GARLIC
ONIONS
POTATOES
INTERLUDE – around the 29th June
Digging up half the 'sweet potato bed' to plant the garlic into. It will need maintainence - the vines.
Chaffcutter doesn't work pragmatically. (blades not sharp enough? Too frequent? Cogs don't have enough grip?
Planted the Purple Turban variety in the other side of the 'sweet potato bed'.
Covered both Rose Du Var and Purple Turban with a box of chook run material. 12th July 2024
OBSERVATIONS:
Chilly week, going to be even colder next week – possibly frost.
Garlic (rose du var) are poking through, I added some water/clay to them, but maybe need to give them a regular feeding of the various microbrews
Teen worker wasn't able to start the mower when he tried today. Might need to take it for a service.
CHOOKS:
Siyao has a clean bill of health!
Daofu is a bully to Kerry, while Gladys seems capable enough of running away, at least. But the others all make threatening moves towards the two girls.
Laying again – Caramba, possibly Siyao, Gladys and Kerry seem to be doing okay.
I need to teach Kerry and Gladys to go through to the tunnels to the tractor, where they can scratch and dig all day long!
Someone is rolling the eggs out of the laying box! This is very odd behaviour, because usually the hens want ALL the eggs.
COMPOST:
Still gathering things.
Been making leaf mulch the last week or so. Stopped because I wasn't carrying the big black boxes for the leaves, but there's SO MUCH of them around the place.
Got teen!worker to chop up the branches I had,now should be able to chip them more easily when I get around to it.
PREPARING:
SEEDING:
Tomatoes, Eggplants, capsicum - set them in the new (flimsy) greenhouse to grow
PLANTING OUT:
moved: Ginger/Turmeric roots to the new flimsy greenhouse to grow
planted out: three Brassicas (probably purple cabbage or broccoli) - also in fllimsy greenhouse
dig up brassicas in PLUM-STONE, pull out coriander, move tractor let chooks in? Still want to build better compost in the garden bed spaces, but it's only Kerry and Gladys who are doing the job.
HARVEST:
Avos, Oranges, still good, harvested some scarlet silverbeets, the peas will shortly be ready, I reckon. Still gotta try that cabbage.
FEEDING:
Some instructions about dealing with brassicas
potash - at growing heads
nitrogen - to get them started
4 wks - sulphate of ammonia (blood and bone) for better structure
PRUNING:
Was going to get the lawn guy to do it, but his dad went to hospital and he didn't know if he could get it done. (I told him to go be with his family and not worry about the lawn.)
Did a bit with J's chainsaw (best chainsaw ever) but can't do all of it.
prune the backyard trees more neatly, and with an eye to a) espalier, b) netting
THOUGHTS:
After the
TO DO LIST:
Improve the flimsy greenhouse:
- aim of a greenhouse is to warm during the day and stay warm at night.
Problem: plastic isn't going to do this; heats up fine during the day, loses it once the sun goes down.
Solution:
1. Make a cloth-cover for the flimsy greenhouse to slip it down overnight. Make sure that the cover is down by the time the sun is setting. (Old cheap blanket/quilt?)
2. Add a flat stone or two (cinderblock) for heat absorption during the day so it's not quite so brutally cold at night. Place stone on the sunwards side of the greenhouse?
Update: I started this log back in at least April, if not March. It's now May, and while some of these have been planted out (the root vegies), a lot of them didn't make it.
also planted: garlic
planning for: potatoes
FLOWERS
POPPIES: tossed in under frangipani
MARIGOLDS: planted along driveway
MEADOW DAISY: planted under cover in seed bed
NASTURTIUMS: lost the really nice red one (dried out)
SUNFLOWERS: not until summer
SWEET PEAS: not planted yet
CLOVER: white clover – sown all along the frangipani space. Red clover: not yet used, contemplating filling in the south side of the yard with it
CHOOKFEED: went in along the inner court of the chook pen, covered by upturned baskets, but the light is being blocked by corrugated iron, so need to move this.
A meadow garden along the driveway: marigolds along the border.
1. rake space around, dig up DANDELIONS
2. spray under the frangipani with SLASHER weedkiller - everything that got sprayed died
3. lay down some compost (finely sieved)
4. plant seeds: POPPIES in the middle, MARIGOLDS along the edges, NASTURTIUMS around the base of vegepod and under the frangipani, SWEET PEA under the apples, CLOVER in the grass around vegepod
5. cover with pea straw
&nsbp;
Along picket fence and on front verge (under the Illwarra flame)
1. water?
2. lay down some compost, finely sieved
3. seed CLOVER
4. cover with pea straw
In the bee garden
1. Pull out the big sugarcane (wait for Huntley's help)
2. trim down the bushes severely
3. dig up the DAHLIA bulbs
planting winterveg
note: most of this was planted out, Unfortunately, the chooks dug it all up! So only some of the radishes have survived. I've since planted out a lot more of the winterveg, but it's all over the place and I didn't make notes.
BEETROOT: golden detroit, red detroit, early wonder
RADISH: daikon white, black spanish, china rose
backyard Bathtub: daikon white
front vegepod: black spanish, china rose
ONION: red burgundy, white spanish, early creamgold , gladalan brown, barletta, unknown
backyard Bathtub: red burgundy, early creamgold
front vegepod: white spanish, gladalan brown
LEEK: mix - backyard bathtub?
TURNIP: mix - front vegepod:
ROCKET
SPINACH: bloomsdale, english
KALE
SILVERBEET
LETTUCE
WATER SPINACH: bamboo leaf
PEAS: shelling, massey gem, purple podded, golden podded, yakuma, sugarsnap, snow pea, telephone(?)
1. Where am I going to plant the peas? (under the apples in the front yard? Around the new lychee in the back? Do I plant them in different spaces and places? The sooner I get it in, the better it's likely to be growing.
The problem is that a lot of this stuff is supposed to apply along the entire east coast of Australia which seems illogical when Hobart gets snow, Melbourne is wet and soggy, Canberra gets frost, Sydney is merely 'cold', and a Townsville winter looks like a Hobart summer!
Even going by a 'cool temperate/warm temperate/tropical' doesn't always help - regional variations can affect frost, how much frost you get, even the rainfall! My suburb gets a touch of frost, but not so much that under the ground freezes.
I found a video that detailed how this guy from the US (who gets snow/frost) in his area grows garlic - it was actually about how to get large garlic heads - and took down his notes. I'm going to try to adjust them for an Australian setting.
Growing Garlic (large heads)
- sprinkle of worm castings
- large cloves into hole
- cover in mulch over winter
- remove in spring
- feed superfood in spring
- compost mulch
My modifications are:
1. planted in May
2. sprinkle of worm castings under clove
3. leaf mulch over winter, pull back a bit once the green bits show
4. feed in spring? (NOTE: what's superfood - NPK? Have super-K in a bag somewhere, might as well use it)
5. compost mulch in spring
I've just realised I'll have a vegepod available during this time, and that might be a good place to do the growing experiment from.
This is going to be rather specific, and it could get kinda interesting to see if I can do this successfully, growing the garlic to a decent size over the winter.
CHOOKS
dug out bits of their yard, they're not fully using the back.
PRUNING & PREPARING
DINING WINDOW VEGEPOD
Edge composted: comfrey, worm castings, pea straw, watered in with worm wee and seaweed brew
PLANTING
in DINING WINDOW VEGEPOD:
RIGHT SIDE
main crop: GARLIC Valiant
side crop: RADISHES confetti and watermelon, SPRING ONIONS
LEFT SIDE
main crop: GARLIC Monaro
side crops: LETTUCES italian mixed, mixed heirloom, CHIVES and SPRING ONION mix
NOTES
Will want really well-draining beds b/c of the expected rain this season and risk of rotting. Except I already used the bathtub garden...
Using any of the wicking beds feels like a supremely bad idea, too.
I feel like the cheap metal frame I set up in the front garden bed might be a pretty good option. But I'd have to dig out all the soil, pull out the weeds, put some cardboard/black plastic down to reduce the weeds growing through, and fill it all back up again before I could do that.
Hm. I wonder if I could put soil in the medium-large black pots and stick a olla in it, fill up the olla if we ever reach a point where things start getting dry...
