case, I'll thing twice before trying Roma tomato's - will stick to the Grosse Lisse (sp??)

Last weekend I planted some seed straight into the rose garden - there are currently 4 standard roses. Being standard, there is plenty of room under them for vegies
Planted some peas, silverbeet, broccoli, lettuce and probably some other stuff I've forgotten about now

The broccoli should be fun cos I've never seen it growing and am not sure how big it will get!
As it turns out, lettuce is an all year growing veggie, not just summer - time will tell!

In the patio garden (OK so the pot garden out the back that is away from Buddy's evil little paws), the bromliads are growing like crazy and were separated about a month ago. The lily's are coming out in bright red flowers and in that same garden is a large daisy shrub which is really taking off now too - I'll have to move that elsewhere soon!
The box hedge cuttings that were planted a few months back now appears to be losing some of their green, I hope their not dieing! there's about 10 or so of these and its very hard to tell if they're growing due to how SLOW they grow
I'd also taken some fuchsia cuttings and palogonium cuttings from mum and dad's about a 3 weeks back - these appears to be taking well too with the fuchsias already getting a few flower buds!
Got a styrofoam box with more beans starting to come up there too and have found a name for the hedge plant near the front door with the jasmine looking flowers - it is an Abelia http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1866596.htm
I'd taken cuttings from this about 3 months ago and they've grown about 10 times in size already and every single one went into full flowering about a month ago - taking cuttings from these was pretty straight forward, just snipped about 4 inches from the new growth shoots as they start to firm up a little - I stuck these into a mix of potting mix and peat

It has been raining now for the past few weeks, more on then off, so there's plenty of water and plenty of sunshine between that too - should be good weather for getting things going.

It is mid autumn, the little purple flowers out the front are all out (I'll get a name for these one day!) the carnations are starting to flower, the roses are starting to drop their leaves, but are still blooming.

The lawns are turning quit brown and I believe this is due to lawn grub eating the roots. I sprayed these little suckers last spring, but it turns out that it is pointless doing this then as they are too large and resilient - will need to spray again in in a few months, probably about when its time to spray for bindii. The other option I want to try is using a hessian sack. When dampened and left to sit over night, the grubs come to the top, when the sack is removed, the birds come for a good munch

I also did a bit of pruning/tidy about a month back. Buddy's daisy bush and the crab apple tree got a bit of a going over, it was fun to use the mulcher, but quickly realised that I need more woody plants/trees/shrubs so I can do more mulching!

That's probably about it for now - quite likely my posts won't normally be this long, but there was some catching up to do - I'll try and dig up a few piccies to add in future too


Seeya!