Taking A Chance

That's what it feels like whenever I try to plant something in my vegie garden.

Last time I attempted this, nothing survived. :(

It's enough to make you give up.

Which I kind of did for a while.

Now I'm giving it another go.

On Thursday I planted:

Peas
Lettuce
Red Cabbage

All in seed form.

Time will tell if anything will grow (or whether it'll all once again get destroyed by bugs :( )

The Summer Garden Is Finally In

With going away and then the family health hiccups we've had, my poor garden has been totally neglected.

Last weekend, DH finally prepared the garden beds for me. We've built one of the beds up a level and topped up the second bed with compost. He also built me 3 strawberry beds.

On Wednesday I bought some seedlings and last night they went in.

Strawberries

I bought 5 more plants to bring our total number of strawberry plants to 10. Those that have survived from last year have increased in size so I'm hoping we'll do better with our strawberry yield this year.

DH used 3 truck tyres filled with compost for me to plant into. They're nice and close to the vegie garden so will hopefully get watered more there.



I bought one punnet of sweetheart plants (4 in the punnet) and a single plant in a variety I've not heard of before - Eureka. It's supposed to grow large fruit.

Tomatoes

I was disappointed with how the Roma Tomatoes yielded last year and the Diggers Heirloom punnet I bought didn't even survive. So this year I'm trying a couple of different varieties. Mighty Red and First Prize. Each came in a punnet of 4 so I have 8 tomato plants in. A couple are looking a little on the sad side so we'll see how many we end up with in a week or so.



Cucumber

Last year my cucumbers got choked out by overzealous zucchini so I've tried to give them more room this time. I planted apple cucumbers last year but the kids weren't real keen on them. This year I've stuck with lebanese cukes (which is what I normally buy from the supermarket).



Sweetcorn and Beans

I bought a different variety of sweetcorn this year called Tasty. Last year we grew a variety called Sweetest which had a combination of yellow and white kernels. I couldn't find seedlings for this variety this time so we're trying something different.



I read somewhere recently that if you plant your beans at the base of your sweetcorn plants, they can grow up the sweetcorn plant. My beans were a total flop last year so I'm giving this a go. I think the biggest problem was they struggled for water being right on the edge of the vegie patch. Hopefully this way they'll get some of the water.

Squash, Zucchini and Pumpkin

I bought a punnet of green squash plants to try this year. We quite like the small yellow button squash but it's quite expensive. I've never seen green button squash before so hopefully it tastes okay.



The only zucchini seedlings the store had were black jack and we didn't really like the blackjack zucchini I grew last year. I thought I had some green zucchini seeds at home but I don't so we don't have any zucchini in so far this year.

The pumpkins took over the vegie garden (and half the rest of the yard) last year so the plan was to plant them outside the yard in the orchard (where they can grow to their hearts content). Unfortunately, I don't have enough of the right soil out there yet so I haven't been able to plant. I did pop a couple of butternut seeds in the edge of the garden yesterday in case I don't get the chance to plant any others. The butternut plants weren't quite as big.

Why So Many Seedlings?

I usually try to plant seeds where possible and only buy seedlings for those plants that are harder to raise from seed (like sweetcorn and tomato) but time wasn't on my side this year so I've gone for more seedlings.

While I really want to learn to garden as frugally as possible, for now we have decided that we'd rather spend the money and actually grow something. There is so much more benefit from the garden than simply low cost food. We're going for freshness, nutrition and taste above money saving. Hopefully as my experience grows, we'll do better at gardening on a budget.

Garden Photo's

Thought it was time for another walk through my garden.



Red Cabbage (I have no idea why it isn't called purple cabbage but anyway...). This one I picked not long after I took the photo. It's still a bit on the small side but tastes really great.



Broccoli. My broccoli this year has done a little better than last year but still not brilliantly. This area of dirt is a bit tired and needs some compost added to it. Once the broccoli is finished, we plan to build it up a little higher with a trailer load of compost.


Farmboy got the fruit trees planted out. My idea of buying them and then he'd get around to doing the preparation work pretty much panned out. Originally I was going to wait for him to dig the holes before spending the money but realised that would put it on the never-never plan.

This is the Pink Lady Apple. We still need another apple for pollination but we couldn't get one at the time. I figured we'd start with this one and find a second one when we get a chance. I'm thinking I'd like a Granny Smith. According to the label, I can cross-pollinate with a Granny
Smith and they do make a nice cooking apple.


This is the apricot tree. I hope this goes well because we REALLY like stewed apricot, dried apricot and apricot jam (among other things).

The orchard is located outside the main backyard area. As you can imagine, we have plenty of room (being on a farm) but it's a matter of convenience and location of water supply as to the best place to put the orchard.

We've chosen the opposite side of the yard to the house. Which is close to where our Ozzi-Kleen waste water system is.


This is the only section of the Ozzi-Kleen you can see. The rest is buried below the ground. If you look closely, you can see the green backyard fence behind it.

ALL of our household water goes into this unit where it is treated. It then gets pumped out through a hose onto whatever section of the garden we choose.

Water is our biggest gardening challenge right now. Since we've moved here, we haven't had enough rain to even fill the rainwater tanks we currently have. Every summer it's touch and go whether or not we'll run out of water. So whatever the Ozzi-Kleen produces is about all the water I can have during summer.

Now that the front garden is pretty much established, I'm hoping that we can use the Ozzi-Kleen water on the fruit trees. It's considered safe to use on fruit trees but not so much for vegetable gardens (in case something gets into the food). Although I do tend to use it in the establishment phase of the vegetable garden.

And that's about all that is of interest in my garden right now.

The New Tenants are In

Well all but 1 of the sweetcorn roots systems have been removed from the patch I wanted to plant into this week. The one that is left is right against the edge of the patch and not in my way for now so I left it there. I still have the other half of the sweetcorn to do but right now there is pumpkin growing over the top so that will be a job for in a month or so. Oh, and I managed it all by MYSELF - didn't need the Sherrif after all!

I now have 5 broccoli seeds all warm and snuggly in their beds. Fingers crossed they all germinate and grow into lovely healthy plants.

Here's what they currently look like:

Last year we had a LOT of trouble with new broccoli seedlings getting eaten by bugs as they poked their little heads out of the ground. We eventually solved the problem by covering the seedlings with clear plastic bottles cut in half until they grew enough that

a) They were able to withstand a little chewing, and;
b) They didn't taste quite so sweet and juicy

Of course, by the time we finally got them to maturity it was a little late in the season to get decent florets from them (they were small and flowered really quickly as the weather warmed up).

So, I'm doing an experiment this time around by putting the bottles on straight away. This was a good way to mark exactly where I'd planted the seeds (I've tried other methods that haven't worked) and also allowed me to spread mulch around the area without worrying about it covered where the seeds needed to come up.

However, I'm not 100% sure if they'll let enough light through to germinate so this is all very experimental. Still, the worst that can happen is failure and we'll learn something. The best that can happen is success. I don't feel there's a lot to lose by giving it a go.

Fingers crossed we'll have some little broccoli seedlings soon! It sure looks like a snug little dwelling to move into. :)

The Seeds Are Up!!!!

8 Days!!!!

8 days ago I planted some pea seeds and some mignonette lettuce seeds and I've just checked the garden and they're UP!!!

I can't believe it!

I'm so glad I posted on the day I planted them because otherwise I'd have no idea how many days ago it was. See, this blog is working well already. :)

Of course, they may have come up yesterday or the day before but I hadn't even though to check them yet.

DOH!!!!

Seeing tiny little seedlings poking their heads out of the soil would HAVE to be my favourite part of gardening I think! :)

Planning Some Planting

My Moon Planting Guide for April has arrived so I'm getting all excited with some plans to plant in the next week or so. The weather seems to have taken a definite turn toward Autumn so I'm hoping to get some of my winter vegies in and up before the ground gets too cold.

This weeks plan is to dig over the part of the vegetable patch where the corn was growing. I do have one no dig garden bed but this one isn't and a lot of the corn stalks snapped off so I need to dig out some root system.

I've heard the broccoli seems to do well after corn so I'm going to plant some seeds and see what happens. According to my plan, April 2nd - 4th is a good time for planting broccoli.

Last year I had a LOT of trouble with bugs eating my seedlings as they popped out of the ground. By the time I figured out how to defeat them, the season was getting late and the crop was rather small. I'm hoping this year we'll do better. :)

Planting

I'm not sure if it's too early to be planting seeds for winter crops yet but I decided to pop a few seeds in the ground and see what happens.

So far I have planted 1 row of pea seeds - all along the fence line where they'll be able to climb (hopefully).

I also planted just a few mignonette lettuce seeds to see if it's cool enough for them yet. They're in the coolest part of the garden so fingers crossed.

Of course, a lot will depend on what the weather does in the next few weeks.

The garden bed wasn't built until May last year so I'm not used to what to plant in March and April. I am hoping though that if I get a few of the winter plants going earlier, they'll do a little better than we did last year.