Algae in the fish tank

having to change the water in my tank weekly or fortnightly, the old water is being used as a fertiliser on my plants out the front - lets see if this is any good...

here's the algae I'm trying to get rid of - any fish experts around?

Myrtle - The Crepe Myrtle

You may remember that back on Australia Day, I'd planted Myrtle (http://fbpod.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-arrival.html)

I was a bit worried about Myrtle over the winter months as her leaves dropped and a bare skeleton remained. Did I plant her too late, was she established enough to make it through her first winter alone? Looking around the neighbourhood, I could see her cousins all coming into flower - but not Myrtle

and then! leaves! She's making a beautiful comeback and is looking very healthy

The Veggie Garden

The sun did not shine

It was too wet to play

so I sat and I gardened

on that cold cold wet day

Have planted some more seeds and seedlings today into the garden - it was lightly raining and plants told me they were happy

This year I've planted

• Tomatos seedlings


• Capsicum seedlings (most in the veggie garden but a few in the big pot out the front)


• Eggplant seedlings


• Some more lettuce seeds - I seem to have a lot of success with these straight from seed and being all year, I keep adding more seeds every month or two There's lettuce coming up now that we're eating and some more coming up that are about 4 or so weeks old


• Some zuchinni - Couldn't fit these into the veggie garden, so I've put them inthe the garden under the bedroom window - will have to remember to give them water now though!


• Some more leek seeds - there were some already growing and about 10cm tall, but a very keen pair of gardeners kindly went out and weeded for me the other day - I found the remaining about half a dozen plants and transplanted to a safer area


• Was also going to plant some carrot seeds but ran out of time

Lawn Corer

The lawn out the back and in spots out the front is looking pretty daggy - A few weeks back I'd had to spray for bindiis - (last year I'd handpicked them, but this seems to have made them come back with force this year!) so this, coupled with the constant dog trampling and also unloading pavers on a muddy, muddy day have caused it to be very compacted.

Put all this together and you get a pretty crappy looking lawn

So... I've bought a lawn corer - What's a lawn coring? It's a way of aerating the lawn by pulling up "plugs" of compacted dirt. This leaves lots of holes about as thick as your thumb but after a bit, the soil in the area can expand and hence allows more air into the soil and to the roots of the lawn
I was looking at hiring a big motorised one and also thought about welding some bits of pipe to some old wheel rims and driving around the yard. Lisa wouldn't let me do the latter and the former was still quite pricey - so I bought a hand or foot powered one from bunnings for about $50
So after a day of using this thing, my leg is very sore and the yard is quite holey. I've tackled this fro ma few angles too - Coring is only the first step
I've also thatched (used the metal rake to get rid of the dead under growth) and cut the lawn a bit lower than I'd normally have done (more so to try and pickup the remaining loose thatch)
The future step will eventually be to start adding soil a few centimeters at a time to try and build back the top soil. I'd noticed in areas while coring that the top soil is only a few cm deep. I've bought some lawn seed from Bunnings and will try and sprinkle across some barer patches and rope this off from the dogs for a while - oh and also a bag of lawn fertiliser


lets hope it works!

Autumn

OK - so it shows how long since the last update when the title is the season "Autumn" but I've been busy in the garden and lazy on the puter...
Well actually Lily and I have been busy in the garden... Lily now comes out every morning and diligently waters all the plants and feeds the animals - I'd like to say that she's enthralled by the sight of emerging seedlings and seeing her efforts result in beautiful flowers and food on the table - but really she's quite happy just to be making a mess with the water in the mornings and yelling "go get it!" to the dogs with a gleeful chuckle after she pours their kibble into the feed bowls - She does enjoy giving the flowers a good 'ol sniff though

The front veggie garden has been dug up and and had some compost and blood and bone turned into it - the compost is from the grass clippings and leaf litter that has been getting put across the back of the garden to keep the grass off the fence and to act as a bit of a path. Apparently, as this sort of mulch decomposes (well actually when wood chips decompose...), it draws nitrogen from the soil , hence adding blood and bone replaces this and keeps things happily balanced - that's the theory!

Anyway, out the front, Lily and I have planted lots of winter veggie seeds - this was done about 2 weeks ago - say 10/5 (I'll update my calendar) - veggies in the ground from memory are lettuce, silverbeet, broccoli, cabbage and possibly some other similarly boring winter veggies - yes, the guarding part is fun, but the range of winter veggies falls very short of the exciting and flavoursome summer crops!

Out the back and under the roses, the butternut pumpkin continues its battle - seemed we'd only get 1 pumpkin of this as the vine isn't agreeing to well to the colder weather, but some rain a few weeks back saw a flush of female flowers, and with a bit of help from father farmer brown nature, 2 more pumpkins now seem to be taking quite well - fingers crossed!

The roses have had their time in the sun - The standards have all had reasonable prunings and are no slowing down - Yes, it is a bit early as they should be pruned after the last frost but they were in desperate need of some taming, especially the strong one which had branches about 3 times as long as the main stem!

Some action in the garden though! Some nasturtiums that were kindly given by Sandra have been planted under the crab apple trees - these appear to be taking well and already have 4 flowers! Also starting to flower are the zygo-cactus which are all budded up and ready to bloom - will post some photos soon once these are all up and going!

Another winter chore yet to be done is spraying of the lawn - Seems to be alot of garbage growing through this year- much too much for dealing with by hand as was done last year with good results - seems the lack of spray last year has given the dormant weed and seed a chance to grow- oh well, at least its green!

So anyway - that's about it for the moment - next post will have some exciting pictures - I promise!

What's been happening?!

OK.... so the blog hasn't been updated for some time now - I've been slack and the garden has been dry and rather un-eventful

With some recent rain though, it's been making a come back. The roses are all out in bloom and the grass is starting to turn wild

Most interesting though is the unexpected addition to the back rose garden. After mulching very thickly some tiny little plants started to emerge. They appeared to be melon or pumpkin. They continued to grow and I watched on - wondering....

The growth continued and apart from odd watering and some minor taming of the vine, it's been left mostly alone.

Seems there are 2 plants there. One MIGHT be a watermelon??? This only has 1 fruit so far

The other one is a butternut pumpkin. This currently has 1 large pumpkin (about 20cm) and lots of smaller ones emerging - 1 cute one if less then half the size of my pinky fingernail!

so there you go - I've been wondering how the seed got in there and have come to accept they must have been from the veggie compost I'd added before putting the tree mulch across the top

Here are some pictures

A New Arrival!

There's been a new arrival in the garden today - A Crepe Myrtle Lagerstoemia Miami (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/7905/)

This went out on the front corner in preparation of the future "one day" garden

The soil was rock hard and it took a fair amount of effort to dig the hole with just a shovel. I ended up digging about 3 to 4 times the size of the pot and filled the hole with water a few times to give it a good soaking. It took a good hour or so for the water in the hole to drain - not a good sign of my soil quality!

I also added some blood and bone and water crystals to the base of the hole...  Fingers crossed!

Beetroot and Pumpkin

The remainder of the beetroot was harvested last weekend - the pic below shows the harvest minus a few that had already been given away.....

hmmmm.... what to do with beetroot.... you'll need to wait and see!

Also the first golden nugget pumpkin for the season was harvested. Just a good size to bake for 3 people! mmmm.. .yum!

The Summer Harvest Continues

Happy New Year!

That can mean just one thing.... It's time to harvest!

The tomato plants are starting to yellow as the heat of the days ramps up in true summer style. I'm watering nightly to keep up but by 11am the plants are wilting but recovering with the nightly water and rest.

But the tomatoes are ripening nicely on the vine. I'd picked the first smaller ones a few days back and the taste was just yum. These were chopped up for Lily who munched them all down!

The tomatoes below were picked this morning - yes, that bigger one is nearly 10cm! A few tomatoes have holes where some bug or other has had a munch despite the tomato dusting to keep them at bay. Right or wrong, I'm leaving some of these in place hoping they'll be sacrificial fruits to the bugs who will leave the others alone......

Another zucchini picked this morning and while there I'd noticed some more coming up so did some more hand pollination. I've found this is the only way to get the fruits to remain viable!

Finally, I had a peak at the corn. These are smallish which I think is due to being planted too late in the season, forcing the flowering to start too soon. Will need to plant earlier next year! But in any case, it does look good and we'll need to plan a good roast or something so we can pick and eat them along with the 2 golden nugget pumpkins that are sitting there ready to go too!

mmmm.... Reaping the seeds you sow - Its a good time for the veggie gardener!

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!