LED grow light in action

Winter is a time of nothing-ness; there is nothing much to do in the garden. Most of my plants goes into domaincy and there is only so much cleaning and organising I can do in the shed, which is a good thing; This leaves me time to perfect my other gardening techniques, propagation.

I have always wanted to buy a grow light; My window sill just doesn’t cut it. It either gets really sunny and hot or cold and nothing. My seedings usually grows to be quite leggy and is ever slightly slanted towards the sun. Xavier says I am obsed with perfection which I am not denying, but who’s not?

After 2 days of googling, I bought this LED light off eBay. As you can see from the photo, it emits purple light. Apparently this aids growth and flowering (something to do with the light spectrum, frankly too scientific for me). The result so far is more than good. My herbs are growing really well, lush and bushy. Like wise cannot be said for the tomato seedlings. I think it’s just too cold in the garage, nothing to do with light exposure. Infect I think I have found the next thing to buy, a heat mat! Ahh.., woman and shopping.

UPDATE: Really happy with the results but likewise could not be said for the product itself. Very poorly made; Had barely used it and have to start duct taping the wire. Not happy. Maybe is just this model that I bought, just maybe….

But “Houston, we have a problem” they are literally bombing our house with bat poop… it is getting everywhere – on the house, on the pavers, on the driveway and on the cars. I would hate to think what might happen if we left washing on the line overnight!

At first we couldn’t work out what they were after, usually they visit in the warmer months and eat the neighbours fruit on the loquat tree, but its not loquat season? At last we realised they are arriving each night to feast on the berries of a neighbouring lilly pilly tree… the berries are black, so that will give you an idea of the tar like “bombs” that we are being hit with.

Has anyone else experienced an ongoing problem with bats bombing them????  Would love to hear from you.

But despite the chill in the air, it is a great time to grow some of those yummy winter vegies.

So far this winter the crop has included growing some brussel sprouts, cauliflower, onions, peas, beans and wombok. And below are some pics of the winter vegie garden in its early stages.

Garlic has also been planted and is up and growing nicely as well.

I have also done a bit of a renovation on the garden area which had the tomatoes. Its been dug up and several handfuls of bio-mustard sown, so that it can be dug in as green manure at a later date. This will make the patch nice and nutritious for the summer vegies.

Plus strawberrys are in, and this year I have been a bit adventourous and have also planted some white strawberries – Strawberry Fraises Des Bois. It will be interesting to see how these go and more importantly how they taste!

Keep an eye on this blog, because since I took these pictures, the cauliflower has grown into nice heads, the brussel sprouts are sprouting and the wombok is hearting… I will post more pictures soon and update on the winter vegie plot soon…

Dwarf Snow Peas - just up out of the ground...

Wombok

Chilli - but something has helped itself and taken a bite - possums??

Bush Beans

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!

Detroit beetroot - last of my winter harvest

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!

Bad bugs get loads of press, so I thought by looking at the good bugs, it may give you some ideas on controlling those bad, nasty and destructive bugs that can seemingly devour a vegetable garden overnight!

Ladybugs

There are good ladybugs and bad lady bugs, so how do you know which is which? Well its all in the spots!

The 28 spot ladybug is bad, but before you go squashing it make sure that it is destructive, if your vegies aren’t under threat maybe leave it be. But if you find an 18 spot ladybug, you should be delighted, these are the good ones. They will happily munch away on thrips, aphids, grubs and a few other nasty bugs.

Not only that they are quite an attractive little bug to have hanging about your vegie garden. Kids love them!

Lacewing

These are a green bug with 4 clear wings hence their name lacewings. And its the hungry little larvae of the lacewings that are predators. They devour pests such as scales and mealybugs, aphids, moth eggs and smaller caterpillars. I read somewhere that they can eat approx 60 aphids in an hour, now that’s an appetite!.

Spiders

While you may sometimes despair when you get tangled up in a web in the garden and then do the crazy “I just ran into a spiderweb” dance. Spiders are your friends, they eat various bugs and while you need to be wary of them eg redbacks, white tails and funnel webs just to name a few… they can be particularly handy.

There are a number of other very handy bugs that can take out the nasty ones, these also include wasps (citrus gall wasp is great for citrus trees), some bugs such as the Damsel Bug, Predatory Shield bug and this one sounds good… the Assassin Bug!

So how do you get these beneficial insects into your garden?

Attract these beneficial insects into your garden by planting a few attractive plants such as sunflowers, daisy’s, borage, parsley, rosemary,coriander and native plants, just to name a few.

You may decide if your infestation is bad, to buy some beneficial bugs. There a number of suppliers in Australia that sell these beneficial insects and a couple that I have found that sell via the Internet are: Bugs for Bugs – www.bugsforbugs.com.au & IPM Technologies – http://www.ipmtechnologies.com.au

If you are interested in finding out more about beneficial bugs, take a look at this newly released book – Bug: The Ultimate Gardener’s Guide to Organic Pest Control

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.