Weekend gardening jobs, 16 & 17 October 2021

If you’re a gardener, and if you want to grow a food forest, and if you are so inclined to partner up, can I recommend you seek out a person that can build stuff? Gardening requires a surprising amount of building and engineering, if you have a largish sized plot. Unfortunately, I am not an engineer. I know what I need, where I want it, and how it should look, but not how to build it. My husband, on the other hand, enjoys being outside and the results of gardening (i.e. the eating) but is not really into the digging, composting and planting. However, he is pretty great at figuring out how to build the things I need.

He recently finished the retaining wall, and has started to re-pave the backyard with recycled pavers (we want to build a backyard in-ground firepit for next Winter). But before he can continue that task, we are building trellises for all the backyard fruit trees and canes. This is a task that has been on my mind for about two years. I built short-term trellises to espalier our dwarf apple trees, but they look, well, craptacular.

The problems are many: star pickets look ugly, the wires were not strong enough and have started to sag, the trellis was quickly outgrown by the apple trees etc etc. It had to go. The trellis for the berry canes in Pie Corner was similarly horrible and the berries are just free-forming it all over the place (as you can see in the above photo). I have also recently planted several passionfruit plants that are going to outgrow the temporary trellises, and I have also recently planted dwarf plums that I wanted to espalier properly. Hence, I need a builder.

I did look for professional landscapers but they are booked out everywhere, and honestly my job is not large enough for most tradies to be interested in. Plus, my husband and I thought we could tackle it ourselves.

I watched several YouTube videos about building a trellis to espalier trees, and visited the Botanic Gardens to look at the way their very professional gardeners had done it. I still couldn’t figure it out. My husband watched the same YouTube video, and off we went to the Big Green Shed and in an hour we were back home with all the stuff we needed to build a trellis. Bloody hell. I mean, I love him.

I left him to it, and did the following:

Dug out enough compost from the two bins to add to an entire section of garden, which I lightly dug through and have left to settle.
Planted three varieties of climbing beans (Kentucky Wonder, Purple King, and Blue Lake) and one of dwarf beans (Yellow Wax).
Picked a whole heap of veggies for dinner, including carrots, broccoli, spinach, onions, and asparagus. I made an Ottolenghi spinach and feta pie for dinner, and it was amazeballs.
Planted beetroot, sunflower, carrots, and lettuce seeds, and pulled out some old spinach and coriander plants and fed them to the chooks.
Planted up a lovely pink calibrachoa for the front stoop, and watered all the balcony plants.
Fed the passionfruit with some fish emulsion and seaweed fertiliser, and cursed a bit when I saw some little critter has been having a nibble on them. Couldn’t find anything so I think it has gone away now.
Waved to all the bees, including at least a couple of native bees hovering among the flowers.
Admired the bronze iris that finally flowered after I thought all hope was lost.

An update in the trellis and espalier efforts next time.

Gardening jobs, October Long Weekend 2021

It’s the October long weekend here, which is one of my favourite mini-breaks. I love it because it’s Springtime in Southern Australia, a few months before Christmas, and we have a bit of time to get some things done around the garden.

It’s always great being in the garden at this time of year, because there are flowers everywhere. All the spring flowering bulbs are out, as well as my favourites, the sweet peas. This year I have three varieties in flower. They always make me feel happy.

This time I am not spending the whole weekend in the garden as I have a deadline, but I decided to take two full days off for the first time in…bloody ages actually.

I booked a big skip bin and my husband and I made plans to clear out our sheds of extraneous junk. A lot of the junk was left over from the guy that lived here before us (yes, still!), and from building our retaining wall and renovating our bathroom. Some of it is just from the accumulation of life.

We filled up a 4m cube bin really quickly. I would not say we are collectors, but it was kind of depressing how quickly we filled a pretty large bin.

The other job left over from building the retaining wall was moving the clean fill back to the garden. This has taken me many months, partly because it is a boring job, partly because there is a lot to move, and partly because it’s really hard. There’s only so much shovelling dirt into buckets and moving it around the garden I can do in one hit before this old lady collapses in a corner. However, this weekend I managed to clear a whole section. I am really happy about that. You can actually see the pathway next to the shed now. Only one section to go (the biggest, of course), then all I have to do is power wash the whole thing and it will look great. Or at least, not filthy.

Pumpkin Mounds

Some of the buckets of dirt went to build pumpkin mounds. Curcubits (pumpkins, zucchini, squash etc) are prone to powdery mildew, which is exacerbated by getting their leaves wet. A way to help prevent this is by planting them on little hills or mounds, then watering the base of the plant. I used the spare buckets of dirt (which was originally from my garden), to build hills. Then I mixed in a bit of compost, and planted pumpkin seeds in the top. I planted four types of pumpkins: Australian Butter, Queensland Blue, ye olde Butternut, and Buttercup. Hoping for a great pumpkin crop this year after last year’s sad effort.

I cleaned out the chicken coop, and let the chooks go for a wander while I did that. After I replaced their straw I went looking for them, calling out their “chookchookchook!” call that lets them know it’s time to come inside. One of them trundled along, but the others just called back and didn’t come back to the yard. After a bit of searching I found all three tucked up under a rhubarb bush, having a dust bath together. I decided to let them be. Twenty minutes later I caught them trying to dismantle a new pumpkin mound, and unceremoniously tossed them back in their pen. Naughty!

Seed Starting

It was raining on and off, so when it was raining I slipped undercover and planted up some seed trays for Summer veggies. This year I am not giving quite so much space to tomatoes, because I need the soil to recover from all the tomatoes I grew last season. It’s not good to grow tomatoes in the same spot, year-on-year. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a massive space, that reduces your tomato-growing opportunities. I will grow a few, but I just can’t grow as many. This year the plan is go hard on squashes and zucchini, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, corn and beans, as well as the necessary chillies and eggplant. Hopefully I can swap some of these with my brother, who always grows great tomatoes. So far I have planted:

Chilli Devil’s Tongue;
Tomato Sweet 100;
Tomato Moneymaker;
Tomato Jaune Flamme;
Onion Long Red Florence;
Corn Jubilee;
Cucumber Crystal Apple;
Cucumber Marketmore;
Melon Pocket; and
Watermelon Golden Midget.

The Devil’s Tongue are from seed I saved a couple of years ago, and that I am hoping are still viable. These were seriously great chillies. Lovely and hot, but still flavourful, and the most prolific plants I have ever grown. Fingers crossed at least some of the seeds grow.

I do not have the greatest of luck with cucumbers and melons, yet paradoxically have generally good fortune with pumpkins (last year notwithstanding). What works for one should technically work with the other, as they are related, however it doesn’t seem to be the case for me. Therefore I intend to give them yet another crack and try something different. Not entirely sure what that will be yet. If anyone has any suggestions to grow cracking cues and melons, I’m all ears.

These were planted up in trays with seed-raising mix. It’s a smidge cold still but I decided to give it a shot anyway – it’s the start of October after all, and if I wait too much longer it will be late November before I have plants large enough to plant out.

The rest of my garden space will be set aside for climbing beans and a little bit of space for some eggplant. I will wait until the end of October/early November to plant them. Once my major deadline is done in late October, I plan to have a week off and then it’s planting time. Can’t wait!

Weekend garden jobs, Sunday 28 February 2021

It’s the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn, and I spent the morning pulling out expiring tomato plants and prepping the soil for the next planting season. I listen to gardening podcasts while I do this, to inspire me for the tasks ahead.

I also picked the rest of the tomatoes, a couple of little onions that I discovered under some big old tomato plants, a couple of zucchini, about half a kilogram of fresh green beans, a small pumpkin, and four lovely eggplant. Sunday night I made curries using entirely homegrown veggies, which always makes me happy.

Seed raising

To get ready for the next planting period, I made my own seed-raising mix. I have not been happy with the ready-made seed-raising mix, which seems to dry out in five minutes flat. It dries out so quickly that if you forget to water even just once, your seeds will die and all your efforts will be for naught. While the failure to water is of course, arguably my own fault, I am a part-time gardener, and stuff happens. Life, work, kids, etc. I would like something that holds moisture just a bit. I made my own using what I already have in the shed: potting mix with added blood and bone, coir, and propagating sand. The addition of the coir holds the moisture, while the propagating sand enables good drainage. I used a brick of coir, soaked in a bucket of water, then added it to the other ingredients in a bucket in the following proportions:

1 part propagating sand (this is coarse washed river sand, not the sandpit sand);
2 parts coir;
2 parts potting mix.

I mixed this up in a bucket with a fork. I would not necessarily recommend making your own seed-raising mix if you do not happen to have all this stuff lying around your garden shed, but as I do, it took only a matter of minutes to throw it together. Also, it was much cheaper than the bags of ready-made seed-raising mix, and as I mentioned, I am not a fan of the ready-made stuff.

Of course in a pinch you can use regular old over the counter potting mix, but it really is too coarse for successful seed-raising. The fine coir and sand lightens up the chunky particles of the potting mix. Some people swear by jiffy pots or pellets for seed-raising, but I think they are not very good. I have run my own nerdy garden experiments and found the pellets have a lower germination rate than regular seed-raising mix by a factor of 2:1, and they cost twice the price.

Once made, I spread my homemade seed-raising mix into seedling trays and planted:

Onions Barletta;
Silverbeet Fordhook giant;
Cabbage Golden acre;
Broccoli Green sprouting; and
Broccoli Romanesco.

I will plant another lot of seeds next weekend, and continue for several more weeks while the weather is still warm. My goal this season is to plant early and to plant successively to ensure ongoing crops of some of my Winter favourites, such as turnips, romanesco broccoli, and homegrown onions (OMG really fresh bulb onions are so good). I also want a good crop of garlic this year: last year the garlic was extremely disappointing. I think I did not prep the soil well enough, so this year I am going all in preparing the soil for the garlic to be planted in May.

Garlic

Garlic is a heavy feeder. It loves nitrogen rich soil, so I am preparing the soil with compost and blood and bone. Next weekend I will dig through aged chicken manure from my healthy, free ranging chooks.

I have two bulbs of garlic purchased from the Digger’s Club shop in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, ready and waiting for my soil to be ready. You don’t need to buy garlic from a nursery; you can buy a regular bulb of garlic from the fruit and vegetable shop. The only rule is that it must be Australian grown garlic, not the cheaper imported garlic. Imported garlic has been treated with fungicide and should not be planted. Australian grown garlic is more expensive, but as one bulb will grow many plants, it is worth the expense of a few dollars for one bulb.

The only reason I like to buy it from a supplier like Digger’s is that they have different varieties, and I enjoy the fun of trying different kinds. Tbh I don’t know a lot about garlic varieties, but I still enjoy trying them. I tend toward the purple varieties, because…well, they are pretty. Otherwise, the Australian grown garlic from the shop is probably just as good and a bit cheaper than buying from a nursery.

I won’t be planting for a few months, so I will have a garden space that will sit fallow until then. The soil will be recovering from a high-demand crop of tomatoes, so it will do it good to rest and relax while I feed it up with nutrients, ready for the garlic crop. Then I will have to be patient while garlic, one of the longest growing crops of the year, takes it’s time. Patience is the key attribute of the gardener.

Fortunately for me, I have some space to grow my beloved Romanesco broccoli, and plenty of other jobs to take on over the next couple of weeks, including espaliering my apple trees (they have grown a lot and I need to re-do the previous job with stronger posts and wire), preparing the soil in Pie Corner for two dwarf plum trees (so excited – I love plums), and feeding the other fruit trees.

Oh – if anyone has any advice on mulberry trees, send it my way. Ours has been in the ground for almost five years now, and not a single crop. The apricot tree nearby had its best crop ever. I can’t work out what is going on with this tree! If it doesn’t start fruiting it’s starting to look like a very nice woodpile…

Finally! Rain!!

No posts for a few weeks, because it has been raining! It has been truly wonderful to see the soil soak up the water and the garden begin to look fresh and green again.

However, today was a warm and relatively dry day (24 degrees in the middle of May! Crazy!) so as soon as I could pull on a pair of jeans and a beanie, because even at 24 degrees I still feel the cold, I was out in the garden.

I really had no specific plans once I was out there, so I decided to dig a hole and see what the soil was like. Damp and beautiful, was the answer. The rain has really sunk through now and the soil was lovely.

I noticed that the lettuces I let go to seed have germinated, and there are baby lettuces everywhere. Some of my favourite little bulbs, Sparaxis or Harlequin Flower, have popped their heads up as well. Can’t wait for these beauties to flower for the third year running. At this point they have naturalised in the garden.

Sadly, there have been a couple of casualties of the extended dry. I had a magnificent creeping thyme plant that looks like it has been touched by a Dementor, and I am not sure it will recover. One of my rhubarb plants looks very sad. The rose bushes are still not established enough to cope with such extended dry weather.

I decided that today was a good day to plant out the lime tree I have had growing in a pot under my patio for the past two years. It has grown quickly but is quite spindly and just does not have the lushness that I would expect from two years of growth, even though it has been fed and loved. I think it needs full sun.

Digging the hole was fun. I have not dug a good, deep hole in a while. If you have the space, capability, and the time, I recommend it. Work has been busy and stressful, and I sit down most of the day. Digging a hole uses muscles that my sedentary body does not often exercise. I started sweating embarrassingly quickly.

When planting a tree, you should dig the hole twice the size (depth and width) of the root ball. Some gardener once said you should dig a fifty dollar hole for a ten dollar plant.

I placed the tree in the hole, and then ran the hose in the hole with the tree sitting in it, next to a brick of coir.

Coir is great stuff. It’s cheap as chips (a brick of it costs about two bucks from the Big Green Shed, and a bit more if you buy it from a smaller nursery). It’s organic and sustainable (a waste product of coconuts, made from the fibre, chopped up and compressed). When you wet it, it transforms to ten times its size by volume. You can then use it as a mulch, a planting medium for raising seedlings, or as an additive to potting mix to help retain moisture. In this instance, I was using it as an additive to the soil.

While the coir was expanding and the hole was filling slowly with water, I dug three bags of cow manure into a bed that has been lying fallow since the Summer. Then I planted broad beans (Aquadulce) and Dwarf Snow Peas into the beds. Last year I grew two varieties of broadies (Aquadulce and Crimson Flowered). While the Crimson Flowered were gorgeous, they did not crop that well.

Some people don’t like broadies – I do. They are good for the soil, being nitrogen-fixers, and they are lovely in pasta or made into pesto.

Once the hole had filled half way with water, I poured some seaweed extract into the hole, broke up half the coir brick and spread it around, and filled the hole back in. I trimmed off some of the lower, spindlier branches. The remaining coir brick I spread around the base as a mulch.

That’s it for today – hopefully tomorrow the rain will hold off just long enough for me to do some weeding and to plant out some window boxes of violas. Then let it rain once more.

Gardening jobs, Weekend 23 & 24 February 2019

It’s been a couple of years now since my grandmother passed away, and finally the roses I planted in memory of both sets of grandparents have started to flourish. The climbing Mr Lincoln rose was planted in memory of my grandmother who passed away when I was 16. I have also planted a climbing Pierre de Ronsard and climbing Gold Bunny, with the aim of having them climb the front of our house. They have all taken some time to establish, especially the Gold Bunny, which seems quite miserable most of the time. My grandfather’s Gold Bunny was magnificent, so I am hoping that mine will get over its current state and grow to be as beautiful as his was. By far, the happiest is the Pierre de Ronsard, which has already produced about a dozen beautiful blooms. The red rose pictured is the first of the Mr Lincoln roses we have had. My husband and I were so happy to see it appear. These plants are important to me as a living memorial of grandparents that each passed a love of gardening on to me.

Summer Roundup

Time in the garden has been rare over the past couple of weeks. I have been busy with work and family, and I am travelling for work again this week. Coupled with the intense heat we have experienced this Summer, my garden is looking quite sad.

This Summer has been one of the hottest on record, and we recorded the hottest day on record. We have had almost no rain to speak of. This has affected my vegetable garden more than the rest of the garden, which is well established. We almost lost a newly planted avocado tree, but my husband’s careful watering and shading of the tree has enabled it to recover, thank goodness. We did lose all our tomato plants in the end, which really grinds my corn. We had a great early start with the tomatoes, and then a week of intense heat with temperatures over 45 degrees, including a day of 47 degrees, really knocked them. Some plants died outright, and the rest never recovered. They continued producing fruit but the fruit didn’t properly mature. Even the chilli and zucchini plants, which are usually reliable producers, failed to produce.

The corn I planted this year produced, but cobs were smaller. Beans produced very few pods compared to previous years. We have plenty of pollinators in our garden, so I do not believe that was the problem. The soil was prepared properly, in the usual way. I believe that it was not possible for us to water enough to replace the loss of moisture caused by the extreme heat.

Successes

There were a couple of successes, however. Pumpkins sow themselves in our garden, popping up out of the compost. I let them ramble, because I have the space. I figure if they produce some pumpkins, that’s great, and if they don’t I have not lost anything. The vines help suppress the weeds and shade the soil.

Last year I grew Kent (also known as ‘Jap‘ in Australia) which I did plant, and Butternuts, which popped up on their own. This year, I appear to be growing a Kent-Butternut hybrid! It has the shape of a Butternut but the skin markings and colour of a Kent. I have not seen this before (others probably have) but for now I am calling it a Kenternut. Or should I call it a Butterkent? Either way, it is fruiting pretty prolifically and we are looking forward to trying it.

I’ll save some seeds of this mutant and see if I can grow it again next year.

The rhubarb plants I divided a couple of years ago have been growing great guns. I divided them again this weekend, as the plants are enormous and becoming crowded – something I might live to regret considering it is going to be another week of 40-plus degrees. We are eating rhubarb every week at this point, even in the Summer. I know some people don’t like it, but I have always loved the stuff. It’s best baked with some maple syrup and strawberries, served with custard.

Dividing rhubarb is very easy. Just dig up the plant, and hack it in half (or more) with a spade. Make sure each crown has a bit of root. Replant each piece. I have even planted a rhubarb crown I found on the ground several weeks after I dropped it there, and it still grew. It is pretty hard to stuff it up, which is why I am not too worried about doing it this week even in the hot weather.

The passionfruit (classic black) exploded with fruit this year. Our passionfruit vine is named Odette. We take great care of her, feeding and watering her regularly. She is enormous, brilliant green, and very healthy. This year she rewarded us with hundreds of passionfruit. We have given some away, frozen it, and of course, eaten it. My husband loves it, and so does our neighbour, so there is always someone willing to eat it daily. I freeze it in ice cube trays for when the weather is cooler. Then I will make passionfruit slice (my favourite) and shortbread.

The pomegranate tree (Pomegranate Azerbaijan) is producing for the first time. Having never grown them before, we were unsure how long it would take to produce (this is its third year). A major storm in September knocked the tree sideways, and we thought we had lost it. I staked it and it was able to recover. We are very much looking forward to our first pomegranates. Mostly I just love looking at them on the tree. They are so beautiful.

This Summer we also had our first real boysenberry crop. Afterwards, I pruned the spent canes and then had the fun job of disposing of the prickly prunings. Boysenberries are thorny and unpleasant vines, but I think this is why we were able to keep so many of the berries for ourselves instead of losing them to birds. No bird was brave enough to get in there and pinch one. I don’t blame them, being pricked by those thorns really hurts. I was stabbed on more than one occasion.

Finally this weekend, I turned the compost, and dug out the fresh compost to spread around the roses and newly divided rhubarb. I gave an extra helping to the Gold Bunny rose, in the hope that it will cheer the poor thing up.

For the next couple of weeks until the cooler weather sets in, we are on a care and maintenance plan for the garden. I am considering trialling a different planting regime for Autumn and Winter, given the change to the seasons we experienced last year: longer warm weather, much less rain, dry Winter. I think home gardeners need to adapt to climate change, but I am not sure yet how to do it. Our traditional practice of Autumn planting and Sprint planting needs to change. Any ideas?

Weekend jobs – 27th & 28th October 2018

“Why is it that every weekend we end up at a garden centre?” my husband muses, as we pull up at the Big Green Shed.

He’s exaggerating, frankly. Clearly, a tree nursery is not a garden centre.

And that place that sells the donkey poo is an organic apple farm that just happens to sell donkey manure by the bagful for a buck.

OK, the plant sale last week – that was at a garden centre. But the free sausage sizzle made it totally worthwhile. And today’s expedition for an additional compost Dalek was a necessary pitstop. War on waste, etc. Doing our bit, etc.

I’ll admit, as soon as the weather warmed up, it was like a switch flicked, and every weekend has been all gardening, all the time. It was as if I was a little kid with my nose pressed up against the glass, waiting until my mum told me I could go outside to play. As soon as I got the nod, I was out like a shot. Now I only come inside when the sun comes down. Or when I have to feed my kids.

Seriously though, who wants to be indoors in weather like this?

Anyway, we got the Dalek home, and my husband and I surveyed the veggie patch. So many jobs and not enough time to do everything that needed doing this week.

He offered to hill up the potatoes, which have been growing like crazy now that the weather is fine almost every day. The spuds are planted in a deep trench, and now that they have poked their heads up, they will need hilling to ensure continual growth. I left him to do that while I turned the compost, transferring the top layers in the old bin to the new bin, and digging the ready compost out to the garden.

The addition of pigeon poo (a friendly gift from my neighbour a few weeks ago) activated the compost so quickly that the bottom half of the bin was full of ready to use compost, while the top half needed to be moved over to the new bin. It’s a messy job, but I honestly don’t mind it. I put the ready compost around new tomato plants, on some mounds ready for zucchini plants, and in a bed I am preparing for tomatoes.

Now I have one half-empty compost bin, and another empty bin. Since we have started composting, we have reduced the household waste we send to landfill by half. Other changes, like switching to ground coffee from coffee pods, and leaf tea from teabags (mostly) has also helped. We still produce more waste than I am happy with, but composting is the single most-effective waste reducing effort that we have instituted in our household.

My husband picked the rest of the broad beans and broccoli – another kilogram of broccoli and 2.5 kilograms of broadies – and then went inside to shell and freeze them. Meanwhile, while I took on the task of mulching with sugarcane mulch. I only managed one bale today (we have at least three bales worth of mulching to do). It’s a huge task in our garden, and I will have to finish the rest next weekend.

Heading back out in the early evening to look over the garden, I noticed that the potatoes had already grown over the hilled soil and the mulch. No wonder spuds fed an entire nation!

Mind you, broad beans probably could too…

Gardening jobs – Weekend 13 & 14 October 2018

It’s halfway through Spring and the flowers are out in force. Bees are buzzing, lavender is going off it’s rocker in my garden – so much so that it self-seeds everywhere and I pull it out like a weed – and the whole garden smells like sweet pea flowers. It is a beautiful place to be right now.

Foreground: Thyme and lavender (pink) in flower

The Summer bearing fruit trees are starting to set fruit, and the Autumn bearing fruit trees are bursting into bud. The first blossoms burst on one of our apple trees today: an early variety called an Early Macintosh. This is its second year, and I am so excited to have fresh apples. The other apple tree, a Cox’s Orange Pippin, can’t be far behind.

This will be our first year of a decent apricot crop. The tree is three years old now. Last year, we scored about a dozen lovely, juicy apricots, but it is really this year that all our patience and care will be rewarded. As you can see from the photo above, the tree is heavily laden. Thinning sacrifices some fruit to make way for the rest of the fruit to develop. While I have no problem thinning carrots or onions, for some reason I can’t stand thinning fruit, so my husband did it for me.

My first job this weekend though was to give everything in pots and containers, including the raised beds, a feed of seaweed extract, Charlie Carp organic liquid fertiliser, and Go Go Juice, a liquid probiotic and soil conditioner. Go Go Juice is great stuff: a local company here in South Australia, Neutrog, makes it. It helps to nourish the soil as well as the plant.

After feeding the tomatoes, strawberries and chillies in containers, I planted out some new basil seeds – Cinnamon Basil, and Lettuce Leaf Basil. I planted these in the pots with the tomatoes and chillies, as basil is a good companion plant for these. I use a lot of basil in Summer for homemade pesto and salads, and I love trying new varieties. I could not resist trying Cinnamon Basil. It sounds so beautiful. Lettuce Leaf Basil apparently tastes and smells like regular basil, but grows larger, ruffled leaves.

Tomatoes, strawberries and chillies in pots

I planted out the tomato seedlings (Rouge de Marmande, and Red Truss) that I have been growing out over the past month. I bought these as seedlings in little punnets in early Spring, and then transplanted them into larger pots. This has given them the time to grow to larger, tougher plants, and for the soil to warm up properly. The soil up here in our Southern hills area of Adelaide really doesn’t warm up enough for Summer vegetables until now, so the tomatoes have been having a nice cozy time in our patio. The patio receives enough sun to keep them alive and growing, but is sheltered from wind and rain. I raise all my seedlings in there.

This extra time also gave me an opportunity to prepare the soil and harvest the last of the Spring greens and brassicas to make room for the tomato plants. I still have broccoli and broad beans in the garden, but over the past six weeks I have been slowly making way for the Summer vegetables.

This has included preparing a large bed for corn and beans. My husband dug through a couple of bags of donkey poo a few weeks ago, and we have let it sit since then. Today I dug it over again and planted two varieties of corn: Jubilee Corn, an F1 hybrid sweetcorn I grew last year with great success, and Painted Mountain Corn, an ancient heirloom variety, grown for popping. This corn was grown by First Nation peoples in the Americas before colonisation, and nearly became extinct until a concerted effort by seed savers in that country. The seeds of the Mountain Corn are beautiful, jewel-like things, coloured blue, purple, red and yellow. I almost hated to cover them with soil, but I cannot wait to see these plants grow.

I planted climbing beans alongside the corn. The beans will provide nitrogen to the growing corn, which is a very hungry plant, and the corn will support the beans as they grow. I planted two heirloom varieties: Scarlet Runner, a green bean that has beautiful red flowers, and Climbing Butter Beans, a yellow, waxy bean that has beautiful purplish black seeds.

The last little job was planting out some Golden Zucchini and two varieties of pumpkin. I am once again trying the Lakota pumpkin – in a different spot in the garden – but if it proves a dud again this year, I am giving up on it. I am also trying another heirloom called the Australian Butter, a squat, golden pumpkin with heavy ridges. It looks sort of like an orange Queensland Blue. Of course, I cannot go without planting the traditional Butternut, and last year’s big success, the Kent – but I ran out of time this weekend so that will be a job for next time. The fun thing about gardening is that there is always a next time: another job, another plant, another flower.

I picked another kilogram of broccoli, some broad beans, and peas for dinner. I love watching my kids tuck into a bowl of vegetables straight from the garden. I showed them how to slip the broad beans out of their skins (although when they are this young and tender, it’s not entirely necessary). They got a kick out of popping the slippery green beans out of the skins and slurping them up. Gardening creates fun, sensory food experiences for children. Plus the flavour of fresh peas straight from the garden is incomparable.

Just as I finished planting tomatoes and pumpkins, and went inside to shower the dirt of myself, the rains came down and stayed for quite a while. Grow, my pretties [insert cackle here].

Gardening jobs – Weekend 20 May 2018

The weather turned! And just like that, the rain set in, and with it, my ability to get outside in the garden much for a couple of weeks. I’m not complaining though – it has been lovely to have some rain on the roof and in the garden.

With the rain also came: weeds! So many weeds! So this weekend I really spend my Sunday morning out among the damp soil, hoeing weeds in my vegie patch.

Weeding is one of those gardening tasks that many people dislike, but I find it therapeutic. I think of it as an exercise in mindfulness. For my lovely plants to flourish, the weeds must be removed regularly, and we only hand weed at our place as we garden organically. I plod along, pulling out the weeds, and listening to a podcast and occasionally standing to stretch my back (boy, have I learned that lesson! A week in bed and months of physiotherapy are expensive and not worth repeating). As the weed pile in my rusty old wheelbarrow grows higher, the rows of happy plants grow neater, and I feel a sense of satisfaction that Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey called “the quiet mind.”

My friend, the things that do attain

The happy life be these, I find:

The riches left, not got with pain,

The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;

Of course it would have been better for Henry Howard if he had taken his own advice, but alas, too often we don’t.

After weeding about half the garden (the rest to be left for the upcoming weekend), I had the sad/happy task of removing the tomato and pumpkin vines, and picking the last of our very happy tomato and pumpkin crop. Look at the pile! I have more pumpkin vines than I can fit in our green bin, and more than I can cram in my compost. I think I will be discarding pumpkin vines slowly in the green bin for at least a few months.

pumpkin vines

The pumpkins were a wonderful success this year. We grew three varieties, with the Butternuts ‘volunteering’ from our compost, and the Kent grown from saved seed. I estimate over 40 kilograms of pumpkins harvested, with some now in our freezer and a couple left in storage in our pantry cellar. I gave a lovely Butternut to my sister, made some more pumpkin soup, as is the law, and cooked the smallest Butternut drizzled with maple syrup and olive oil with a roast chicken the other night. Yum!

Finally, I sowed more broad beans (I have warned my husband that this Spring will bring a plethora of broad beans!) and planted out some broccoli seedlings I have been raising. I am hoping against hope that they will survive slugs, snails and white cabbage moth caterpillars. I have more to plant out this weekend. I also thinned the beetroot and carrot seedlings. I hate thinning, but it is a necessary evil to sacrifice all those baby plants so the others can grow nice and strong.

I’m hoping for some lovely weather this Sunday so I can finish my weeding and plant out the rest of my seedlings, and then – bring forth the rain!

Weekend Jobs – Monday 12 March 2018

It was a long weekend here in South Australia, which means an extra day for – you guessed it – gardening!

I did a few little jobs on Sunday: feeding my fruit trees with an organic fruit and citrus blend, and then watering them heavily, and picking the last of our zucchini, and some eggplant ready for brinjal pickle. We have had a very dry Summer, and the trees required some extra food and water to get them through until the rain comes (and who knows when that will be?).

I picked just over a kilogram of eggplants. We have at least another five or six coming on, thanks to a late flush of Summer heat. We are growing a standard Black Beauty eggplant this year. I have tried growing an heirloom variety from Diggers called Listada di Gandia, but as with the San Marzano tomatoes, I planted the seed too late and only one of the plants is doing well. If I end up with one or two fruit from this one plant, I will be very happy. It’s a shame; I was looking forward to the beautiful purple and white striped fruit.

That being said, the Black Beauty has been prolific, with no pest problems. Seed catalogues and plant guides say to expect 4-6 fruit per plant, but our best plant has produced at least double this. We have four healthy plants and have eaten the fruit curried, in pasta, barbecued on skewers with haloumi, and as a layered ‘lasagne’ style with ricotta and yoghurt sauce. This time we have decided to make brinjal pickle, our favourite Indian condiment.

Brinjal is just the name that eggplant or aubergine is known by in South East Asia. The pickle is of Goan origin.

Having never made it before, I just found a recipe online that looked simple enough. My husband and I started it on Sunday, by chopping and salting the eggplant, and leaving to drain overnight. Then this morning after breakfast, we got to work. I recommend the recipe linked above, as it smelled amazing and was so easy that even our daughter helped out.

Then it was out to the backyard to remove the spent zucchini plants, dismantle the bean tripods, stripping off the dried bean pods to save for next year, and pick the last of the fresh beans for dinner. I also tied up the tomatoes again. The San Marzano I planted late seem unlikely to produce the huge harvest I was wishing for, but they will yield some fruit and we may end up with tomatoes for fresh pasta sauce for a few meals at least.

Once we removed the spent zucchini vines (discovering one last, giant zucchini under a leaf!), we assessed our pumpkin situation. We are growing Butternuts (I say “growing”, but that implies both effort and intent – these self-seeded and we have let them go their own way), Kent (in Australia also known as ‘Jap’), and Lakota. The Lakota is struggling, and I would probably not grow it again. The winner by far has been the Kent.

I saved the seeds from a Kent pumpkin I bought at the supermarket last year. Normally I roast pumpkin seeds (my family love them as a snack when roasted with olive oil and salt), but I managed to snaffle some away for the garden. I was not sure if they would grow, but they turned out to be very successful. When we pick this pumpkin this afternoon, I will make sure to save some of the seeds for next year. The huge vine is still producing baby pumpkins, and I expect to leave the plant in the ground for another six weeks at least.

We took a break and had a chat with our neighbour over the fence. He is a very keen gardener, and gave me the Giant Russian Sunflower seeds that were so successful this Summer. He did not have a lot of luck with his sunflowers this year, so we gave him a head of seeds from our collection drying on the shed roof. He has pigeons, chickens, and parrots, so was pretty happy to receive it. He also discovered a giant zucchini in his patch, so we had a good laugh comparing our finds. We will save the seed and swap. He is always experimenting with different gardening methods and soil mixes, and we spent a pleasant half an hour discussing soil, plans for garlic crops, and our successful plantings for the Summer. Best of all, he promised me a bag of pigeon poo from his aviary (pigeon poo is the king of compost activators). One of my favourite things about gardening is that it creates great relationships between gardeners.

The rest of the afternoon will be spent weeding, tidying up, and feeding the tomatoes, capsicum, and eggplant with a liquid blend of organic fish emulsion fertiliser, epsom salts, and seaweed tonic.

Seaweed tonic and Charlie Carp – turning the pests in the Murray River into something useful. Not shown: epsom salts

An occasional feeding of epsom salts is good for tomatoes. The high magnesium helps to ‘sweeten’ tomatoes in the fruiting stage. It also helps to prevent blossom end rot.

A perfect, sunshiny day of gardening finished with a delicious meal of five-spice roasted pork served with stir-fried beans and maple-roasted pumpkin from the garden. Doesn’t get much better than that, really.

Weekend Jobs – Saturday February 24 2018

This weekend was lovely and cool after a few weekdays of bright heat and sunshine. There was a tropical cyclone in Western Australia that caused heat and humidity here (but not a lot of rain, unfortunately), and the garden responded with a sudden burst of late Summer productivity. This meant that my Saturday morning job was to pick some veggies, including some unexpected Purple King beans, eight enormous zucchini, and some green capsicums. We have about six eggplants on the way and a plethora of flowers indicating another lovely crop coming, but I decided to leave the eggplant for another week.

Patience, my pet. Another week and you will be ready to go.

My fervent hope for the eggplants is to have enough to make Brinjal Pickle, the king of Goan condiments. So far we have picked eggplants consistently, but not enough to make a pickle – hopefully by next week there will be enough to make my spicy pickle wishes come true. My rule with pickles and jams is that I only make them if I grow the main ingredient myself. This is partly because I am a tightwad (why would I go to all that effort if I have to buy the ingredients?) and partly because I want the bragging rights (homemade! homegrown! all bow before the pickling queen!!!) If I cannot pull together enough eggplants, I will have to wait for next year.

Garden bounty — Purple King Beans, Lebanese Zucchini, Green Capsicum.

Purple King beans are a fun bean to grow. This is an old heirloom climbing variety that grows a pretty purple-green vine. I have grown dwarf beans in the past, but to be honest I do not have a lot of luck with them. I have found the yield to be low compared to the climbing variety.

This year my kids helped me to build some teepees from bamboo stakes, and we planted about twenty seeds. Don’t bother to plant the bean seedlings you sometimes see at nurseries – these are a straight ripoff. Beans should always be sown direct where you want them to grow from seed, and are great value. I bought my pack of seeds from The Reject Shop for less than two bucks. Most bean seeds that you buy are heirloom varieties, but you can check the packet. If the seed packet says ‘F1,’ that means it is a hybrid and you cannot save the seed for next year.

Of course, you can make sure your seeds are heirloom by buying them from a more reputable company than The Reject Shop! If I want a very rare variety, I go to The Diggers Club, but for the traditional old bean varieties like Purple King, Borlotti, or Scarlett Runner, you can get them easily from Bunnings or the discount shops with no problems and for a low price.

The Purple King is fun to grow because the beans grow purple as you can see in the photo above, but when they cook they turn green. It’s entertaining for kids to watch them cook and magically change colour.

Flavour-wise, they taste the same as regular green beans. Try not to let them grow too big – I let these grow a little too large for my taste, because I was busy this week and I actually did not realise there were so many there. It is late in the season and I was not expecting such a large second crop. Beans love hot weather and will only set fruit after they have a few days over thirty degrees centigrade, which is why we have had a second crop. I am a big fan of green beans, so I was happy to have a big crop. I blanched some for the freezer for later in the year, and I also gave some away. All up from our two “bean teepees”, we have picked about five kilograms of beans, which is not too bad for plants that are really “set and forget.”

These plants have required minimal care, aside from regular watering. We have a dripper hose set up around them and that is it. Beans do not need fertiliser, and although they can sometimes be susceptible to whitefly, we have not had that problem here. If we did, we would have used yellow sticky flypaper to deal with it.

The rest of my afternoon was spent grating zucchini for Zucchini and Haloumi burgers (dinner), making my patented zucchini chips (baton zucchini and crumb, then bake – serve with mayo and green chilli sauce), and Zucchini Chocolate bread. Tonight it’s Zucchini and Bean stirfry with honey soy chicken. We have never grown a zucchini plant like this one. Along with the pumpkins it has taken over the backyard. I thought about pulling it out the other day, but it keeps putting on new growth and adding new flowers. Until it stops doing that, I will leave it there and we will keep eating zucchini.

By the end of the Summer we will have eaten so much green food we will all be looking like The Hulk.