urban vegetable patch

Well, it wasnt snow, cotton wool or a spiders web.

So what was it?

This was the big question facing vegie patch owners Fiona and Peter and their family.

The even bigger question was, “is it bad”?

Having just recently planted their vegie garden they began to wonder what they had done to cause such a problem.

So after a couple of photos, they began to surf the net for an answer and after just a short while, they found the answer.

And it was all good news, they had done nothing wrong and the white stuff was in fact a fungus, but a good sort of one. Saprotrophic Fungi.

According to the Fungi section of the CSIRO – Saprotrophic fungi (also known as saprobes, saprophytes) obtain their energy and nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter such as in soil, litter, dung, and wood.

And for a bit more info a search of www.environment.gov.au came up with this info: Saprotrophic fungi obtain their nutrients from dead organic matter. There are many forms of dead organic matter—leaf litter, dung, soil, dead animals, wood and dead fungi-to name just a few. Saprotrophic fungi use them all. Saprotrophic fungi feed on and recycle about 85% of the carbon from dead organic matter, with bacteria and animals responsible for the other 15%. These fungi release the locked-up nutrients that can then be used by other living organisms, making the fungi vital to the health of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

The original answer that gave way to further investigation came from Wiki Answers: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_remove_mold_from_the_dirt_in_your_garden

The cause may have been due to the fact that the weather had been quite warm and all of a sudden the garden owners received almost 100mm of rain in just a couple of days, and with the weather still being warm, decomposition of the organic matter may have been quicker than usual for that area of Australia.

But whatever the cause, we found it fascinating to look at and we learnt something ourselves.

If you have come across a problem in your garden and then solved, it feel free to share it with us and the readers of the Urban Vegetable Patch.

Male Zucchini Flower

I have noticed that both my cucumbers and zuchinni have both had loads of flowers lately, but I dont seem to be getting much in the way of crop.

So I made myself periodically visit the vegie patch at various times of the day, I know it seems odd and a bit overprotective, but I needed to confirm if my suspicions were correct.

And they were, I seem to be sadly lacking a bit of Bee Action!

I checked the flowers and as you can see in the picture there are male and female flowers which is a good thing, but no sign of any bees buzzing about doing their thing.

So its time to put opertaion Bee into action.

Plant some Bee attracting plants nearby the vegie patch and fingers crossed that this will encourage some bees to visit the garden and more importantly the vegie patch. While it wont help this cucumber and Zuchinni season, it may help next year.

Female Zucchini Flower

Some of the Bee attractors that I will consider are Cammomile, Hyssop and Lemon Balm as the 3 of these are not only ahndy for attracting bees, but also are great herbs. I will also look at some other non edible plants as well, becasue I really need those bees!

10 days after the first flower appeared, I see pea pods!! You can only imagine how excited I was. Snow peas are currently selling for $14.99/kg in the market! $14.99/kg,  are you kidding me?

2 Pea Pods

On the upside, I’ve now got peas! On the downside, I got only 2 peas. I don’t think I can do much with it. Oh well! Before I get all excited and all, I thought I will jot down some points for future reference.

My maturing Snow pea plants

So these are my notes:

• They are a cool climate vegetable. Plant either early spring or late Autumn
• They are really really easy to care for. I will even go as far as saying you can plant and forget about them.[link to previous post]
• Pea seedlings are really susceptible to bugs. I am not sure what bugs (my guess is earwigs) but I lost 2 seedlings due to their ferocious appetite.
• Good in fixing nitrogen in the soil. Plant them after harvesting hungry crops (Eg: Brocolli, tomatoes)
• It takes about 2 months to grow from seedling to flowering stage. Once they flower, pea pods will appear shortly, usually within a week.
• Not all sweet peas needs trellis. I bought a dwarf sweet peas from Diggers that are advertised as “No trellis needed”.
• I do not intentionally fertilise them except for the occasional left overs in my watering can of fertiliser.

Things I have read about but have not and will not want to experience

• They are susceptible to mould/fungus known as powdery mildew. This has not happened to me, but I try to only water the roots using the spout of the watering can

Melbourne had a wild weather night on Friday; There was wind, rain and more rain. My mob of unruly tomatos flopped over their existing supports and nearly killed itself. It’s probably my fault for not staking it properly in the first place.

unruly red-fig tomato. Look closely on the bottom left of the bush

While stalking them securely to the existing bamboo stick, I realised some of the undergrowth are starting to grow out and up to get more sunlight. This is not good because as they grow bigger (which is what happened now), they will be heavier and lay in the soil bed for support. This is bad bad karma for spreading disease from soil to plant.

What I did was, I had a bit of a DIY moment with 2 kebab sticks and a rubber band. I tied the two sticks together in the middle (using the rubber band) and poked them in the ground to form a ‘X’ shape. I then gently lifted the branch and rested it on top of the kebab stick frame.This will lift the heavy branch above the ground now. Not sure about its performance in high wind condition; Will deal with it when it comes. For now, I am a happy girl.

Branch support to lift it up and up