Weekend gardening jobs, September 11 2021

September is the busiest month, to paraphrase T.S Eliot – for people in my game anyway. This means that I have to work most weekends until late October, just as the weather is warming up and the garden is singing to me. I have spent every day this week looking out of my office window at perfect Spring days, watching the irises in full bloom and hearing the rosellas fighting for supremacy on my roof with the currawongs (crazy birds). Spring is the absolute best season, in my view, and watching the first week of it go by from my desk was painful.

But, I also really enjoy having money to pay for food and my mortgage, so…

I decided that no matter the crippling deadlines, I would block out some time over this weekend to spend in the garden. 7am-12pm in fact. I woke up stupidly early for a Saturday, helped out of bed by my husband’s excellent coffee, waited for the grocery delivery to arrive (bang on time, thanks Coles!), then bolted out the door to visit the Big Green Shed.

The plan today was to prepare the soil for later Spring planting (think, tomatoes, chillies, beans, eggplant). The garden is still pretty full of greens, peas, some broccoli and cabbages, and loads of onions, so it was more a case of picking then feeding after. So I went to Bunnos to load up on Dynamic Lifter, seed raising mix, seaweed extract, and fish emulsion to feed the soil and the existing plants. I also bought some potting mix to refresh the balcony pots. We couldn’t resist buying a few chillies for the balcony to get started early, but I tried hard to avoid buying any plants this time around. It’s just a bit early yet.

Today I was very excited to discover the asparagus was ready to start picking. Asparagus is a plant for very patient gardeners.

You can’t pick it for two seasons after planting the crowns, no matter how tempted you are. To ensure healthy crops for up to twenty years after, you need to let the first two crops grow to fern and die down, to allow the crowns underground to build up energy. Year three is when that patience pays off: and I am finally in the third year now. I spotted the very first tip last week, and look how quickly four big spears grew in just a few days!

I also picked a big bowl of fresh garden veggies: cabbage, cauli, peas, onion, the first of the carrots planted in autumn, lettuce, parsley, and romanceso broccoli. Along with the asparagus, the onions, broccoli and herbs went straight into a delicious omelette for lunch when we were done (eggs from our chooks).

But before that fun, I had to do some necessary work: turning the compost, weeding, lightly trimming the lime tree, spreading Dynamic Lifter across the newly cleared soil, raking, giving the other plants a liquid feed, watering, and generally tidying up. I could have spent all day out there, but at midday I ~~turned into a pumpkin~~ pulled off the gum boots, came inside and cleaned up, made a bloody good veggie-filled omelette, and sat down at my desk.

Man, that garden looks good out there. Until next weekend, lovely plants.

Weekend Gardening jobs, May 22 and 23 2021

Boy, it’s been a while! I have been working so much lately that I have not been outside much, let alone out in my garden. I think the last time I really spent much time in the garden was Easter weekend. I have really, really missed it. I have seen it – from my office window. That is not the same thing at all.

This weekend I told my husband that no matter what happened, I was getting out into the garden. It also happened to be a very sunny and beautiful Autumn weekend, so that was lucky for me – but I would have gone out there in the hail, I was so desperate to dig in the dirt.

So much needed to be done after a month with no attention. I had to:

Repot plants on the balcony and remove Summer annual plants from the balcony garden;
Trim plants in the front and back garden (herbs, asparagus, etc);
Remove the last few pomegranates from the pomegranate tree;
Water and feed everything;
Weed the veggie patch;
Remove the dead Summer annual flowers from the backyard;
Plant out the last of the Autumn veggies before Winter sets in;
Finally plant the rest of the Sweet Peas before it’s too late;
Dig out the parsley plants that are setting seed.

That’s a lot!

Saturday

I started with the balcony garden, which was looking very sad. The eggplant and tomatoes were well and truly done, but had been sitting out there ready to move in to the compost for at least a month now. I pulled them out of their pots and removed half of the potting mix. I topped up each pot with fresh potting mix and soil wetter granules. Some of the pots I re-potted with a Dragon Fruit plant and climbing monstera, but the remainder I have left empty for now. I fed everything with liquid fertiliser. The full pots can stay out there over Winter, regularly watered, and I will plant them back up in the Springtime.

All the spent plants and old soil went into the green bin, because my compost bins are almost full.

I watered all the indoor plants and moved some around to make sure they get the best light.

Then I started on the weeding. Although I mulch well, the weeds still come up, so I started in the garlic patch and cleared the little weeds that had started to make their presence felt, along with the rogue potatoes from last year’s crappy potato plantings. I also noticed that the lime tree, which has a bad case of Citrus Leaf Miner, needed another spray of Pest Oil.

Lime leaves affected by Citrus Leaf Miner

Citrus Leaf Miner is a very annoying little critter that sucks all the goodness out of the leaves of citrus plants and weakens the tree. They are too small to see, but you can see the damage to the leaves: they look puckered and twisted, and if you look closely you can see the telltale tracks on the leaves. Of course because I have been out of the garden for so many weeks, I did not notice they had moved in until a couple of weeks ago when I was tossing something in the compost bin. I was cranky as, and gave the tree a spray of Eco Pest Oil, which is a natural pest oil spray. Pest Oil smothers the Citrus Leaf Miners and is organic. It doesn’t damage the tree, just coats the leaves so the little monsters cannot breathe. One coating is not enough to knock them off though, so today I needed to spray again.

The lime tree has been an ongoing hassle. When we first planted it, we grew it in a pot in our patio. It caught a shocking case of wooly scale, helped by farming ants. It took forever for us to get on top of it (again with Pest Oil). After finally clearing that, it didn’t really enjoy being in a pot or under the patio, and kept dropping its fruit. We planted in the garden, and this year we had our first crop of about twelve large juicy limes. Then the Citrus Leaf Miners moved in. We love limes (we eat a lot of Mexican food) so I am determined that this tree will survive.

Sunday

Today my first important job was to cut back the asparagus.

Asparagus should be allowed to set its fern at the end of the season, as this enables the plant to build its energy for next year’s spears. When the fern turns yellow in Autumn, it’s time to cut it back down. Cut it right back down to the ground. It looks horrible and messy while it is getting to this stage, but if you want asparagus, that’s the deal. The other part of the asparagus deal is that you can’t eat the spears for the first two years: you just have to let them run to fern. You also have to leave a couple of spears to run to fern each year. This will be my third season of asparagus this Spring, so we are finally able to eat the spears, and I will be very excited about it, let me tell you.

Note: If your asparagus fern grows little berries, it is a male plant and you won’t get as many spears or as delicious spears. Best to dig it up as soon as you can and try again. If you leave it for another year or so, you might not be able to dig it up as the root system will be very strong. That’s the other deal with asparagus: you plant it, you keep it.

I also cut back the Vietnamese mint, that had grown like crazy under the lime tree, but was now woody and horrible. Poor thing likes a lot of water and this season has been very dry. I managed to save a bit and it should come back ok.

I dug out all of last season’s dead and dying annual dahlias, some parsley that was running to seed (I have tons of it everywhere so I don’t worry about saving seed anymore), and then I fed the whole patch and the lime tree with a mix of pelletised chicken manure and blood and bone.

Then I had fun planting onion sets, pak choy, violas, more broccoli, lettuce seeds, snow peas, coriander, and a couple of hopeful packets of Sweet Peas. The veggie patch is really full now: I couldn’t cram anything else in there without pulling something else out.

I am saving space in Pie Corner for two dwarf plum trees, but it is too early for them to go in yet. I have another month at least: hopefully it will not be that long before I get out there again!

Gardening Jobs, Week beginning 21st July 2019

This week as my husband continued to work on the wall, I started to move two raised garden beds that are now in the way of the wall’s continued progress. I had to move the plants in the boxes (strawberries, lettuces, silverbeet, coriander, and some brassicas). That took a surprisingly long time! I was careful to disturb the roots as little as possible. You can see the mini greenhouse and an upturned raised bed down the end of the yard. My main issue now is, where to put them?

After all that planting, I weeded a little and used chopped lucerne to mulch around the rest of the brassicas and other plants I had recently moved. Everything looks so much happier with a little mulch around its roots. Looking forward to lots of delicious Spring veggies in about six weeks – especially that most delicious of all the brassicas, Romanesco broccoli. I have been patiently growing it from seed this year, so I hope it grows its little head off.

I planted out asparagus crowns today. These were a gift from my mother, who was moving her crowns due to a lack of space.

Asparagus is a great plant to grow if you have both room and patience. Believe it or not, I am starting to run out of room (never out of patience – for plants anyway. For people…possibly). I had just enough room to fit the asparagus, but it has meant I will have to sacrifice space for the potatoes. I might have to plant spuds in grow bags this year.

Personally, I love asparagus. It is one of my very favourite vegetables, but I have never grown it. It has been on my ‘to-do’ list. Then Mum had to move hers, and I was fortunate enough to inherit some of her crowns.

Asparagus is actually a herbaceous fern. It grows from a crown that is buried in the dirt, and takes about 18 months to produce useable spears. Once it produces, a single crown will produce asparagus for up to 20 years. This makes it a worthwhile investment in both space and effort.

The asparagus crowns look a bit like aliens. The spidery roots must be planted in a deep hole, in well manured or composted soil. Mum had wrapped these crowns in damp newspaper to keep them going before I had the time to plant them out, but to give them a pick-me-up before planting, I soaked each crown in a bucket of weak seaweed solution for about fifteen minutes.

Asparagus crown floating in a bucket of delicious seaweed extract

While these were soaking, I dug three pretty wide, deep holes. Organic Gardener magazine suggests the hole should be at least 20 cm deep. They also suggest digging a trench, but as my space was quite limited, a dug three separate holes as near each other as I could.

I found a spot for them in the back of my veggie patch, near my lime tree. They will be undisturbed there for as long as they need to start producing.

I placed my soaked crowns in the bottom of the hole, and covered with just enough dirt to cover all except the very top of the crown. I watered well with weak seaweed extract (about half a bucket), and then mulched lightly with chopped lucerne:

As the crown starts to grow, I will add some more soil over the top of it.

In the first year, the plant will produce a fern that I will leave to grow until they set seeds. Then I will chop them back right down at the end of the season. I will have to be patient and wait until the second year for the spears to start producing, and even then, I will not be able to harvest too many. I can harvest some, but let the plant again set the fern and seeds.

In the third year, I can go crazy and pick all I like! Then it will be an asparagus party, baby. Just like the Great Gatsby used to throw.