urban vegetable patch

Lovely seeds from our friends at "Voted with our forks"

Since my post on ha-ogen melon, I have been contacted by a couple of readers about seed swapping. I am really pumped up about it; I get to swap some of my extra seeds for something new and exciting, like a mystery box! I thought I will continue this effort with this post, and maybe even start a trend. So after sorting through my box of seeds, these are the seeds available for exchange:

• Ha-ogen melon
• Butternut Pumpkin
• Jalapeno
• Edamame (soya bean)
• Tigerella Tomato
• Sweet corn (Honey & cream)
• Sunflower yellow pollenless
• Chinese forget-me-not (blue)

If you are reading this and would like to be part of the action, please leave me a comment and I will get back to you. If you have got no seeds to swap but would still like to join in the fun, do also leave me a comment. Let’s get some seed swapping action happening people!

Several years ago we put some wooden screens up in the backyard to help hide the shed and the clothesline.

They looked great as they were, but they were also put up to serve another purpose to espalier some fruit trees. Espalier is when you grow your plant along a fence or other setup and trim them so they grow long arms, which is especially good for fruit. We tossed up what we would like to grow and decided on a lemon and an olive.

The lemon really tries hard but hasn’t really done much good, the olive on the other hand is loving being espaliered and this year was its second real lot of fruit, I picked 17 black olives, I feel there were a few more, but evidence showed that the Butcher birds had been at them and they had helped themselves to a few… again!

The Olive is the Manzanillo variety and I decided to wait until they had turned black to pick them, rather than pick them as green. We chose this variety as the olives are suitable for eating and as oil. Now I haven’t really had any experience with preserving olives and there was a lot of different methods of pickling them. But i had heard about a method where  you just pack the olives in rock salt for a few months. So I decided as a novice and a little time poor at the moment, this sounded like a quick and easy method. So my 17 olives are now doing their stuff in the rock salt. I did however forget to prick them    so they will take a little longer, however they are packed very tightly so this may work in helping the pickling / salting to work at a slightly better speed… but it is a waiting game.

Will let you know how my olive experiment goes.

Round Baby carrot

This particular carrot was plucked prematurely off the ground. I was just curious on what’s happening underneath the soil. It looks so cute! I split it half and shared it with Xavier. Definitely more from where it came from. Bliss!

Eggplants behind bird netting - I was not sharing these with the birds!

OK, sorry about that headline, just had to do it as this year for the first time, my eggplants have flourished!

I have had several nice size Eggplant “Black Beauty” and to my surprise and delight I have also had a couple of the heirloom variety of Egplant Listada di Gandia, these are supposed to be a purple and white striped eggplant but for some reason mine was more white. But that’s OK, I was just surprised to get any at all. I had previously tried growing eggplants before but this year I popped them in a different spot and they just loved it. Maybe they liked being planted alongside the tomatoes or perhaps it was the afternoon shade from the large gum tree.

2 weeks old garlic in foam boxes

It’s Autumn and that means it’s time to pop those garlic into the ground! Well this is my first time growing them so I don’t really know what to expect. I have read that they one of the easiest things to grow, just sow and forget. Instead of popping them into my main patch, I’ve decided to fill up a medium sized foam box with my special potting mix. (Well, as always, I have a little ‘traffic congestion’ on the main patch. So sorry garlic, you will have to settle with a form box). In goes 6 cloves (pointy bit facing up) and after 2 weeks, green shoots!

Apparently, all I need to do now is to keep the water up and feed them occasionally. Hopefully by the end of the year, I will have nice fat bulbs!  Will keep all posted. Go garlic!

Saffron Crocus flower bud

About 3 years ago, I received my regular mailout from the Diggers Club and saw that one of the plants in that edition was the Saffron Crocus – Crocus Sativus and was interested in how a pretty flower like that produced such an expensive spice.

I had purchased “genuine” Saffron threads once for a receipe and they were like little pieces of gold, so I thought why not grow my own?

The bulbs arrived and after some reading about growing saffron, I planted them in a pot. I did this as sometimes things come up in the garden and my partner considers they may be a weed and he pulls them out! So a pot was the safest spot to grow them.

Each year they bulbs came up and did nothing, died off, remained dormant and came up again…

Can you imagine the buzz when we discovered a lone flower this year… we watched it, checking its progress 3-4 times a day…waiting like expectant parents for the flower to open and revel its 3 precious stamens.

Yes, each crocus flower has only 3 stamens, so you need to grow quite a few to produce a kilo of this expensive spice, but I dont really mind if I just get a few, its better than nothing and certainly an excellent way to learn about saffron. Just think you may decide to grow a row of crocus saffron flowers as a border or garden edge and not only do you get some beautiful purple flowers, but you get to grow your own Saffron.

The big day arrived, the flower was open (you need to pick the threads as soon as the flower opens) and carefully we removed the 3 precious stamens. We then dried the stamens for 5 days on paper towel in a dry spot (aka – the laundry) then into a screw top jar ready to be used in cooking.

Was it worth the wait – it certainly was!

Saffron Crocus Flower with threads

Saffron Threads drying

Lemon Meyer Tree after 3 months

Not sure if I have mentioned about about my dear lemon meyer tree before, but it has been doing so well that I think its worth a mention. Well, about two years ago when we first moved into our current house, we decided to replace a dead tree on our front lawn with a lemon tree. Sounds like a fantastic idea at first but I failed to investigate why the first tree died in the first place. One thing lead to another, after 2 years, the poor lemon tree is on the verge of dying. It has shed most of its leaves and was looking really distressed.

I was determine not to let the poor fellow go without a fighting chance. I went to our local Bunnings to buy half a wine barrel and filled it up with 50% potting mix, 50% manure/compost and 2 handfuls of water crystals. I am now please to announce, after 3 months of transplant, new shoots, leaves and even flowers are growing & blooming as it should be! There are even tiny lemons growing! I remember reading somewhere that you don’t get much lemon (or sometimes small, low quality lemons) from a lemon tree for the first 3 years as this is the time they matures and develop their root systems. Any how, I am contented that it’s well and alive – anything more is a bonus!

Look at those flower buds!

Well after a long hot summer we took a long hard look at our vegie patchs’.

Time for a revamp was the call.

One particular patch was just really past its useby date, so I started to look around at what we had on hand, so that we could have a bigger and better vegetable garden. Hiding behind the shed were a couple of bits of colourbond (left over from the shed construction), so with tinsnips and a metal grinder we spilt the wider piece of roofing colourbond into two and decided that the two smaller bits would be perfect for the ends. Construction began and in a short time and some random bits of scrap wood we had a new raised vegie garden.

We also found some old garden hose that we put a slit into one side and then placed this on the edge of the colour bond and rivited it to hold it firmly in place. This will help prevent getting cuts from the tin.

In went some lovely compost, chicken manure, soil, blood and bone, plus some wetting agent to help with moisture retention. But before the patch was complete, we decided we would include an experimental watering system, to help save some watering time and maybe improve the efficeincy of the water. So before the last layer of soil was put down, we coiled a weeper hose across the bed and held it down temproraily with some metal pegs. The hose attachment end was left hanging out of the garden bed.Then down went the final layer of yummy soil mix, then the metal pegs were gently removed and we hooked it up to the hose from the rainwater tank.

In went some cauliflower and brussell sprouts and in between these went some randomly placed red onions. This combination I have since found out is a receommend companion planting combination that helps deter white cabbage moths… Fingers crossed on this…

As for the watering system, it seems to be working the cauli’s and brussel sprouts look like they are happy and healthy.

Earwick, also known as Forficula auricularia is a real PEST! I know, I know (*sigh*) there are countless counter argument about how beneficial they are but to me, there are a real pain in the neck. Not to mention they rape my wong bok!

The problem with earwick is that they will destroy your vegetable (especially the leafy ones) in no time. It starts off with bits of holes on the leaves and before you know it, “Houston, we have a problem“.  And the markings (holes) left on the leaves makes it really hard to tell if the damage is caused by caterpillar, slugs or earwick. Frustrating!

The earwicks pulverise my Wong Bok by drilling its way through to the heart of the vegetable and then start eating its way out! Not to mention it invited more friends to party in this earwick’s haven. You can only imagine my horror when I found the mini colony inhabiting within my vegetable. Firstly disgusted then anger! I am going to kill these little bustards!

Found quite a fair bit of post on trapping earwicks in an organic way. Personally I am filling takeaway containers with fish oil or linseed oil and use it as a trap. Result is not quite what I expected; Caught some wondering ones but nothing worth celebrating. If you are like me, plague by earwicks, have a read on these links I found. I would love to hear from anyone who has any solutions that might help.

Generic info about Earwick
Fish oil trap