The Best Christmas Present Ever...

This year I got a my first tomato of the season off my yellow cherry tomato tumbler plant for Christmas, couldn't of thought of anything better!

Summer has arrived

The garden is coming along nicely at the moment with lots of growth and very exciting things happening.

One of the veggie beds that has tomatoes and the mammoth zucchini is going well. The parsley is strong and healthy and I'm trying to grow lemon grass again, hopefully it will go better this year then in past years.  

The rocket plants are getting bigger and I have my first zucchini flower! The Pumpkin is going better since I feed it with a top dressing of aged manure.

The Spacemaster cucumber has the beginnings of fruit on them. The lemon and lime trees all have healthy buds on them and the beans are flowering.

The mint I planted in the garden is starting to spread out just like I wanted and the chocolate mint in a re-purposed cooking pot is doing well. The mini mama capsicums and jalapeno chilli are strong and healthy but neither have turned red yet.

Shallots

This week I pulled up the shallots that I planted back in June. I lost one third of them to aphids that I tried to get rid of with water jets, soap spray and tomato leaf spray; but nothing helped. I'm very happy with the harvest I got from the rest of them though. I originally planted 10 white shallots and 10 red shallots and I've now got 40 in total! It could have been bigger but doubling my original output is still pretty good.

I wasn't entirely sure when I was supposed to harvest them as I read two conflicting times; before flowering and after the leaves had died and dried up. Half of them were about to flower and none of them looked like drying up any time soon. After pondering for 2 days I decided to pull them up even though the leaves hadn't dried up. They've been in the garage for a week now; and they look fine so I think I did the right thing.

Summer's almost here!

It felt like summer had already arrived yesterday with the sun shiny brightly and I got burnt for the first time this year! The garden is shaping up nicely with almost all of the summer veggies in with a little more space for more.

The garden is looking good with the big veggie bed exploding with red & baby cos lettuce, spinach and parsley.

Unfortunately the majority of my tomato seedlings went yellow and died, but I did manage to save the Tigerella and San Marzano seedlings and they're now in the ground. I bought some more tomatoes to fill the space where my seedlings should have gone; all up I've planted 10 tomato plants: 7 in the veggie beds and 3 in tubs. The tomatoes that are in the ground now are:
Cherry Varieties: Beams Yellow Pear, Wapsipinicon Peach, Tomatoberry, Sweetbite and Tumbling Yellow (which only grows to 40cm tall the tomatoes 'tumble' off the plant)
Standard Varieties: Tigerella, San Marzano, Grosse Lisse and Apollo

Out of the seedlings I stared earlier in the year I've planted out the wrinkled butternut pumpkin, spacemaster cucumber, costata zucchini, lemon basil, sweet basil, Thai basil and wild rocket. 

Wheel Barrow with nasturtiums and marigolds in flower, the pumpkin ladder and costata zucchini seedlings

I've also planted a  fire chilli (left), sweet mama capsicum (middle), mini mama capsicum (right) as well as a  jalapeno chilli and.sweet chocolate capsicum,

Pray Mantis

Progress Report

Everything has taken off with the warmer weather over the last few weeks so I thought I'd share some progress pictures. The pumpkins, basil, eggplant and tomatoes have all sprouted their first true set of leaves. Yesterday I transplanted the tomatoes into bigger containers and the sticky fly trap I put up has caught lots of flies! Unfortunately only 6 of my marigolds have survived a bug attack which is disappointing.

The wheel barrow is slowly bulking up; the nasturtiums are growing well, the Brahmi is creeping out and the thyme is flowering. The hellebore's and violets I planted recently are settling in well; and the lavender that I didn't think was going to survive is now in flower which is good to see. 

The Shallots are getting bigger and strong and have warded off an aphid attack very well. The Potatoes have grown to the top of the bags and are growing tall and strong. 

Last week I planted out the big veggie bed with the first lettuce, spinach and parsley that I've grown from seed. I also planted some red cos and marigolds with them that I bought. There are also lots of green strawberries on the newer strawberry plants. 

Crystal Beauty Red Fringed Tulips

My Red Fringed Tulips from Tesselaar have poped up in the last week and they are beautiful! Last year my tulips got attacked by aphids and I didn't see any, but I've kept a close eye on them this year and no aphids so far!

Seed Progress

It's almost been two week since I started all my seeds and half of them are already up and growing.  I do have mold growing on the outside of the peat pots and the pots made out of news paper which is a bit concerning. All the Tomato seedlings have sprouted as well as the pumpkin, marigolds, nasturtiums, chamomile and rocket. The eggplant, capsicum, lemon balm, malabar spinach, tomatillo and basil are yet to sprout.

My first set of successful seedlings!

The seedling set up in the garage. 

Progress Report

Here's a look at how the gardens going at the moment:

The over grown dwarf snow peas are slowly coming to an end; they got badly bashed around in the last storm we had. The potatoes have sprouted through and the wheel barrow has been planted up with edible flowers and herbs.

The hyacinths are long gone, but the tulips are just popping up.

 The red and brown shallots have all sprouted and are looking healthy so far. Unfortunately all my garlic has failed to thrive, gone limp and is now dying. This was such a blow to me because mum said garlic was fool proof!

The collection of mint living in the re-purposed cookware is thriving minus a small scale attack. There's common mint, apple mint, Vietnamese, spearmint and after dinner mint. Also the strawberry plants that I planted in May now have the biggest strawberries I've grown thus far.

Seed Starting

Spring is officially here! The long awaited September has finally rolled in and I've gotten straight to work on starting my seeds. I decided to try and start all of my summer veggies from seed this year as it's much cheaper. I've read plenty of books on how to successfully start seeds and I've almost perfected the art with lettuce and spinach seeds over the winter. Fingers crossed all goes well!

Here is a list of the seeds I've started in the garage under fluro lights:

• Basil: Sweet, Thai & Lemon.
• Chinese Giant Capsicum
• Eggplant; Listada Di Gandia
• Wrinkled Butternut Pumpkin
• Cherry Tomato: Cherry Roma, Brown Berry & Yellow Pear
• Standard Tomato: Tigerella, San Marzano
• Purple Tomatillo

 These are the seeds I started in the green house outside:

• Wild Rocket 
• Malabar Spinach
• Nasturtium
• Lemon Balm
• German Chamomile
• Marigold: Citrus mix & Red marietta

Even more mushrooms...

I know I've already blogged about my mushroom succuess but I just had to share the latest and first harvest from the white mushroom box. The harvest ended up weighting a total of 750g.

The previous posts can be found: here, here and here.

Determined

I was re-potting my lettuce seedlings yesterday when I discovered this little fighter. A discarded trimming had sprouted roots and was growing into the cardboard underneath!

Pretty Purple Flowers

It's been really pretty in the garden at the moment as I have quite a few flowers in bloom. In the house I grew up in the garden floor was carpeted in violets and I've really missed that this year. I couldn't find and seedlings in the nursery so I went over to my friends house and took some out of her front yard and replanted them into some pots. I never thought they'd flower so soon but they're all in bloom!

 Here are some pictures I've taken recently: The violets from my friends, My newly planted hardenbergia, some cheap but effective potted colour and my hyacinth bulbs.

I swear I didn't give it Steroids!

I've already shared  the success I've had with my swiss brown mushroom box, but I never thought I would get anything as big as this coming from it! It took about a week for the mushroom to get to this size. It's cap is 17cm in diameter and the stalk is 5cm wide!

Sprouts

Mum recently bought me a sprouter from The Diggers Club so I thought I would document my progress with it. I decided to used a mixed seed mix consisting of Adzuki Beans, Mung Beans, Lentils and Fenugreek that I picked up from Bunnings. The whole process sounded a bit labor intensive, but it really wasn't that bad. You start off by soaking about a tablespoon of seeds in water over night to loosen the exterior shells. Over the next 5-7 days you rinse the sprouts 3 times a day and tilt the jar so the water drains away. After that you have about half a cup of sprouts to use. We decided to use them in a couscous and chicken salad, they added a nice texture and crunch.

Here are the daily photos of the sprouts:

 

The Finished Product:

Make me beautiful

A few years ago I bought an orange art easel from revolve in Canberra for $5; I knew I would eventually find a good use for it and I finally have! I decided to turn it into a trellis to grow a purple hardenbergia up. All I had to do was drill some holes in the top, bottom and sides and then thread some wire through to make the trellis. The garden gets quite windy so I fixed some brackets to the legs and then hammed them into the ground with tent pegs and its as sturdy as can be!

Next to the art-easel-come-trellis is an old wheel barrow I picked up for $10 at the tip, I plan to plant it out with herbs for teas and edible plants when spring comes around. In the front of the photo are my bulbs that are slowly coming through.

Mushroom Progress

My mushroom box has kept me very excited over the last few weeks. I finally harvested the first 'flush' of mushrooms the other day and am now waiting for the next flush to come through. I've been so impressed by the Swiss brown mushroom box that I've bought another box from a local mushroom farmer that went along to the Mt Eliza Farmer's Market.

My Composting Solution

For the past month Dan and I have been putting out composting system to use. Since doing so we've cut our rubbish each week from 1.5 big garbage bags to only half a bag! We are now only throwing out non compostable items such as plastic and recycling paper, cardboard and metal.

Worm and Compost Buckets:

Our solution has 3 parts:

• The Worm Farm: All vegetable scraps excluding citrus, onions and garlic get fed to the worms. I generally feed the worms once a week and blend all their food up so its nice and mushy for them. The also get feed a 'fattener' once a week made up of chicken layer pellets, corn flour, powdered milk, agricultural lime and bran.

• Bokashi Bucket: Everything that can't be feed to the worms get put in the bokashi bucket, including small scraps of meat. This method ferments the food making it okay to put in the outside composter.
• The outside composter: This gets all the garden scraps plus the fermented bokashi bucket contents.

Garden Update

The weather's been horrible the last couple of weeks and today it was finally sunny so I decided to take some pictures of whats been happening in the garden. Everything is growing really slowly at the moment because of the lack of light so there's not much to show.

We've already picked 2 snow peas and there's 3 developing at the moment, very exciting! The newest plantings of dwarf snow peas are taking a lot longer than the first two, but they are getting there.

The two veggie beds with clever clover have started sprouting. They will eventually be dug throw to add nutrients to the soil.

The lettuce in the tub is coming along nicely. As you can see Mum helped me plant the rosemary and thyme along the side ally way.

Snow Peas

I've got three tubs of dwarf snow peas growing at the moment; they're all at different stages so I don't harvest them all at once! One of the tubs has started to flower and the other two are still growing. The packet said the peas would only get to 60cm so I made a tipi out of 1m stakes. The little buggers decided they wanted to expand there from limitation and grow bigger than 60cm so I've had to build a make shift cage around them to support them, it doesn't look pretty but its working for now. I've revised my tipi/cage configuration for the newest set of seedlings.

Mushrooms!

I was the garden shop the other day and stumbled across these mushroom boxes. There were two types too choose from: Shiitake and Swiss Brown mushrooms. The Shiitake mushrooms grown along a piece of wood which wouldn't be practical for my garage as the cats like to climb and explore over everything. The Swiss brown mushrooms grow in a box which is much more suited to my needs so i deiced to try that one out.

Above are the pictures of the Mushroom kit. When you open up the box there is a bag of brown castings which you add water to and then spread over the white web-like surface of the compost in the box. That's all there is to it. It's kept in a cool draft free spot out of the light and sprayed to keep moist. The instructions say you should get mushrooms in 2 to 3 weeks, fingers crossed and I'll keep you posted.

Garden Face Lift

When Dan and I first moved into this house 9 months ago the majority of the garden was taken over by 8 big coastal rosemary shrubs. They were taken out when we had to replace the back fence and because I didn't do anything with the vacant land straight away the weeds took over. We've been blessed with the very annoying Sour Sob which is very hard to get rid of and continues to re-appear. Over the last week when the weather has been surprisingly good Dan and I dug out every sour sob by hand and then placed wet newspaper down and 10cm of mulch on top of that. Hopefully this will smother the weeds and we won't see them again, fingers crossed.

 To divide the space up we've put 3 square meter veggie patches in. As its half way through winter and there isn't much we can plant in them that will be ready to harvest in time to plant the summer veggie crops. To make sure the weeds don't take over in the empty beds I've sewn some clever clover seeds that will be dug through just before we plant the spring crops. Clever clover acts as a green manure adding nitrogen to the soil. The middle patch has 10 golden shallots and 10 red shallots in it which will be ready around December.

Down the side of the fence in between the garage is a bit of a dead spot at the moment, there were agapanthus there but they didn't make it through the fence replacement. I've just mulched it for the mean time until mum comes down to help me choose shade loving plants to go there as it doesn't get any sun.