STINKn...... bugs

A large branch on my grand old lemon tree was dead. I cut it off and immediately discovered the cause.... Bronze Orange bugs! They are everywhere. Now, accoring to my sources, October and November are the big months for these guys and as they suck on the sap, they cause damage to the branches - hence the dead one!

bronze orange bug

Options:

Confidor - an inspect spray that works, but also kills the 'goodies' - of which I have plenty.... spiders, ladybugs etc

handpicking - drop them into a bucket of hot water with metho or detergent. Problem: they are stink bugs.... so it is full nucler protection gear to avoid getting stinked.

hanging and drying

Today I harvested the garlic. Fearful of a very wet week, I pulled it all up and it is all now drying in the shed. Some of the bulbs are big and fat... others not so. We shall see. We had a fresh clove in tonight's spaghetti.....yum

drying garlic

Not sure about the plaiting. Rather, I have tied it all together and have it hanging from the rafter...... 3-4 weeks from now, it should be dried and ready to eat - if it hasn't all be eaten already.

harvesting garlic

white squash

Am trialling white squash this year. I have planted a couple of patio (dwarf) varieties to prevent them from crawling all over the vege patch. They are exactly the same as yellow squash, but.... white!

white squash

I notice that they are called 'pattypan' squash or white scallop squash. If it stops raining here, I will let you know how they go!

digging in the rain

Ok, so it is raining and apparentrly will continue to rain until the next millenium. So what? Well, I can't plant in the heavy rain for these reasons:

• rain increases the chances of soil compaction

dpi.nsw.gov.au

• when the soil dries, a crust forms over the top preventing some seeds from germinating



ipm.iastate.edu

• heavy rain can change the soil structure - especially in a heavy soil like Tamborine volcanic soil



fao.org

• the soil sticks to everything when it is wet - I will end up with more on me than in the patch!

So! I wait and wait and wait and hope I can get some food into the ground before too much longer.

prepared earlier!

plotting and planning

The winter season is over. As soon as it stops raining, I have to remove all the spent growth and prepare for the next planting. There are a few broc and cabbages still to mature, but then it will be bye-bye cool crops hello warm crops.

My big decision this year - NO tomatoes. I can not win the battle against the birds and my neighbour excels at growing tomatoes.

I am going hard on the lettuce, carrots, capsicum and eggplant. These are my staples, along with parsley and garlic and chillies.

Will also soon be time to harvest my garlic... hope it turns out. There is a heap of it.

BTW, found the sneaky culprit who has attached  my purple podded peas.... king parrots, just as I suspected. Just as well they are so bloody beautiful!

multi coloured carrots

Carrots have not always been only orange. They come in a variety of colours, but orange become the popular choice in Europe, particularly Holland, in commemoration of the Royal House of Orange (the Dutch Royal family). Now, you can grow them in all kinds of colours - as I do - and brighten up all your vege stews!

I have had no problem growing the Purple King variety or the mixed colour variety. I grow from seed and and don't even thin them out as they grow. I pull them up when they are still  young as I don't really like the thick vibrator-looking  numbers you buy in the shops. I also like the feathery tops of carrots - they add a textural dimension to the garden.

(ref: recipegirl.com)

Oh, they also grow all year round here. I have had success through the wet summer season and the dry winter season... they will become a staple crop in the patch

jasmine secrets

From the dark corners of by bookshelf, I pulled an old Readers Digest book about plants. I now refer to the books as the 'bible'. It has all the answers, man!

We have the most amazing star jasmine bush creeeping all over the washing line. It is now in full bud and bloom and you get high every time you walk out the back. I love the smell of jasmine but when I cut a sprig for the house, it loses its fragrance. Then I consulted the bible!

Solution: immediatley place cut sprigs of jasmine into 2-3 cms of boiling water for 1 min. This stops the bleeding process. Then stand in cold water for an hour before arranging.

I did this last weekend and the house is still full of fragrance - all from 3 sprigs.

Hey Apple! What about inventing scratch and sniff monitors?

star jasmine

peach pash

At the moment, the peach tree is still sleeping, although a close inspection this morning reveals swelling buds. I planted this tree 2 years ago and at that time, it was as tall as me. Now, she towers over the patch and provides good shade in the middle of summer. Last season I saw some small fruit on a couple of  limbs, I wonder what I will get this season? Fortunately I have to prune it too, so I will get some great sprigs for the house.

winter peach

spring peach

spring sprung?

The first sign of the wisteria. A stunning climber capable of ripping your house of its foundations! Beware of anything that is beautiful. It come sin mauve and white. The one outside the window and covering the tank at our place is mauve... and she works it, baby!

Want to know more? Good old Gradening Australia has all the answers

winter update

The last couple of weeks have seen typical August weather - cold and windy! The nights have been close to freezing and I suspect the odd frost has sneaked in unexpectedly. Last week, a ferocious wind whipped through the patch and bent back my peas! They are purple-podded peas and they had just go to the top of the frame and started to flower - a very pretty flower too. Now I have my fingers crossed that they will survive the beating. That's life in the patch!

(ref: purplepoddedpeas.blogspot.com)

The comfrey is hibernating, the brocs and cabbages are powering along - not a white moth insight, so they are blemish free. The garlic and leeks are plodding along - they need to be harvested befor the wet season starts. There is new greowh on the chillies. I took a risk and pruned the bushes back hard at the end of last summer, now they seem to have survived the winter and are getting a new lease of life.

I am loathe to do any kind of spring planting until there is no longer the chance of a frost.

potatoes

I harvested my first crop of potatoes today and man, was I pleasantly suprised. I am always amazed at root crops - you just don't see any action and then... pow!

(ref: chiotsrun.com)

I bought some certified organic sebago and planted them in an old coffee sack. I used potting mix and organic pellitsed fertiliser. I allowed the green stalks to appear once and covered them over to maximise the crop. Fortnightly watering of seaweed and 'Bob's your uncle'! I was suprised to see that the potatoes were not attached to anything, they were just sitting there in the dirt. I was also amused to see that the term used for digging around looking for potatoes is.... bandicooting..... aaarrgghhh.....

Tonight's menu included... oven roasted potatoes with rosemary and sea salt.

product placement time

The patch is chemical free. It does not make sense to use any type of manufactured chemical around food, let alone in the soil where it does untold and unseen damage.

The issue for me is that the patch is surrounded by kykuyu grass which has long runners that are determined to invade the friable soil in the patch. In addition to the chickweed and cobbler's weed that is already in the patch, constant weeding is required.

I hate weeding. So I looked for an alternative to back-breaking work.

Beat-a-weed and beat-a-bug are the way to go!

The Beat-a-weed works wonders and it keeps many of the 'pests' of my previous post out of the patch as well. Based on salt and vinegar, it suffocates the weeds and makes it easier to rake them all out.

Love it.

bandicoots et al

Possums, bandicoots, bush turkeys, birds and cats. They all love the patch and each has a special relationship with it:

cats - roll in the mulch and sit on the seedlings... because they can!

birds - pick off the young tomatoes or pea pods...because they can!

possums - scamper all over the beds as they make their way from one place to the next...clearly I am at fault for putting my plot in the middle of their busy highway!

bush turkeys - wait till you mulch eveything then relocate all the mulch to the other end of the garden...because they do!

bandicoots - dig for gold every night making sure to rip up every plant. While they are at it, they munch on the leaves of my broccoli....

Ultimate bandicoot protection weapons?

I think I am starting to win the war!

comfrey

This is a wonder plant. I first bought it because it was labelled as an 'heirloom' plant. I liked the sound of heirloom - a plant that has stood the test of time. Little did I know how much I would come to rely on comfrey for all manner of things.

Comfrey is great as a compost activator - it encourages nitrogen growth and decomposition. You can pull off a few leaves and just throw them into the compost bin. I do this all the time in summer when I struggle to keep up with growth. Click here to read about composting comfrey.

As it is a good source of nitrogen, I have been planting beans or peas (legumes) in the same bed. The crops seem to do very well indeed - as does the parsley, a permanant friend of comfrey in my patch.

In winter, it looks like the plant dies, but it goes into hibernation. Usually, I cover it lightly with mulch to protect it from frost and it bounces back next season. As it rots, it releases nitrogen into the ground. Click here to learn about growing comfrey

Historically, comfrey has been used for many reasons. Click here to find out how comfrey has withstood the test of time.

strawberries

My first strawberry adventure began with a bag of potting mix. I planted straight into the bag and as you can see, it was fine.... until the summer rains came, and came, and came. It is hard to move a bag of potting mix without the contents spilling out all over the ground. Since starting my vege patch, I have struggled to manage the wet season and it all began that summer with my strawberries.

Since then, I have planted locally sprouted stawberries into a deep pot. I am sure to surround it with mulch and feed it as regulalry as I should. Ideally, strawberries like acidic soil and pine needles are a good source of acid. Which reminds me, I need to get a supply for my hungry berries......

Click here for information about growing strawberries. Click here for information about wild strawberries

vigorous growth

The first season was particularly spectacular. With no clear idea of what we wanted to do long term, we simply planted what we liked to eat and what we thought looked nice. The result was a cottage garden mix of herbs, flowers and vegetables. Within weeks, the beds were bursting at their seems and we realised we would have to expand our site.

So in here we had: pineapple sage, comfrey, parsley, wormwood. Obvioulsy, all this went nuts living on a diet of solid chicken poop! The pineapple sage has gone and the wormwood too (although, I confess that I may have prematiurely removed it instead of pruning it hard), but the comfrey and parsely are still thriving. They seem to love being next to each other, so there they will stay.

Incredibly, I planted a pumpkin in the middle of all this. Obviously, I soon learned how much room a pumpkin needed. If you look closely, you may see that the tomatoes are looking a bit crazed... I am scratching my head in puzzlement. I am yet to master the art of growing tomatoes. Either it is the climate here, or I just don't have it in me to grow a consistent crop.

first among roses

We decided to plant a rose - every vege patch needs a rose, said my mum. So, meet Playboy. This has been such a vigorous grower, although I am sure it has everything to do with the years of chicken poop in the garden!

Since our sucess with Playboy, I have planted roses in other beds... meet Playboy's friends:

Betty Boop

Bonica

Woburn Abbey

Rosa Chinensis Mutabilis

first harvest

The first basket of produce. It all seemed so easy then.... little did I know what was to come!

the first season

Standard planting of silverbeet, parsley, tomatoes, celery

the site

This is the site of my vege patch.

Before it was a vege patch, it was a chook run. There was a huge corrugated iron water tank that was cut in half and turned upside down. This was the chook shed.  As you can see, there was also a green shadecloth potting shed.

I wanted a vege patch and this was the perfect place for it. So the work began!

In total, the site is about 10x5m. However, we tackled it in two parts. These are pictures of stage 1.

All the broken terracotta tiles were moved out, a huge Monsterio plant was removed (back breaking work) and all the rubbish raked up. We used the bricks that were lying around to for the garden beds. As you see:

Finally, we started planting the things we thought would look and taste great.