The story so far...

So we began our "vege patch" on the 11th of May 2013 so we have been vege gardening at this house for a little over a year so I thought it was time to take stock and see how far we have come.

Sub Lime - in ground.
Dwarf Lemon - in ground.
Dwarf Imperial Mandarin - in ground.
Mulberry - Guessing English Black.  In Pot.  Back in leaf and berry!
Bay Leaf Tree - well established in pot.
Curry leaf tree - needs a bigger pot!  Little one in ground out the front.  4 seedlings in pots.
Pepino / Cameron Apple "Gold" - In Pot in flower.
Dragon Fruits - two in pots - types as yet unknown!
Fig Cutting in pot - unknown.
Blackberries - 4 pots.
Loganberry - in pot.
Raspberry - 2 pots.
Strawberries - various.
BlueBerries - 3 in ground but I think I will need to dig them up and put them into pots of Azalea potting mix.
Passionfruit - Gold and Red (either Nelly Kelly or Panama - need to check!)
Rhubarb two in ground have survived.
Cape Gooseberry.
Dwarf Pomegranate.
Potatoes - In various spots: Delaware, Ruby Lou and possibly Royal Blue and Nadine.
Mints: Common, Chocolate and Basil.
Rosemary - Common (upright) and Prostrate.  In ground.
Thyme.
Oregano.
Lemon Balm.
Lemongrass.
Coriander.
Sage.
Onions.
Native Violets.
Rainbow Chard & Silverbeet.
Kang Kong.
Purple and Green globe artichokes.
Purple and Green Asparagus.
Sugar Cane - only just gone in so fingers crossed.
Kale - Black Tuscan.  Seedlings just gone in.
Sweet Potatoes - Japanese.  Pink skin, white flesh.
Self seeded lettuces - everywhere!
Radishes - easter egg and Long Scarlet.  Now self seeded and crossed.
Peas - Greenfeast and Snow Peas.
Broad beans.
Beans - Lazy Housewife, Purple King, Rattlesnake and Blue Lake - self seeded and growing right through winter!
Celery from bases of shop brought - growing well!
Jerusalem Artichoke - 1 but not looking well!

Hydroponics:
Strawberries.
Rhubarb.
Oregano.
Thyme.
Chives.
Rocket.
Rainbow Chard - star performer.
Kale.
Spring Onions.
Basil - Common and Purple.
English Spinach.
Watercress - filled entire grow bed.
Grandpop's Super Tomatoes. - in flower in grow bed.

Sown the last two days - many seeds being out of date (due to move) and not expecting much of a turn out:
Amaranth Red Calaloo.
Kale, Black Tuscan.
Lettuce, Yellow Leaf.
Celery Stringless.
Mustard, Giant Red.
Mustard, Mizuna.
Silver Beet Bright Lights.
Silverbeet Five Colour Mix.
Silverbeet Fordhook.
Rocket.
Mesclun, French Salad Mixed.
Broccoli, Italian Sprouting.
Leek, Lyon Prizetaker.
Spring Onion Red.
Pak Choy.
Tatsoi.
Cauliflower, All Year.
Cabbage, Sugarloaf.
Turnip, Early Purple.

Over the next few weeks the sow list:
Broad Beans - I know its late but I can try!
Snow Peas.
Garlic Chives.
1 starfruit seed (I hope it takes!).
Black Sapotes (Chocolate Pudding Fruit!)
Spring Onions.
Parsley.
Beetroot, Heirloom Mix. Red, Gold and White.
Beetroot, Baby Beets.
Beetroot, Chioggia. (Target)
Beetroot Crimson Globe.
Carrot, Harlequin. Yellow, Orange, White, Purple Nantes.
Carrot, All Seasons.
Carrot, Baby Pak.
Carrot, 3 Colour Purple.
Carrot Heirloom Mix.
Parsnip, Hollow Crown.
Radish, Easter Egg. Purple, Pink and White Egg Shaped.
Radish, Long Scarlet.
Radish, cross bred - see what happens!
Cucumber - Lebanese Mini Muncher.
Cucumber - Sweet and Striped.
Spinach Climbing Malabar Red.
Sunflower Yellow Pollenless.
Coriander.
Chives.
Oregano.
Basil.
Rockmelons.
Watermelons.
Dwarf Beans.
Pop's Super-Toms.
Paprika Capsicums.
Rosella.
Squash Mix.

Now that is one awfully big list to plant *but* as I said, a lot of my seeds went out of date due to us knowing we were moving and being unable to plant.  I doubt many are going to germinate but there is no harm in trying!  If they do... well we will eat well! hehe.

To expand our growing space I am hoping to get Aquaponics with NFT going along the whole of the back fence.  That should give us another 200 cup holes (4 levels of about 10 meters.)  Fish in an IBC clad with either wood and painted or colour bond like the fences.  The Lettuces, Silverbeets, Basil (in summer), Pak choy, tatsoi, mizuna and other greens will grow brilliantly here, freeing up garden beds for other edibles.  I would say we would be just about self sufficient for greens down there with staggered plantings.  The IBC would still need some media beds on top of it (prettied up of course) to help filter out solids... this will be great for tomatoes!

Looking at how far we have come in a year I am pretty proud of everything our family has done!  I hope that we can continue to expand our edible garden and sculpt it into something that is aesthetically pleasing for the neighbours too!

*hugs* Thanks for visiting,

Sarah

A wonderful weekend!

Tom kept his hands busy with saws, hammers, screws and the like and made me a box to store and organise my seeds!  Thanks Tom... I love it!  It currently has my seeds in which I now need to organise.  I was working out of a small esky which is fine until you need something lol.

Tom also planted our Dwarf Imperial Mandarine Tree out the front.... No photos since I wasn't quick enough to keep up!  So we now have a Dwarf Lemon, Sublime and Mandy in our citrus range!



Sadly one of our big bags of potatoes got decimated by caterpillars and the plants didn't make it :-(  So Brandon went ahead and harvested the potatoes... there weren't many but that was not surprising since they finished early.  Meanwhile I got on with topping up the new seed beds.  There was a lot of excitement when wriggly friends were found!  When we moved in we had straight sand (still do if you dig far enough) and NO worms!

Now our Raspberries have finally figured out it's winter and given us some beautiful red and orange foliage... Our strawberries are *still* confused!  We have a few red leaves but other than that they are still flowering profusely and producing lots of luscious fruit!

 On the subject of confusion... Our Purple beans are still growing and flowering?!?!  So along with peas I am sticking in more bean seeds!  The Sublime that looked so ill last winter is looking better (middle right of above picture) so let us hope for fruit this year!

So today, Sunday, we headed to Jetto's Patch!  Now the boys were none to sure about going but by the time we finished... well lets say they haven't stopped talking about it all afternoon.  We had a great tour of the garden by Dario and got to have a chat with Michele.  It was wonderful to see the variety for food that will grow here (despite people saying they wont!) and I believe it was an eye opener for the boys on the possibilities they could have at their doorstep!
(Photo care of Dario)


 The boys enjoyed the food forest especially the Starfruit, Tangelos and especially Cane Sugar!  So now our garden plan needs modifying to add these!  I planted out two cuttings of Cane Sugar just after we got back in front of the fence where it will get sun all day so cross your fingers that they decide to grow.

 Tom didn't know what to eat first!  The Tangelo's are already all gone!  Oh and Tom... Don't look behind you!  You have been busted!  Hehe  

 

Thanks so much to Michele and Dario for their time and sharing of knowledge and "tastes"!

This afternoon (or what was left of it) we headed back into the garden.  We potted up 4 baby curry leaf trees, a random tomato and planted lots of seeds that were way out of date, just incase.  (We had them then found out we had to move)  If they all come up we are in deep trouble.  Yellow Leaf Lettuce, Pak choy, Tatsoi, Mizuna, Red Mustard, Red Amaranth, stringless celery all went in.

Tomorrow while the boys are at school I will hopefully get time to put beetroots, carrots, black sapote and more rainbow chard in.

Now the funniest thing to happen today... I ate watercress... because I skipped lunch then went back to fill a pot with the potting mix at which point Rex.. all 40kg decided to try and find the "smell"... Yes ok that ended up with me in fits of laughter on the floor.  So I take Rex up to the hydroponics and give him some watercress... now he HATES greens... he will pick the peas out of his cooked dog food!  So he grabbed it and chewed it up and disappeared... came back for more... so I followed him he ripped all the leaves off and tried to kill it lol... glad he didn't do that to my head :-D

Happy Gardening *hugs*

Sarah

More treasure!

My youngest garden gnome and I have had a busy and productive day!  While I planted 16 Rainbow Chard, 8 Kale and 8 Cauliflowers into the front bed B was busy planting snow peas along the fence and then went treasure hunting... oh boy did he find some. A 2.3kg Sweet Potato hiding near the passionfruit vine... and some smaller ones that apparently needed harvesting now! :-)  Can anyone confirm for us these are japanese sweet potatoes?  Bright pink outside and white inside.

On my way out to the worm farm for some castings for the new seedlings I spied MORE flowers on Pop's Super Toms.  Shhhh NO-ONE tell them its winter! ;-)

I definitely need to make some watercress soup as my one little pot is now escaping from its grow bed since it's so happy!

Then I lifted the top floor off of the worm farm and went for the good level down the bottom... OHHH the whole thing was ready!  There were only two twigs and some egg shells left unprocessed in this whole layer and I only fished out two worms which were returned to the currently active layer.

It seems Rex and Balla Balla have found some treasure too!  Sadly it's the chook poo I put on the Curry leaf, Bay and Mulberry trees!  

Now keep your fingers crossed my seedlings don't get eaten by the crickets, slugs, snails, green caterpillars, hair black caterpillars, millepedes or salters lol... they have all discovered that we have a delicious smorgasbord on offer all year round.  Now if only the dogs would eat them!

Happy Gardening,
*hugs* Sarah

Preparation and maintenance!

Wow we have had the busiest day in our garden!  Mr T drilled old preserve lids and sawed some garden stakes for me and Mr B and I turned them into new plant labels!  We need to eat some more preserves to get some more lids now hehe... what a shame!

Well we have been busy getting the back garden back in order.. we are slowly getting there!

This is the mess I started with, grass in the garden beds, weeds everywhere, overgrown bushes... Everything grew wild while we were on holidays!  Below... much better!  Ok yes the first photo is better and we are working on the next ones!  Mr B and I put in two "garden beds" today.. tomorrow hopefully we will get time to plant some seeds in there!

Our Raspberries, Loganberries and blackberries are now labels thanks to the boys efforts!  The new dwarf pomegranate is currently under the kitchen window and Brandon's Dragon Fruit is now in a pot (with a layer of expanded clay then pearlite then potting mix) next to our heat sink - next doors garage wall.  It also got its own label.  It also looks like we get strawberries within a few days :-D  No one tell them its winter! 

Our fig cutting got potted up today and got labelled along with the Gold Cameron Apple (Pepino), Native Finger Lime and Mango!  I took our pineapple out of the pot today and popped it in ground in a higher light area... I am hoping it cheers it up a bit!

 B's Mint Collection got labelled, we have Chocolate Mint, Basil Mint and Common mint.  I also fertilised it with the Maxicrop (chook poo pellets) and gave it a sprinkle of Multicrops Snail Pellets that turn into Iron rather than anything nasty and also wont harm the dogs if they find any.

 Which is probably a good thing since my darling shadow is 2 steps behind me at all times hehe.  I would give you a picture of Balla but she was wagging so hard the whole image was blurry!  I did try 3 times lol.  B and I filled some seedling trays for seed sowing tomorrow or Saturday.

 We allowed some lettuces to goto seed in the hanging baskets and with all the rain woo hooo we have many, many babies!  We are going to need to pot these up or I may let them get a little bigger and pop them into a garden bed.

You will please forgive the fuzziness of some of these images, the light was fading and I had to use the software to lighten things up.  Also today we Multicropped (chook poo pellets) the whole of the back garden beds and tree pots.  Dug out two escapee Blackberries and popped them into a pot.  Potato E'd all the potatoes.  Use Multicrops Long Lasting Pyrethrum spray on some of the potato leaves, sweet potatoes, broad beans, lemon tree and passionfruit plants as our garden had a huge sudden onslaught of green caterpillars, black hairy caterpillars *and* black aphids being farmed by ants!  I at one point checked a potato plant and noticed damage, by the time I came back the 4 leaves it had had turned to two!  Squashed a green caterpillar and sprayed... hopefully it will recover.  Anyway its been a busy day ... thanks for stopping by!

*hugs*

Sarah

Better than asking for Toys!

Well my youngest Garden Gnome and I had a busy day shopping for a variety of things.  First stop was Bunnings as we ran out of our Hydroponics Grow Solution since we cleaned out our system yesterday... a very soggy, messy business involving washing out scourers and sponges (or filter system), scrubbing out the reservoir and hosing out the grow beds as per "Uncle Shane's" instructions! :-)  (Oh I digressed sorry!)

So of course I knew we wouldn't get out of Bunnings with just that... well I was reminded that we have two garden bed bags that need filling, so two 90L coir Garden Soil Bricks went in the trolley and then we looked for broad beans and peas... NONE in sight! :-(  There was however a great many other seeds!  Beetroot, Turnips, rainbow chard (which we never have enough off... who needs to say "eat your greens" when they are so pretty?), rocket and coriander.  At which point we had a discussion about our rocket having gone to seed and going bitter.... so since we like rocket on our burgers and Chris loves it in his salads we decided to head to the seedlings.  We got out with just two punnets which I am pretty happy about!  Rocket and I believe dwarf Cauliflowers... It is funny what kids like to grow!  (Might have something to do with cauliflower cheese me thinks!)  It was interesting to note the funny looks we were getting from adults as my Junior Gardener took charge and told me about each plant, checked out the different mints and compared their smells and textures... I think perhaps more kids should get out and do things in real life! :-p

Anyways we headed to shops next and somehow ended up in the garden section of Kmart lol (HOW did that happen? hmmmm).  Well ok we went in there to get two cheap pots as my blackberries have sent down two suckers again so we need to dig them up and contain them once again lol.  While we were getting our pots carrot seeds, baby beet seeds, leeks and sweet peas jumped into our trolley (with just a little help).

We go through a lot of everything we got seeds for so I am quite happy with todays choices but we are still in need of peas and broad beans... I have a feeling we might have a few pea seeds in our seed bank which I will locate tomorrow.  We also got another kids kit of stevia "lolly plant".  We have tried these twice so I am hoping third time a charm!

So tomorrow Mr B will be helping me hydrate the two coir blocks and make the new vege beds.  Transplant the new Dragon Fruit cutting we got from another gardener on the weekend and plant the new seedlings.

I am giving Mr T a few different tasks as he isn't so into the whole digging dirt and planting.  He is a power tools kinda guy ;-)  So my old preserving jar lids and some hard wood stakes are going to be (hopefully) joined to make plant markers.  He also gets to cut us some collars for the new seedlings to hold back the mulch!  The lawn edges also might need whipper-snipping!

If I get a spare hour I will move some more mulch into the back and one day start building the new aquaponic pond frame.  I can dream can't I?

On the weekend as I mentioned above we visited another gardener to pick up a Dwarf Pomegranate plant... It was lovely to see some elses edible garden odyssey!  We came away with a cutting of Dragon Fruit, a mango seedling, a vietnamese mint cutting, a fig cutting and a hopefully dormant rosella bush.  It seems the gardening community is full of lovely and generous people.  It is wonderful for my boys to be involved in this community... we regularly give away lemongrass, chocolate mint cuttings, mint cuttings, basil mint and sweet potato cuttings... so it is good to know it goes both ways!

Anyway... that is enough of me waffling on... time to go clean up the kitchen!

*hugs* Happy Gardening,
Sarah

Brandon is a jammy dodger!

So before we went away I sent my green thumbed garden gnome out with all the left over spuds from the last harvest *and* the supermarket ones that had more eyes than a room full of minions... figured not much would happen... went out in the garden yesterday and added mulching potatoes to my list for today... check out what is growing in the shadiest, most neglected corner of our little block!

Aside from these little spuds... Brandon and I planted two lots of potatoes... mine so far are a complete no show!  My little Green fingered and thumbed gnome has 5 up so far in the grow bed!  and the bags he planted are going great guns... I think we have found his calling hehe.

 Oh and my Cameron Apple (Pepino) is flowering!!!

That's it today... Happy Gardening *hugs*
Sarah

So much to do!

Well I got out in the garden this afternoon... Yay!  Thank you Pop for the Super Toms!  They have gone in the new grow bed in the hydroponics still in their pots so as not to disturb them too much.  The Bell siphon is working beautifully but I did push the pipe down so that there is a lot of air around the roots.


No one tell my Rhubarb it is winter... it seems happy as larry at the top of the NFT pipes.

Where did this lettuce come from?  LoL I did not plant it but oh well... into the salads :-D  Thymes still doing well as is the Oregano... all have been harvested from several times.

More shots of production central... English Spinach is now starting to hit its straps.. The Basil is still struggling but that isn't surprising with the cold weather we have been having.  Rocket... Egads spicy, piquant abundance... or is that glut?  Eating plenty but its growing faster than we can eat lol

 
 The original spring onions that were the roots from supermarket bought ones are still going strong!  Brandon gives them a hair cut for salads regularly and they just keep growing!  My garden helpers... and the reason for the red board in front of the reservoir...  I thought we had a huge leak... turned out Rex was drinking my hydroponics water instead of his drinking water! lol  I figured it wasn't so good for him so blocked it off and "leak" fixed! *chuckle*

 The whole set up... not huge but more greens than our family can eat!  Top level Strawberries and Rhubarb; Second level Oregano and Thyme; Level 3 Basil and Spinach; Level 4 Rainbow Chard (a great performer) and Rocket; Level 5 Chives and Rocket; Level 6 Kale, Spring Onions and lettuces.  I am eating Watercress daily but you could never tell!  What a wonderful crop.

I am thinking I should have washed the expanded clay today... my clean water now looks like a mud pit!  Oops!

My star performers... rainbow chard!  It ends up in so many salads, soups and side dishes... and still grows brilliantly and is beautiful too!

Ok so its not very pretty at the moment with my dog guard board but it is worth it for so much food!

Onto other garden news... I bandicooted around Brandon's random Potato patch... there are new potatoes right at the surface all through the leggy plants to tomorrow I will start hoofing mulch and bury them all nice and deep and use some more David Greys Potato E.  The Cameron Apple is flowering... there are radishes everywhere and the Ruby Loo's we planted are sprouting... No Delawares yet though.  The Lemongrass stems are huge so I need to divide them and give some to my lovely neighbour and make some lemon tea for us.
I am going to make some more hydroponics positions using foam boxes... I am thinking of making a few for Brandon's mints as they seem to like wet feet.  Aside from that everything needs a good fertilise and prune and the lawn needs weeding... lol one day :-)

Happy Gardening! *hugs* Sarah