Bannana harvest

The rain seems to have helped the bannana's this year 18 in total. Some are all but I didn't cut the flower head off that bunch early enough.


Not much really but they grow wild on te block next door. I'll try and give them some more attention this year and see if we get a better yeild next year.

Volunteers helping out in the Garden

Had some Volunteers help out in the garden all morning this morning. All I had to do was feed them,  They did a great job cleaning up the many catapillers that have come out this year with all the growth.

  Yep  a bunch of little sparrows showed up and have been working tirelessly all morning eating green caterpillars.  They get right into the Tomato and bean bushes and then pop out to devour there catch.   This really is working with nature!  

This encourages me to plant some bushes in the corner that will attract insect eating birds.   Apparently spiky sort of plants that offer them protection are the go.  Not gravilliers etc as they attract the honey eaters and wattle birds who chase the insect eaters like finches and sparrows away.

Rercord bean harvest

The bean harvest really has been amazing this year! Just this week I have picked 3 shopping bags full. Been giving them away at work and to friends now have a bag full out the front of the house for people to take.

YouTube - Dirt! The Movie Trailer

YouTube - Dirt! The Movie Trailer: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

New Web Site for getting together Land owners and growers

There is a new web site about to launch that gets growers in contact with Landowners, this is has been inspired by the success of the scheme in England prompted by the River cottage series.
Landshare Australia:

Bean harvest

Bean harvest is well and truly on.



This is one days picking!

Beans

Beans are just ready to start picking now
These where all self sown from last years crop!

Harvest

Just dug up all the potatoes that where left, got around 24kg , but we have been digging them up as we needed for the last month.

Picked all the cabbages they where thinking of going to seed. Now to work out what to do with 5 cabbages.




Onions also harvested got 25 of the brown ones hopefully get a few more whent he red and white barletters are ready later in the season. These onions seem to have a nice thin neck so might keep better than last years.

Picking zuchinis

Started picking zuchinis only two so far but already wondering why i planted three plants!

Drowning in broad beans

Wow this spring is really going well with all this rain. My broad beans that looked they where struggling early in are now producing by the bucket load.






Hmm what to do with them, maybe I could sell them at the newly opened green grocer in husky. They are looking for local produce.

Sweet potato harvest

I noticed the other day that some of the sweet potatoes where rotting in the ground so although my initial idea was to just let the vines keep growing I dug them all up and replanted some of the tubers



12.5 kgs worth, not bad considering we have been picking them for at least 6 months now to eat and give away.
If you live in a mild climate then try growing sweet potatoes just buy some tubers from the super market and stil in ground just under the surface not deep like you would potatoes. They like a long growing season so it will be autumn when they are getting ready to start harvesting.

Ph problems

I have an embarassing admision. My silver beet ( apparently the easiest thing for newbie gardeners to grow) is dismal. After 3 months it looks like this



Yes that's it in the plastic container! Now I have grown silver beet fine before but this year it just doesn't want to happen. After fertilizing it with varying substances with no luck I decided to check the ph and got a suprise



It was 8 which is quite alkaline. Vegies normally like neutral to slightly acidic. I think the fault here was a load of mushroom compost that I got last year. They add lime to the compost to sweeten it. Lesson learnt check the ph of your bulk manures. Not helped by the fact that before I checked it I limed the area as well :-(

Anyway reading up seems I can add sulphur to lower the ph, lots of compost will lower it as well aparently but takes a long time. I'll see if the sulfur makes a difference be an interesting experiment.

Time for bean planting

Things have been getting a bit warmer here and I'm starting to plant some stuff. Beans went in today reusing the frame intended for the ill fated rock melons last year.



Placed it amongst the leeks as they will be all gone soon. Especially when Ros keeps pulling them out for dinner!

Tatties for tea

Hmm new season potatoes!

Mad mulcher

We have a large native hedge at the front of our house that twice yearly I have trim. For this woody type of pruning I have an electric chipper. This chipper is a bit different as it doesn't have a fast moving blade but a slow moving gear type cog that drags in the prunings and crushes them against a plate. It very effective and can handle large branches not mention it's a lot quieter than the chopping type.




All this becomes



Which in turn becomes



Mulch for the fig tree.

Mulch

I can get a bit slack with mulching the garden one reason is I don't really like importing material from elsewhere to do it as it doesn't seem particularly sustainable. This year I have been mowing the block next door and piling all the clippings up. I left that for a few months making sure the heap had a concave dip in the top so water would penetrate rather than just run off. after turning it a couple of times over the last couple of months I put it around the vegies. It was full of worms so the resident Peewee got a feed at the same time.

Before

After

Winter update

Considering it is winter we actually have fair bit in the garden.
Leeks, potatoes (as I mentioned before), sweet potatoes, spinach, fennel, still getting cherry tomatoes and our first lemons a ready ( we have already started using the limes )

New taties!!

Starting to get some reasonable sized new potatoes. From the early crop.

New chicken run

My freind Shane wanted some more area for his chickens and had a heap of wood from an old fence. So together we created a new movable wire frame that connects to his existing coop.

Tripod round up

Here is the summary of the seasons experiment with tripods and vertical gardening.



The butter nuts at first worked ok on the tripod but turn your back for only a week or two and it escapes. I think becuase the season is so long here it is hard to keep it constrained to the tripod. You could harvest the pumpkins that form early then pull then plant out but my plant is still showing no signs of slowing down with new pumkins still setting. Will I do it again? Probably not. pumkins want to be free!

The rock melons where a dead loss. I just used seeds from shop purchased one and I am pretty sure they whee hybrid. The plants where spindly and they set only one or two small strange looking fruit. Rock melon vines are smaller than the pumpkin vines and I think I'll give them another go next year up the trellis.
Keep gardening

Clean up

Had a clean up of the garden today especially this thing that I never identified.




Then into the compost



Machetes are great for chopping up this stuff.