Next winter plans

- Plant sugar Bon Bon and cover with fine wire immediately, sparrows and snails will stunt or kill it and it will never ever grow.

- Red Russian, curly kale, Brussel sprouts, and purple broccoli. No dino kale or Georgia collard. Only 3 each max except broccoli. And SPACE them out.

- loads of broad beans as green manure. 

- cornflower is adored by the native bees

- as well as radish flowers, they are also pink and edible and the pods are loved by mother and Aunty. Give lots of sun and space out. 

- sorrel will barely tolerate high sun and brown. Borage will shrivel eventually and burn. 

- pick watermelon radish and daikon root young! 

- plant enough beets for 1 a fortnight is enough! 

- try winged bean and purple King bean again. 

Summer Gardening - Pot Compost Potting Mix!

Oh I'm hopeless!
I learned why my seedlings take forever to grow. REPOT THEM!

These seedlings are several months old! 

I repotted the baby tomatoes and the friendly black bird did dig around the seedlings, they find the friable compost topping irrisistable to search for insects, but none were unearthed as i planted them deeply!
Still have the gooseberries to go and quite a few other plants too. Will try get them done before christmas shopping tomorrow!
I'm trying to strike a bunch of plants and the mints are looking pretty crappy.
I had a swarm of these flies i have not identified yet.
I also put a pepino in the soil to see if it faired better than the pots. It's quite a drought tolerant plant i'm finding!
I managed to grow a pumpkin in an ICECREAM CONTAINER! I'm surprised too. Volunteer! I hope it will produce some female flowers though!

POT COMPOST POTTING MIX - Black, Friable, Nutrient Rich!
I also experimented with a cool new trick to make BEAUTIFUL dark soil for plants rich in organic matter- that means its good for pots because it holds water!
I collect banana peels (Potassium) and egg shells (Calcium) and just toss them all in a newspaper bottomed pot (as these are great for tomato season). I also grab plants I am pulling up (Ie the greens for beets, stray sunchoke stalks, broad beans and etc) and any trimmings i will cut up and place in a pot. THEN i put in a shove full of worms from the vermicompost tower and a layer of any dirt, even rubbish clay or sand. I then basically keep adding in clippings (grass or plants) and various scraps, and keep it watered. By the time it is full it is composed enough, nice and black and rich and i imagine my new plant will be really happy! I may need a top layer of soil to plant the seedlings in but that's it.

I'm super happy with how rich this soil came out, and with the edition of vermicompost, i can tell there was also some bacterial decomposition due to how dark it was (and vermicompost is a brownish, compost is more black). It looked so good I was super impressed. I've done this with grass clippings and soil and water in a cardboard box before, it only takes a few weeks to turn to a beautiful black mix.

Lettuce

Harvested some lettuce.

Planted out some scarlet runner bean near where I had the mouse melon.

Worm tea-ed my favourite.

Got some impressive (for me) beets maturing.

Hamburg Parsely - a taste test

Before I begin, dad dug these up early because he was amending the patch and the greens had been more than decimated by snails.

I microwaved them for about a minute and ate them, i still had a chinotto flavour in my mouth so that may have skewed the results. They were tiny, only a sample! haha...

 

Ok the ends were woody.
They taste like a weaker carrot with a peppery undertone without the spicyness and less sweet and an almost more starchy consistency, strangely getting a hint of banana though... Interesting. 

---NOTE I have never tasted parsnip other than in a soup once so it could very well taste like parsnip?

Make the most of your small garden space.

I have a space 5x7 with half being full shade. This is how i make do...

GO VERTICLE -
i plant pots on shelves, it quadruples the plants. Also planting trellises to keep vining plants vertical. And strawberries in recycled stacked 2 Lt bottles etc.

DOUBLE PURPOSE -
Hamburg parsely (root and leaves), entirely edible plants, like nasturtium or radishes (flowers, green seeds, leaves), strawberry spinach (berries and leaves),

BE CHOOSEY -
only plant the plants you actually love to eat

GO DWARF -
Plant mini varieties or heavily prune.

POTS -
put post on concrete that is otherwise useless.

PLANT SMART -
I have half of my patch in pretty much full shade, so i plant greens here to prevent them bolting early and keep them tender. Also broad beans and peas and other plants that aren't so warmth and sun thirsty like some alliums just for the greens. I also plant stuff under my fruit trees because I have no choice. I don't have problems with them competing too much but it's best to plant deeper rooting plants with trees i think.

HIGH YIELD VARIETIES -
plant high yielding plants like mouse melon and green tigerella to the most bang for your buck so to speak.

PACK IT IN -
but not too much so that things get starved for sun. It keeps weeds down and if you have good soil it actually works out well! Try not to monoculture too much and have patches about the place so pests don't find all your patches and you can have some untouched plants.

Replacing murdered seedlings

Sigh....

Well the birds, sun, and snails alike just won't give me a break!

I had to let some go and not even bother with replanting them. The uncharacteristic random boiling days fried a bunch of seedlings and my corn salad. That mache being fried, will leave a hole in my heart. Seriously my FAVOURITE green, the stems are tender and delicious. I love love love it so so much. I will definitely plant a huge crop. It is a magnet for leaf miner, but so is milk thistle so I purposely grow that too (the birds like the flower heads too!). So I did replant some later that I felt would be worth it.

Ok, I replanted the last lot of "Spring" seeds, even though summer is at our door. The last tomatoes and another cotton plant.

I bought lots of ornamentals from bunnings. It was the best fun. I'd love to create terrariums as a job in all seriousness. I did spot green zebra at bunnings, and they didn't lie on the internet when they said they produce the biggest crop. I'm super impressed!!!!

I looked into permiculture recently and I'm excited to work some things into my garden.

I feel this year everything is growing at half speed. I'm super anxious about it too.

Repotted the blueberries, thyme, got a caper bush, ...

I do hope my seedlings make it.

We will get cherries this year for the first time!

my beetroot and greens

my flowers

my beets, white and red, the white might be swiss chard...

spirooli veggies, nothing but the lemon from my garden.

brussel sprouts leaves are perfect for round wraps!

dog loves chroming the southern wormwood and so do i!

my daikon! Flowers and greens (not olives).

my dried stevia for sweetness! It came up after winter! YAY I should repot it thought it hates the sand.

my greens serves with a croquette.

yup, this was a bit ago but still.

daikons, they were all woody :(

Also Green Radish seed pods are edible?!  Spicey! Who knew!?

kale taller than I, only took 2 years!

native stingless bee

my daikon spirooli gluten free "pasta"

I think it looks like a Dr Zeus character! LOL

My entire carrot harvest so far.

I love a fresh cardboard pathway!

lentil bud

 

Yes I take screen cap photos from my instagram. :p I'm lazy, what can i say?!

 only got 2 poppies

 Sorry neighbours, no doubt you'll get borage popping up in your yard! 

 Kale went Ape this season!

This is how i weed.

SPRING HUSTLE

OH the hustle and bustle of spring!


I mad rushed planted seeds, waited a fortnight, realized barely any sprouted, and repeat. I like to plant them early, and also some late, just getting a range of "ages" to extend harvest and ensure germination if the weather is being weird.

Got my tomatoes in, gooseberries...etc

I really hoped to get capsicum this year, didn't happen, so i ran out of seed and gave up!

Birds attacked half of my seedlings and i had to replant!

The best seedling pots is newspaper THROUGH AND THROUGH.

Also I'm over Kale. LESSON LEARNED only 2 max of each kind of kale, you don't even like Kale anyway! (except as "pizza" chips)

 Did some weeding too...some plucking, some digging for this nasty heart shaped leaf rhizome one, and some smothering with cardboard:

I have seen an influx of a native bee here: They love the radish flowers and the cornflower so I may continue to plant cornflower (thought I haven't actively this year). Don't really want to dedicate too much to a plant that has 1 purpose, though it is edible I did NOT enjoy it so instead of being edible and bee attracting it is just one. (petals are tough and has barely any flavour). But it is pretty and my nephew loves it. So I wont pull out the existing one.

LOVED the watermelon radish. Tasted ok. Low calorie and so so pretty! I am trying to seed some, the flower is above, root below.

We are being run by these bunching onions. They are more like spring onions or even chives. A bit hopeless barely a bulb, not even worth it!!! I think I'll pull the lot out, slowly eating them, and then I will have some planted in a sandy area. ATM they are in almost every pot plant and just all over the place, it's excessive and I'd rather plant something else there.

I'm excited for some first time plants:
crimson forest onions, Salad burnet, Summer savoury (less spicy than the winter kind), brahmi, yacon, gooseberries, Oca / New Zealand Yam, strawberry spinach, winged bean (looks not promising), nigella (fail), black salsify, sage, toothache plant, dark opal basil, ...

Repeats: purple king bean, ...