urban vegetable patch

Its cold, its windy and there has been rain -  its winter!

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

In our alphabetical series of posts about various aspects of vegetable gardening, I thought B might be for bugs in the Vegetable Garden. But not the bad ones… lets look at a double B – Beneficial Bugs!

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.

On a regular basis, we will be posting an A-Z of various aspects of vegetable gardening.

So to get started – we will kick off with good old A !

A is for Abundance!

Try as hard as I might to get a good “even” supply of vegetables of various varieties, you can guarantee that something is bound to fail and something else may produce prolifically, at times over prolifically and you end up with an abundance of a particular vegetable.

Hopefully it is one you really like, but what do you do with an over supply?

Here are just a few ideas;

• Give it away to friends, family or a charity – consider a food charity, soup kitchen etc

• Preserve it by bottling, pickling, drying or freezing.
  Some vegetables can be frozen as is, but most may need to be blanched before freezing. Blanching is really just a quick dip in some boiling water for a couple of minutes, depending on the vegetable, then plunge them into some ice cold water to stop the cook process. It is also a good idea to give them time to dry off before freezing them. Bottling and/or pickling and how you do it is really dependant on your taste and the type of vegetable you have in abundance. I just had a look at the Fowlers Vacola Simple Natural Preserving Kit – looks much easier than I remember… my mum used to bottle abundant fruit!

• Drying – lots of vegetables can be dried either using the sun or an electric dehydrator.
  You can also puree some vegetables and dry them as a fruit leather. I dry chili by threading them onto cotton and hanging them under the verandah, they dry really quickly in our hot Australian summers. Many herbs can also be dried by handing them in bunches in a warm, dry and “wind-free” spot.

• Jams, Relish and Chutneys
  Are a great idea as not only do you get to eat the vegetable fresh, but you have it as a different form to be enjoyed in another way, such as on toast or on your sandwiches or meats. But the real double bonus is you can give it away as gifts to people who have already said, hey, don’t give me anymore of vegetable x as I am over them at the moment. But by giving them the jam or relish, yes you are giving them more, but its a different form of the vegetable, so they are likely to jump at the chance to enjoy homemade jams or relish. Sneaky!

• Freezing them as a ready cooked meal.
  An abundance of tomatoes this year led me to do this and I still have a couple of packs of sauce left! I made the tomato sauce out of my homegrown tomatoes, basil and capsicum. Then added some onion and garlic, with some cracked pepper and a pinch of sugar, until the tomatoes were cooked. I then waited for it to cool, pureed it in the blender then poured enough for a meal into freezer bags and froze! Its been used in pasta sauce, as a casserole base and minestrone base.Herbs can also be frozen, I like to pick the herbs, put then into ice cube trays in quantities that I would use in cooking, add water to the trays and freeze. I can then pop a cube into whatever I am cooking over winter.

• Make a cake!
  Zucchini cake, pumpkin scones and pie and beetroot cake are just a few baked items that can be made with your abundance of vegetables. There must be more, so have a surf around the Internet to see what cakes can be made with different vegetables.

There are probably lots more ideas and tips on dealing with an abundance of vegetables, so feel free to share your hints or tips on what you do with your abundance!

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

I remember as a child heading off with my Grandpa, down the back of the garden to the vegie patch, here I learnt many little gardening skills, including planting, how to water plants, how to use my special little shovel, but most importantly how to know when to pick the garden goodies. We would load up our buckets with all manner of vegies and head back to the house were Grandma would be waiting and then she would teach me how to prepare the vegies we had just bought into the house. My most favourite vegetable was a purple bean, now I didnt like beans, but for some reason, the purple ones were ok, now I dont know whether it was beacause they didnt really look like a traditional bean or whether it was beacuse I had helped to grow them. But they sure tasted the best! So it got me thinking about getting children started in the vegie patch. Not only will they learn lifelong skills, but it may also encourage the more picky eaters to try some vegies.

With a young child, a good starting point  is to involve them in your family garden, give them a small watering can and get them to help with the watering, let them pop the seeds (non chemical coated/treated is best) into the soil and let them pull the odd weed out, and most importantly let them help pick the vegies. It is a gentle learning introduction, then as they get a little older, give them their own piece of patch to plant out with their favourite vegetables.

If your child is a picky eater or your would just like to make the vegie gardening process a little more interesting, investigate some heirloom varieties of vegies, there are some fairly unusual and can I say funky vegies out there.

Here are just a few ideas (note: you may need to purchase these varieties as seeds, rather than seedlings);

• Beans – Purple King, Rattlesnake (purple and green), Dragons Tongue Bush Bean ( purple and white)
• Capsicum  – Sweet Chocolate
• Carrots – Dragon (purple skin)
• Corn – Popcorn or Anasazi (multicolour kernels-red, white & blue)
• Beetroot – Candy stripe (red & white flesh), Golden (yellow fesh) or white (white flesh)
• Pumpkin – Guatemalan Blue Banana or Turkish Turban
• Radish – Black round spanish
• Tomato’s – So many to choose from, but black russian, green zebra or the large mortgage lifter may be fun, along with yellow and red cherry tomatoes.
• Watermelon – Moon & stars
• Zucchini – Tromboncino.
• Strawberries – White Alpine, yes they are White! ( and available as seedlings)

These are just a few fun, yet traditional heirloom varieties that may just spike some interest in Vegetables and gardening, plus they can also make a great “show and tell” subject at school.
Look what I grew!

I was recently flicking through a new seed catalogue and I was struck by the number of purple vegetables that are available and many of them are the traditional heirloom varieties which have been saved from extinction by seed savers around the world.

OK, we know about purple cabbage, beans,eggplant and more recently purple carrots, but here are some other varieties of vegetables that come in the colour purple.

• Artichoke – Violetta
• Asparagus – Purple
• Beans – Purple King – Violet Queen Bush
• Peas – Purple podding
• Broccoli – Purple Sprouting
• Cabbage – red Drumhead
• Carrots – Dragon & Purple Three Colour
• Cauliflower – Purple Cape
• Eggplant – Many varieties, black beauty, Early purple and more!
• Tomato – Eva purple ball
• Potato – Sapphire seed

As I said, I was amazed at the number of vegetables available in a purple colour and I have possibly missed a few, so please feel free to let us know of any others.

You could even dedicate a section of your vegetable garden just to purple vegetables. It would certainly make a good conversation piece.

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.

There are some juvenile delinquents roaming my neighbourhood at the moment and boy are they sneaky!

My juvenile delinquents are in fact 2 young butcher-birds… I have done the “crazy vegie gardener” thing ( I think much to my neighbours amusement) and waved my arms and “shooed” them, but they hardly take any notice and fly into the large gum tree, pretend to hide and then after a while they return. So what are they doing?

They are sneaking cherry tomatoes… And are doing so through the bird netting…. its actually quite an achievement and I have watched them do it out of fascination for their skill, they put their beak through the netting, latch onto a tomato and then twist and manoeuvre it through the netting, I don’t quite understand how they get a tomato through the netting but they do it.

But the worst thing is they are only doing it as a bit of sport, they don’t eat the tomatoes, they bite them, then throw them on the ground and try for another. I am not sure if my tomatoes just aren’t to their taste or if it is a bit of a game.

Wonder if  I built a scarecrow, if that would work???

Growing your own heirloom vegetables – Bringing Carbon Dioxide down to earth, is written by Diggers Club founder Clive Blazey.

It provides information and loads of photographs to help you on your way to growing your own patch of heirloom vegetables. Plus also has a section for children to get started on their own vegetable garden.

Find out what makes these old varieties of vegetables so good!

Growing Your Own Heirloom Vegetables: Bringing Carbon Dioxide Down to Earth