A Rake's Progress

mutant tomatoes and everything else

2008-12-29T18:00:00.012+11:00

Isn't this a brilliant time of year in the garden? Frost is well and truly unlikely*, there's plenty of sunshine without it being punishingly hot, and everything's in fruit and flower. Including one of my tomatoes which has sprouted a strangely large yellow flower which I've never seen before on a tomato. I can't remember whether this one was a self-sown one or one of the seedlings given to me by a friend of my mum, but I think it's a bit of a mutant.

On Christmas day we put in a whole lot of Lemon Rush and Princess sunflowers which we'd raised in jiffy posts (see previous post). They're a bit boring looking in their rows but the reasoning behind the monotony was that we could support the lot with one stake at either end in a clothesline type arrangement. I knew there were a few submerged bricks but I was fairly horrified as to how many we found once we started digging. Anyone need bricks?

We manhandled up the dwarf fig tomato into a frame because it was spreading out of control and going right over/through the silverbeets and strawberries. Foolishly I'd assumed the "dwarf" thing meant it was a miniature variety but I think it only pertains to the actual fruit, which is indeed a tad on the smallish side. So the plant got well and truly bashed up getting pulled and shoved into a tomato frame but I think it will forgive us.

We put in the carrots (shown in jiffy pots in the previous post) in an drip-fed oval where we'd previously had spinach. You can barely see them in the ground so the right hand picture shows the close up.

While it was nice to have fresh baby spinach in salads it all seemed to bolt to seed very quickly despite constant picking of leaves. Maybe rocket rather than spinach in future salad plots. The great herb project, however, is a raging success. We are growing and using basil, chives, dill, kaffir lime leaves, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, tarragon and thyme. Mostly in salads but generally over everything. Lettuce is going crazy at the moment so if anyone wants, we has.

The red capsicum now has two fruits on it which will hopefully make it to red and ripe without being attacked by a beastie. Possibly about time I put a plastic bag around the fruit but I worry that this would steam them on a hot day and I'd come home to lightly steamed underripe capsicum with the skins all fallen off. I think the reason I never grow things like capsicum is that they're a lot of fuss for so little reward. All this for (maybe) two capsicums!

Figs are looking good, as are the apricots. The figs are actually very large and surprisingly syrupy for so early in the season. Last year at this time the first flush of fruit was spongy and not at all sweet. The apricots are massive and I ate the first one just this afternoon - happy to report it was sweet and juicy and just how you'd hope an apricot to be.

The Jap pumpkin (or Kabocha to those who wish to steer clear of the slightly racist horticultural terminology employed by Australia and New Zealand) is doing well and will hopefully start stealing ground from the rampant spearmint patch.

Exciting news in the kitchen is the addition of a big red plastic tomato mouli thing for making and preserving sugo and apricots. Preserving jars and books have been ordered from the internets. Woot!

* being Melbourne one is ill-advised to rule these things out, especially in print.

2008-12-07T17:41:00.010+11:00

Imagine if you will, the words "BEST. DAY. EVER." mumbled through a mouth full of free fairy floss.

And then imagine the words "BEST. DAY. EVER." mumbled through a mouth full of free fairy floss while standing in the new Coburg Bunnings. And imagine the words "BEST. DAY. EVER." mumbled through a mouth full of free fairy floss while standing in the new Coburg Bunnings while a jolly little band of professional merry makers and troubadours walk through the store spreading cheer and giving the place a carnival atmosphere.

And then you begin to get a sense of how awesome the BEST DAY EVER is.

It started with a sleep-in and a mild, but in no way debilitating, hangover. The sort of hangover that just gives you reason to sleep in, take it a bit easy and eat a bit of junk food for medicinal purposes. The morning saw us do a bit of extended newspaper reading and tea drinking in bed, a bit of an amble through the garden in pyjamas, a bit of baking cakes with lots of fresh cherries plopped into the batter.

SO FAR, SO GOOD.

Next, a trip to Bunnings was in the offing with zucchini seedlings, bird netting and Seasol to buy. Not wanting to go further than absolutely necessary we opted for the Gaffneys Road Bunnings, which is technically a Bunnings but not a Bunnings Warehouse. This makes it a second rate, or a "crap" Bunnings, especially in terms of their range of garden supplies. On arriving we noticed things were not quite right. The enormous gates were locked and there didn't seem to be anyone inside. The sign clearly indicated that they should be open for business. While we stood outside scratching our heads, other would-be customers came and went, all befuddled. Figuring finally that all the head scratching was coming to not much we set off down Gaffney's Road for Northland Bunnings.

BUT LO, WHAT MIRACLE DOTH APPEARETH BEFORE OUR VERY EYES!

A brand new Bunnings had popped out of the freshly poured car park a mere 800 metres down the road. And this was the full warehouse, aisles which went on forever and ever like the arsenal room in The Matrix or that warehouse where the Ark Of The Covenant is stored.

AND SO IT CAME TO PASS THAT WE ENTERED THE HOUSE OF BUNNINGS AND WE ATE OF THE FAIRY FLOSS.

And bought the seedlings, seeds, peat pots, etc. So arriving home in a post retail high (or was that the fairy floss LOL) we set about doing some of this:

We got seeds for purple carrots, regular carrots and two varieties of sunflowers.

A very impromptu sort-of greenhouse was formed by sandwiching the Jiffy Pots between two plastic storage bin lids.

We're going to try a new fine leafed basil called "Spicy Globe". Also got some more marigolds: we planted some about 6 weeks ago and some bloody snails thought the leaves were really delicious.

This is the bird netting in action. Well, not in action in any real sense - for that I'd have to get a shot of a bird swooping down to eat something in the garden but being foiled by the netting he'd have to swoop off again, pretending that he was actually just larking about to save face. We really only wanted it to cover a small patch of strawberries but when we took it out of the pack and realised it was 4m x 4m we decided on a "big top" type arrangement with a tomato frame propping up the centre.

The eggplants are coming along well this year with a few fruits forming already.

Things are looking a bit sparse - I have to keep reminding myself that it's only just the beginning of summer and there's plenty of growing time left in the season. Hopefully we'll get some joy from the carrots and sunflowers because I've never grown them before.

Will keep you posted.

time for a little update...

2008-12-05T21:43:00.008+11:00

My summer veggie garden is a little less ambitious this year. Until we get a water tank, the veggies are all watered by hand from a bucket - something that restricts the number of plants I've time to nurture. Grey water goes on the fruit trees (um, there's a few of them now...). I head off to work on one of the permitted watering mornings and the other is my one sleep-in morning of the week and much as I love my garden I'm not prepared to set the alarm clock for it just yet.

The plus side of this style of watering is the way it forces one to consider which plants are worth hanging onto. The raspberries are now gone, they gave so little fruit for the water they needed, and I'm debating how much I need a red currant bush.

Our poor old shed has no gutter so I collect the water that drips off it with the my collection of buckets. The last downpour was enough that the the green wheelie bin was filled as well. Will probably empty the last of it tomorrow.

Tomatoes dominate the garden. The first I planted was a cultivar called 'Stupice'. The bloke at the market stall said it could withstand frosts and I'd have fruit before Christmas, and he was right. Not perhaps the tastiest tomatoes and they are on the smaller side but it's not something I've ever achieved before, and I plan to save some seeds and grow a couple next year. Probably not so clear in my photo, but the leaves have far fewer leaflets than a typical tomato, the plant looks quite distinctive.

The bulk of what I'm growing is a San Marzano - the fruit above is is what I usually grow from seed from the local Italian supermarket. This year I'm also trying out a variety from Greenpatch Organic Seeds 'San Marzano Lapadina' (see the photo below). Both are intended to be cooked down and bottled. I've trying out a couple of plants of 'Daydream' from Eden seeds, no fruit there yet, and one plant has succumbed to a virus and been ripped out.

There are two zucchini plants which are already producing ferociously...

some Lebanese cucumbers and some pickling cucumbers - the prickly little fruit below (yesterday I attempted my first batch of cornichons)...

and a couple of yellow peppers which seem I have less trouble with than capsicums (plus my bloke makes a very nice dish with chorizo with these).

Then there's half a garden bed of spuds, Dutch Cream, my favourite at the moment. I don't know much about growing potatoes, I've just dug them in, mulched heavily and left them to their own devices. They look really perky so I've not been watering them.

And finally a small bed with a mix of salady things, rocket gone to seed, and some of the best spinach I've grown. It's gone a little yellow and sad in the last month, but we've harvested masses of leaves from it. I've had little luck growing it from seed - these were seedlings from the bloke at the farmer's market at Collingwood Children's farm that sold me the Stupice tomato.

Fruit-wise there are 6 apples on the dwarf apple tree, lots of divine apricots which will be ready soon, lots of blood plums and a sadness for my missing pears. The cute little buggers were there one day and gone the next, and I've no idea what happened, they certainly weren't ripe enough for birds. I planted the tree about six years ago and this was its first ever fruit.....

The blood plum tree and some of the plants around it have this odd yellowing to their leaves. I've been puzzling for a while as to what might be wrong, when by chance I read somewhere about nutrient deficiencies caused by alkaline soil which lead to this sort of yellowing. As the backyard was full of bits of concrete before we dug it up I suspect this may be the problem.

Another mystery is the mulberry tree. It fruits prolifically (below are some immature berries), but the fruit are utterly bland and tasteless. I've tried watering more, and not at all with no change. If I can't work out what's going on by autumn I think it might get replaced.

What A Difference A Day Makes

2008-12-04T08:42:00.004+11:00

Well, well! Thank goodness for the Kevin Rudd Surf Team, as I now have time to throw myself headfirst into the gardening before it gets too hot (= vegetables for Christmas lunch... maybe) and a major working bee was had yesterday from midday onwards. Remember what the back yard looked like before? Check it out after a day fuelled by Huggie on Gold FM with the radio sticking out of the bathroom window:

But as Talking Heads said, how did I get here? Well, I'm glad you asked. The first star of this amazing makeover has to be my trusty mini-greenhouse. Bought from Bunnings many years ago for about $25, it's moved with me from house to house and is a fabulous way to raise seeds and oompf-up seedlings before planting them. Smile for the camera:

I keep bowls of water at the base of the house, mainly to keep the climate humid, but also to catch any runoff from watering and save it for use somewhere else in the garden.

And inside, its precious cargo:

As you can see, I've currently got some rocket and basil seeds coming up. The parsley seems to have gone dormant but that's not much of a drama. Today I'll be sowing some carrots and zucchinis, too.

Back to the garden! Upon consultation with a Bunnings fellow who had not one but eleven Outstanding Customer Service medals on his apron, I decided that building up the plots would be a) too expensive and b) take longer than I'd like, so we decided upon doing a modified version of the 'rows' mounded up by commercial growers. Here they are in the beginning stages:

I stomped down the 'walkways' between them and laid in some wet newspaper and mulch/tanbark from the front yard (yes, Super Mario's "pruning" leftovers), patting it up the sides for a little extra strength. Then I dug in some organic potting mix at the top of the rows to give the prepared soil a little sum'n sum'n:

Then the vegetables started going in! Above you can see the three tomato varieties that I've been bringing up in the greenhouse, and some baby corns along the back. That wall (photo taken at 6pm) gets sunlight for the bulk of the day and will be great for sun-loving vegetable frenz. I have some potted chives for companion planting, as well as some insect-repellent pelargoniums nearby. Eventually the basil will go between the tomatoes and the corn.

Finally, as you saw in the first photo, the pea straw went on and one third of the backyard was finito! Now it's time to enjoy my favourite bit of compost bag artwork ever:

More updates after today's continued working bee!

The Beginning Of A "Beautiful" Friendship

2008-12-03T08:47:00.005+11:00

The bloke and I just moved into a delightful West Preston house with both a front and back yard. Having lived in concrete boxes and flats for the past five years, you'd think this would be cause for whooping in the streets.

Unfortunately, the previous tenant did everything they could to destroy the garden: concrete "tiles" compacting the dirt! "Pruning" the trees with a chainsaw! Tipping paint into the planter boxes!! (Then the landlord came and "pruned" some more trees, leaving stumps and piles of mulch and tragic, amputated leaves. I cried for an hour.)

This is the front yard (or at least, the bit that we'll plant):

As you can see, unimaginitive '80s "ornamental" planting (read: lame state school "garden area" trees that no one likes) and totally buggered soil full of couch grass and deathly looking violet tubers hanging on for dear life. That metal pole? That's the TV aerial!

And out the back (the bloke had arranged the tiles into their eventual final resting place under the washing "line", the extra tiles had covered the rest of the soil):

I could barely get my shovel in more than 5cm! However! Onward and upward, and after a few good rains, the soil softened up enough to be dug and then have the first of many bags of organic matter/rotted cow poo/mulch from the landlord's "pruning" applied:

Looking better already, non? Since then (two weeks ago), more poo/mulch/etc has been dug in, and I've started some seeds and seedlings in the mini greenhouse while they wait for the soil to be ready. I haven't even started thinking about the front yard yet; first things first.

Stay tuned for updates!

garden update

2008-01-18T08:33:00.000+11:00

Hello gentle reader! A long while between updates I know, but I picked these little beauties this morning from one of my 4 delightfully fruity tomato bushes and couldn't not share them with you. The variety is Mighty Red, which has proven to be the early fruiter out of the four. The others are Apollo 3, Grosse Lisse and Roma (green fruit pictured in abundance, below).

Also picked up these great olive tins and planted three varieties of cherry tomato. Fruit is a bit sparse but extremely sweet and juicy.

So here's the garden overview. The big garden plans were put into effect exactly as drawn up and it all seemed to work out great. We had the addition of a scarecrow which didn't seem to scare anyone but me. Compared to the bleak "before" picture I think it's all pretty gret, aktuly. The fake turf is courtesy of my work. Officially, it's "lawn on loan". Unofficially, I'd be very unhappy to see it go back given that it's doing a great job of hiding a large expanse of cracked grey concrete. A lovely outdoor rug. Which is what good lawn should be. Even good fake lawn.

Ebay came through for us when we were looking for a big outdoor seating area for outside. $126! Seats 10 - 12! Chunky! We parked it under the fig tree...

So you look up and see this...

And soon you'll be able to reach out and pick these.

Looking up the fence you get a better view of the scarecrow *shudders* and the corn. I has a corm! Many to be picked tonight to go with us to a mate's bbq. Chives in front of the corn.

Baby eggplants! Awwww.

And the mighty green zucchini machine. This tireless baby just keeps pumping out the zukes.

And lastly, some basil. Just starting to get seed heads so I might have to pull up the lot if I wanta batch of pesto before it goes 'leggy'.

All in all, yum. God I love summer. Not the heat. Just the produce.

permablitz

2007-09-09T08:43:00.000+10:00

A new thing seems to be taking off in Melbourne, and will hopefully be the kind of thing that catches on elsewhere. It's called Permablitz - a Backyard Blitz done with permaculture principles to provide an edible garden. You can have an informal Permablitz (actually I think I'd rather start using a small 'p' here - no need to make this a trademark) with just two people or you can go the whole hog and hook up with the permablitz society. There's a calendar of blitzes and workshops in permaculture you can attend. The whole thing is so community building and friendly it brings a tear to the eye.

*sniff*

I've personally done plenty of solo blitzes on the various rental house gardens I've tended over the years, but I'm not so sure how perma they were. I've got Bill Mollison's essential guides on the bookshelf but I've always just planned my gardens in a way that makes sense to me. My more recent plan is being drawn out into the soil today, so I guess its a solo blitz once again unless I call in for help. I kind of like the solo blitz though.

http://www.permablitz.net/

sakura

2007-09-08T08:48:00.000+10:00

Now if it fruits this summer I'll know what kind of tree it is.

weed and seed

2007-09-05T16:02:00.000+10:00

This afternoon I've been getting rid of the weeds I've let run wild over the winter months. I figure they're mulch and it would be a losing battle to try to keep the otherwise bare soil from sprouting dandelion, chickweed, various seedy grasses, etc. I noticed the baby beetroot I was growing primarily as a salad leaf was virtually pushing itself out of the earth so I harvested the lot.

Borscht anyone?

I'm pretty happy overall with the fruits of my lazy winter efforts. Considering I only put a couple of days work in Autumn I've had quite a lot of produce. My broccoli was the surprise boomer with 6 out of 8 plants surviving, and each plant producing a minimum of four good sized heads of very nice broccoli. Don't know why they weren't hit with slugs and cabbage moth like all my other efforts at growing broccoli, but whatever the reason, I'm happy.

big plans

2007-09-04T20:51:00.000+10:00

Big plans are afoot for the summer garden. A new outdoor dining setting and a string of glorious early spring days was enough impetus to get the pen and paper out, followed by some extra work with Illustrator.

The concentric circles radiate out from the Hills Hoist so I can mark the beds out pretty easily with a stick on a string. The stuff under the clothes line has to be reasonably low growing so clothes don't flap all over the plants to the detriment of both.

There's an intricate grey water drip system underlying all this planting. Now that I'm ready so early I'm considering doing the whole thing from seed to save some money.

Egg-citing!

2007-08-28T11:28:00.000+10:00

The chooks ate my brocoli, an affront that was, quite frankly, a bit hard to swallow, seeing as they had never deigned to lay me even one itsy-bitsy egg.

All is forgiven though as the onset of the warm spring-ish weather has tipped some deeply-rooted switch and at least two of them are now laying regularly. For a bantam, regularly, is one wee egg every second day. One of them however has gone into over-achiever mode and laid three days in a row. I know, because the clucking associated with laying is still enough of a novelty to send me racing out the back-door to check on who has perched herself on one of the boxes.

Hopefully the other two will follow suit soon. Four bantams should give us two bantam eggs per day which is equivalent to one large egg per day. That's plenty, in general we only eat eggs on weekends and for occasional baking. The eggs themselves are delicious and Andrew from Andrews stock feeds in Sydney Rd tells me that they will increase slightly in size after the first 25 or so have been laid.

The chooks eat Andrew's organic layer pellets, seeds, kitchen scraps and the lawn, not to mention the occasional broccoli. They also get to scratch throughout the garden feasting on worms, slaters and other delicious things. I'm growing some comfrey from seed at the moment to plant around the garden. I'm hoping this will a.) distract them from broccoli and other vegetables and b.) entice them to spend more time scratching under the fruit trees.

Cima di Rapa or whatever it's called

2007-07-19T22:17:00.000+10:00

I can't resist purchasing veggies seeds when they are something I've not tried before. Sometimes this doesn't end well. Last year I grew chicory for the first time. Not knowing they have incredibly long tap-roots I had a wee bit of trouble later removing those we didn't eat. I found this packet somewhere locally, probably one of the nearby Italian supermarkets.

I'm not quite sure what to call this plant, I've seen it referred to as rapini, broccoli rabe or raab, turnip greens or turnip top. I noticed someone mentioning that although it has a habit similar to broccoli, it is botanically closer to the turnip. Make of that what you will. Anyway it was a cinch to grow, I put the seeds in just before we got that bit of rain and thinned them out when it was obvious that I'd oversown. That was pretty much it. On the packet it claims it can be grown throughout the year, with best results with autumn sowings.

Two months later it was ready to eat. I noticed on the seed packet the whole plant can be eaten, I just trimmed off the bits that looked like broccoli. It tastes somewhat bitter and mustardy, nothing like broccoli, and the larger leaves seemed even stronger. I found that steamed, it was somewhat too pungent for my liking, but quickly boiled in salted water it was delicious. I haven't tried this yet, but the idea of eating it with pasta and anchovies really appeals. Now I just have to find out how to get my four year old to eat it; and work out what to call it....

Beginner 101

2007-06-29T13:23:00.000+10:00

Fluffy sent me an invitation to blog on A Rake's Progress and you will immediately sense just how organised I am when I tell you it has only taken me 45 days to find my blogger login details. This is the same organisation and efficency I like to bring to gardening so be warned.

Coincidentally, just like din (below) I too am a woman with chooks, a vegie garden (on the left), fruit trees and an-almost-4-year-old. One of my chooks is even called Olive! There I'm afraid the likeness ends. While din is obviously a woman who knows what she is doing, our garden by comparison looks like a bomb hit it. All enthusiasm and no inclination to RTFM I'm afraid. Still, we're learning as we go and having fun so we're happy.

We moved into our Brunswick house eight months ago. We were very lucky to have inherited from the previous owner an olive tree, a mulberry tree, two lemon trees, three apple trees, a quince, a grape, a passionfruit, a bay, youngberries and a vegie garden full of rhubarb, mitzuna, potatoes and oregana, rosemary, sage and thyme. By the time we'd unpacked, sorted a few things and had time to look at the garden we felt we didn't have much time to add much before the worst of summer hit. We focused on mulching, watering (we have two water tanks) composting and I threw in all my heirloom tomato seeds. I also started a small herb garden by the back door and planted lemon thyme, purple sage, italian parsley, vietnamese mint and lots of basil between the rows of tomatoes. Summer was fabulous, we profited from the hard work done by the previous owners and feasted like kings. Only the olive and mulberry didn't fruit, the olive having produced 4kg the summer before and the mulberry suffering from a minimum of water.

One of the first things we did after moving in was get four bantams who are now fully grown and free-ranging throughout the back-yard. They sometimes attack seedlings so I have rolls of chook-wire I can hang around the vegie garden when I need to. The hens were due to start laying in April but went through several moults with the bizarre warm weather we had and never got started. I'm not worrying too much, I figure they'll probably sort themselves out come spring. We feed them with an organic layer mix from Andrews in Sydney Rd, kitchen scraps and of course they are free-ranging throughout the garden eating lots of pests. The chicken manure we collect from their coop is added to the compost and also to a cow-manure-tea I have brewing in the garage. You can watch our chooks on an eerily silent film if you feel so inclined.

Since the cooler weather we have been busy digging up stretches of lawn and widening all the garden beds (right). We have been composting and mulching all these new areas and we have planted much of this with gorgeous grasses and other drought tolerant plants, they don't look like much now but we are hoping come spring they will start growing madly. Basically, we stopped watering at the end of January and have replaced anything that hasn't survived the summer with a drought tolerant plant.

In the vegie garden I have planted broccoli, lettuce, broad beans, snow peas and spinach. I grew them all from seeds from Diggers. The broad beans are doing OK, most of the broccoli is growing well, the spinach has vanished, the lettuce just stays the same with no visible growth whatsover and the snow peas are just popping up. The vegie garden is very close to a neighbour's walnut tree and I have just read in a companion planting book I found in an op-shop about the effects walnuts can have on some vegies and fruits. It is interesting as the tomatos in this garden didn't grow anywhere near as well as the tomatos near the house so maybe there is something in it. The rhubarb has come back to life after the summer and is also doing well and we still have a few potatoes popping up spontaneously from the compost.

We want a larger vegie garden but despite having such a big yard it is hard to find spots that aren't shaded. In the center of the yard are two fabulous trees that together provide a living umbrella throughout the summer and lots of breezes so we don't want to lose them. There is a car parking space at the rear of the yard that I was hoping to plant more fruit trees in but if the walnut tree does turn out to be the culprit I may have to relocate the vegie garden to that spot.

We have also just expanded the herb garden so that we can plant a few more vegies there. (above)It is a great spot for capturing winter sun so we do want to keep enough space for sitting in but worked out we could afford to make the garden a bit larger than it was. I have spring onion seedlings ready to go in and also some root vegetables I want to try out so this will be the perfect spot for them. There is also a hanging rosemary I will be using to cover the chook shed with and I am still working on where my stawberries will go. They are varieties that can grown in pots and hanging baskets so I am toying with the idea of turning the shed roof into a garden and planting them there. I also have a loquat tree looking for a spot, a dragon-fruit and a dwarf kaffir lime, not to mention a list of wannahaves a mile long.

Phew I think that enough for now, are you still awake? I promise future posts won't be so long. At the moment I am focussing on raking up leaves for the garden and compost and practising my begginner pruning skills. Ever heard a tree scream? Oh, yes, and then there's the frog pond we started building........... As you can see I'll be needing all the help I can get so please comment with all your suggestions and ideas.

let me introduce myself

2007-06-19T20:48:00.000+10:00

Thanks Fluffy for inviting fellow gardeners over. I love the idea of a fruit/veggie garden blog, and hope others will join. I love seeing other peoples gardens, and seeing how they go about dealing with the problems that arise.

I'm been in a house in Coburg for the last six years, with the privilege of turning a backyard full of weeds, concrete and ageing fruit trees into something a little more productive. The concrete was a surprise that only made its appearance when I started digging; in the end there were two skip loads . The fruit trees I took out as they were not fruit that I'm all that keen on (loquats and prickly pear) or were shading the side of the garden that was obviously destined to be the veggie patch.

This is the veggie patch as it was late this afternoon. There are some fruit trees espaliered along the north fence (barely visible in this photo as they've just lost their leaves and have just been pruned). There's a quince and pear (not visible here) and mulberry, apricot and damson plum. I've had a lot of fruit from the quince, apricot and plum, am still waiting for blossom on the pear (I believe they are very slow to start to fruit) and though it fruits a bit I don't think the mulberry wants to co-operate.

The veggie patch is divided into six beds. The first bed is for flowers, because there was a shed next to this spot (it started to collapse soon after we moved in so it's been removed) and the soil is full of lead paint fragments. I'm assuming the rest of the soil is non toxic, I haven't got round to having it tested. Does anyone else worry about this?

The next four beds are for veggies to be rotated annually. I confess although I try to keep notes on where and what veggies I plant, I've found it impossible to follow any sort of strict rotation plan. The last bed has raspberries, asparagus and some currant bushes. There are some ill thought-out indigenous native shrubs against the back fence which are crowding out the last bed, and I'm desirous of more fruit trees. We will see.

The other side of the garden has the garage (beautiful isn't it), the chook pen, and some more fruit trees. The lemon tree was the sole survivor of my fruit tree massacre. I was fully expected it to die it looked so diseased and sad, but it confounded my expectations when the chickens started living under it and produces more lemons than I thought possible. There is also another apricot, some dwarf apple trees, a multi-graft plum, a nectarine and a dead cherry - casualty of the drought. I've probably planted them too close together, but what can I say, I'm greedy.

The orange cat is Rufus, my feline gardening assistant; Hannah, my almost 4 year old daughter also plays a role in the proceedings. As of course do the girls, Olive (in the foreground) and Beryl....

There' s a certain irony in discovering just before the chooks started laying that my then six month year old daughter had a severe egg allergy. So any eggs produced get given away or made into cakes to take to work. They do seem to keep the apples coddling moth free, so I guess they earn their keep. (Photo from the archives, you may notice the apple in blossom).

I attempt to grow things organically though I'm not utterly purist about it (for example I'm not rigorous about where the animal manure I acquire comes from and I use a pyrethrum spray with piperonyl butoxide as I've not got round to finding one without). I've also played around with companion planting; one day I'll write about my horseradish disaster.... I'm not terribly orderly or organised about things, and I'm very happy that I've every year there is a range of self seeded flowers throughout the patch. Please wait with baited breath for my next post about the mystery vegetable 'Cima di rapa'.....

lettuce know

2007-06-15T18:57:00.000+10:00

Anyone want to join this blog? I'm throwing open the garden gate and making this a group blog. Anyone with a garden (food producing) just leave a comment.

take a bath

2007-05-06T14:18:00.000+10:00

So I made this bath the other day. Bought a brand new bath off eBay for $25 in pretty good nick but for a few chips caused by mishandling. I built a surround for it and put in a window box planter for flowers. I've taken one bath, and the Tiny Man has had two (one with a friend). It sends the drained water straight to the veggies. Can't think of too much else to say about it except that it's good and I'm happy with it.

you can't beet broccoli

2007-04-15T10:21:00.000+10:00

Finally - planting. I got sick of looking at dirt and threw some baby plants in yesterday.

Baby beets.

Lettuces - mixed.

Broccoli and beets under heaped sugar cane mulch. It ain't pretty, but it is wonderful.

Self sown flat leaf parsley under the apricot tree, with some more lettuces.

Mint.

slowwwww

2007-04-06T20:50:00.000+10:00

It's been a bit slow in the garden as of late. I had a free day to get into it today, but I've come down with a revolting cold that's going around at work and I just felt like shlumping around. I did set a date to get the bath surround sorted out (this Thursday!) which entails a work mate who has a big troop carrier nicking some 1200 x 2400 panels of exterior ply from work and taking them to my house. They're worth about $90 per sheet so it's very nice that I'm not going to have to pay for them. To be fair, I did offer to pay. In a way that also managed to suggest I would very much like to not pay for them. So they are doing a sneaky thing and smuggling some building materials out for me. God love em. I bolted a towel rail to the side of the house today in celebration, and painted in the rusty spots where the enamel was chipped off the bath with the touch up paint that came with my car.

This afternoon was spent lazing with friends and playing music, then daydreaming about my August holiday and checking out the destination on Google Earth. I'll be lolling on the beach gathering strength from the sun's rays and planning a full scale assault on the garden for spring.

compost

2007-03-26T06:38:00.000+10:00

I'm a bit blank right now and couldn't come up with the puns for the title. I'm throwing this one open to the audience: pun me a title please. Compost related.

Firstly: how good is rain? Answer: very good indeed. The only damage recorded was the tarp under the fig tree didn't cope with the hundreds of litres of water it was trying to carry and it came down with a tidal wave of rotten figs and leaves. Easily cleaned up anyway. The fig production seems to be slowing down finally. I saw Maggie Beer pickling them the other day in their big salute to the fig episode on The Cook And The Chef. The overabundance I've had through the season has made me a bit spoiled and I'd just as soon not see another fig until next summer, but the fig and mozzarella plate she did looked pretty damn good.

The rain even made the soil look alright. It seems to hold together a bit without turning to clay or becoming sludgy mud, so maybe the dirt wasn't so bad afterall. Brunswick soils tend to be very heavy with clay - which is why there was a great big brickworks on Glenlyon Road. Cloudy gave me a helping hand last weekend turning a few bags of bought compost through and modifying the back shed to be a super compost station. You can see (especially after the rain) where the new compost enriched soil comes up darker and healthier.

Yesterday I took a drive to the country and collected 3 enormous bags of horse shit. It's fairly well dried because it didn't smell in the car at all on the way home. I'm building up the compost heap from scratch pretty quickly so the poo will be a good layer to speed it all up.

So here's the compost heap breakdown so far:

When I decided to turn the little falling down shed into a compost heap I obviously did it with my usual lack of forethought and planning. But now that I think about it, the floor of the shed was boards with a bit of a hollow below visible between the boards. Why would someone lay floorboards in a little old shed the size of a toilet? I've decided it was because the elderly Italian man who was here till his sons shipped him off to a care facility buried his fortune where thieves, and perhaps his evil sons, would never find it... under the shed! And therefore, under my compost heap. I do hope it's well wrapped.

drum roll

2007-03-16T08:19:00.000+11:00

Anyone got a used 44 gallon drum they can spare? It's also called a 200 litre drum in metric enabled countries like ours. In any case, it looks like this.

If it didn't have anything too noxious in it that would be grand. I want to store water in it. Especially good for the rare occasion when water falls out of the sky for free even though it's not my watering day. It's insane. It just goes running straight off the roof and down the drain.

the yawning abyss

2007-03-12T11:11:00.000+11:00

First photos of the garden. AKA startlingly bleak "before" pictures.

This is the plot. You may see a horrid grey concrete dirt trough - I see POSSIBILITIES. *cries*

This dirt's not much chop. Drier than a cork leg.

Hardscrabble. When the weeds won't even take to it you know it's dire.

The landlord had a gardener come in and plant "natives" (since when is box hedge a native?) and lay fluorescent tanbark to keep the weeds down.

Despite best efforts to keep them watered, the Cuphea Mexicana Compacta (another native, obvs) has succumbed to some sort of leaf burn. Note the dandelion emerging on the left.

This is the fig tree. It's doing exceptionally well, and I've had to put up that blue tarp to catch all the rotten fruit falling off it. To the right is the partially obscured apricot tree, which isn't doing as well but still fruits. Behind that and to the left there's a small sheltered area which I'll use as my kitchen herb garden and an outdoor bath area.

a dry sense of humus

2007-03-11T22:36:00.000+11:00

New blog! Exciting. Back at the other blog you might have read that I recently moved into a house with a garden. I used to have a garden, years ago, before the apartment complex living. I was a bit of a summertime gardener - always bringing in the giant tomato crop but giving it a rest all winter when the cold wind and rain made it all a bit earnest getting out there and tending to the wee frozen veggies. Not sure how I'll do this year, but starting in Autumn bodes well for the gardening interest over the cooler months.

I'm starting with some big disadvantages: I've got the deadest patch of dirt imaginable. Grey dust with a heavy base of roof tiles and broken bricks. There's a drought on and serious water restrictions in place. Tight budget will see the seed propagation happening in place of the extravagant purchase of the darling baby plants.

But there's some joy - the garden already features two established fruit trees, it's north facing with full sun on everything most of the time, it's a good size without being too big, and I think I can get the grey water happening as the kitchen, bathroom and laundry are all at the back of the house.

First thing to accomplish is improvement of the soil. Digging through tons of rich dark organic matter, adding wetting agent, and topping with piles of mulch. No small feat.

Onward hoe!