2010 Garlic harvest

My first ever garlic effort and what can I say but it is whopping success!! Needless to say, those that have a bit more space to grow turn out to be much bigger; Those that grew in the styrofoam was, well, a tad-bit small. All I need to do is dry them out int he garage before keeping them in the pantry. Happy days

My last mushroom growing experience can only be sum up as a total disappointment. Not only have I paid good money ($20!!) for a kit, I was even diligently watering it day in and out but nothing. It produce absolutely nothing, zip. But you know, one should stop trying because of failures and boy am I happy with the result this time round! Big succulent mushrooms that is all ready for that morning omelette.

Mushroom harvest

My last mushroom growing experience can only be sum up as a total disappointment. Not only have I paid good money ($20!!) for a kit, I was even diligently watering it day in and out but nothing. It produce absolutely nothing, zip. But you know, one should stop trying because of failures and boy am I happy with the result this time round! Big succulent mushrooms that is all ready for that morning omelette.

What made this a success compared to last? Well, get a fresh kit for a start! The last one I bought was from Bunnings and god only knows how long has it been sitting on self. I could only imagine that most of it’s life giving spores are dead or well, half dead. Also, I’ve started much earlier this time. The instruction that came with the kit says the ideal growing temperature is between 17 – 23C. So, if you start a kit in the middle of summer in the garage, it will not exactly be a mushroom friendly environment.

Mushrooms are like weird little creatures; In a short period of time (i.e just 10 hours), you can literally see a difference in size. It’s like have little elfs that comes out to work on the mushroom while you are away! So, if you are thinking about growing something interesting this spring, why not give mushroom a go!

Mushroom (taken on 20/10/2010)

Mushroom (taken on 22/10/2010)

We finally got a watertank!!

Spring plan 2010

So this is my big plan for Spring. As you can see, I’ve got a good selection of my summer favourites; Ha-ogen melon, Beetroot, Tomatoes & Pok Choy! I am also trying out new crops such as capsicum, turnips and pumpkins. On top of just growing vegetable, I am also going to try out some growing technics I have read over winter.

Tomatoes – Quality not quantity

With all the problems and troubles I had last year with my tomatoes, this year I am going to be super duper disciple with them. That means picking out lateral growth and only keeping 4 truss of tomatoes per plant. The theory is that this will encourage bigger fruits, which is what I want.

Deep watering

I am guilty of that sporadic watering, which I find is doing more harm than good. Deep watering mean water last often but for a longer period of time. With deeper watering what I want achieve is a deeper root system that helps my plants to cope with the hash summer heat.

Seaweed application fortnightly.

Seaweed is just a general good guy to have around. It is a tonic food for plants and encourages root growth (and many other things). Together with the practice of deep watering, what I hope to see is a overall healthier crop for the season.

Vegetable bed in rest

I drove my patch very hard with last year’s spring/summer crops – no resting in between harvest, just constant churning for a full 5 months. With this in mind, I have decided to clean up my winter crops much earlier than usual; I just wanted to give the ground a rest before the busy warmer months kicks in. I started sowing my green manure sporadically around the patch probably around July. By mid August, I started clearing all the winter crops and give my green manure a good bashing and dig-in before applying palletised manure. After this, I just let mother nature do it’s thing with the green manure and really, leaving the ground to rest and have a breather.

With the recent constant rain, I find the soil to be more acidic than normal (PH test came back to be 5.5 ~ 6). To finish the bed preparation, it rake in some Trace element and garden lime. The early signs are very encouraging; While raking in the lime, I find there is so much more earthworms activity than before! On top of that, with all the constant compost and manure I am adding into the patch during the growing the season, the topsoil is all nice, crumbly and yummy looking too. Looking back, I can truly say the soil is in a much much better condition. I just cannot wait for the weather to warm up and the growing to begin.

Tip: I went really easy on adding blood and bone into the patch. The reason being that fruiting crops (i.e: Tomatoes, Rock melon, zucchini, etc) will spend all it’s energy producing lots of forage and less on flowering if the ground is too rich in nitrogen. I find by digging in palletised manure well before the growing season is usually more than sufficient.

Propagated from last season's mint. All lush and ready for some summer love!

I love herbs. They are what I call quiet achievers. They don’t really require much attention and if you do plant the correct ones near your vegetables, they can be your plant saviour!! In this instalment of our alphabetical count down, instead of giving you a list of “you should plant X next to Y“, I really want to give you some tips on how I practise my companion planting. Hopefully you can get some ideas on how you  too can make companion planting work for you.

With companion planting, I find it very difficult to practise in a small vegetable garden. For me, I’ve only got 1 bed and space becomes a very priced commodity. For the smaller, soft stem herbs such as basil, it’s easier for them to be planted  amongst the taller tomatoes. But what about the perennial such as thyme and rosemary? If I plant them amongst the main vegetable crops, what do I do with them when it’s time to clear the patch for a new season of crops? It will be such a waste of resources (& money) to buy new herbs every time.

Rosemary for those hard to reach places
Do you have a hard to reach spot in your patch? I do! When we designed my patch, I made it a little to deep. I can hardly reach the far side without the help of a ladder. This makes it a perfect spot for my rosemary! Rosemary are really hardy, once you stab same cuttings into the ground, they will just grow, grow & grow! The best part is when you do clear the patch for next season’s seedlings to go in, you can give the rosemary a nice haircut & it good to go another year!

Herbs loves pots
So do I. I read in a gardening book about planting mint in the ground. It talks about planting mint in a plastic container and then submerge the whole container into the ground, in an effort to contain the invasive nature of mint. Presto! This gives me an idea – why not plant all my herbs in plastic punnets and pop them straight into the patch? When it’s comes time to clear the patch, I can dig the herbs up (container and all) and easily move them to a new spot. How good is that! Not to say that it will also be a good use for those plastic punnets that are slowly filling my shed.

Everyone has got different way of making their companion planting work; Some intentional, some accidental; Some fantastic, some not quite. As long as you keep trying, you will get there. Eventually.

The Brussell sprouts grew wonderfully and while not all of them manged to be tight, it didn’t really matter as they were still delicious and made it into several different dishes. They were full of flavour and while not as large as the store bought ones they were still good. And that brings me to the wombok, Corine started them off as seedlings for me and I nurtured them into really good looking and tasty fat womboks. I did have some issues with millipedes, but they didn’t destroy the crop which was the main thing.

I still have the onions growing that I planted amongst the cauliflower and Brussel sprouts, they will be a little bit longer before they are ready.

Now for Spring!

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