veggie tales

Added another set of layers to the compost heap and achieved hot composting! YAY!

Planted corn, carrots, and spring onions, tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, and cucumber. Corn, carrots, and spring onions germinated - YAY!

Forgot to water during a hot day (and the gardening calender advised against watering) and all but three of the corn died. BOO.

Moved into the house. Brought all my fruit trees and several planter boxes (wish I'd asked them to bring all the garden things over - now I'll have to get them over in my car, getting my car dirty in the process).

Everything has survived, although I think the citrus are in a little shock right now - they're getting a full day's sun after years of mostly shady afternoon sun. I have to remember to water them rather more regularly than I used to. One more thing to do.

I'm filling a planter box with 'salad vegies' - lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers. Added oregano to the planter box with sage growing in it. And tried to sprout some more asparagus in the passionfruit planter box.

On the 28th, planted more corn, tomatoes, cucumber, melons, pumpkins in the compost heap which has now cooled down (it was hot for nearly two weeks). It doesn't quite look like it's fully composted - at least not on the outer levels - lots of white mould-ish looking things, and a mushroom that decided to grow out of the side of the compost - but otherwise we'll hope. And keep it watered this time.

Must remember to get to the North Shore Permaculture meeting.

Have to contact gardener about mowing the lawn and helping sort out the garden beds. I want the underlayer pulled up and the woodchips mulched. That will take some major deliveries of manure and straw, I think. And working out where is good to grow the cherry, doughnut peach, and fuyu persimmon my mother is giving me. I know where the raspberry canes are going.

So much to do, so little time. But the small garden bed is the first priority. That, and working out where the fruit trees should go.

I hope the seeds I planted on the 28th do better...

Garden start - the first no-dig bed

No-dig garden started:

Newspaper, cow manure, sugar cane mulch, woodchips, cow manure, shredded paper, cow manure, sugar cane mulch

Needs another five or so layers I think: chook poo, lucerne, cow manure, woodchips, chook poo, sugar cane mulch

Then planting on top:
- ccrn seeds, capsicum, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin, onion tops, cucumber seedlings

Seed raising mixture:
- coir fibre, perlite (vermiculite?), mushroom compost?

I was going to grow corn up against the fence, but I think I'll go for beans, or maybe a passionfruit in that spot. Corn in the centre of the no-dig bed, so I don't have to reach in to grab things.

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From Hargreaves Nursery:
SEEDLINGS TO PLANT NOW

Flowers: Alyssum, Amaranthus, Aster, Begonias, California Poppy, Coleus, Cosmos, Dahlia, Dianthus, Gerbera, Gypsophila, Impatiens, Lobelia, Marigold, Nasturtium, Petunia, Salvia, Snapdragon, Verbena, Vinca, Zinnia.

Vegies: Beans, Beetroot, Cabbage, Capsicum, Carrots, Celery, Chinese Cabbage, Chilli, Cucumber, Eggplant, Endive, Leek, Lettuce, Melons, Onions, Peas, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Rhubarb, Silverbeet, Spinach, Squash, Sweet corn, Tomato, Zucchini.

Growing ong-choi

starting from scratch (but, alas, not chicken-scratch)

We've had the new house for a week. I've been around nearly daily when time/schedule permits, partly to get a feel for the house, partly to air it out.

Internal renovations start today and are estimated to take at least three weeks, probably closer to a month, given delays, etc. That's okay - we're planning to move from the old house to the new on the second weekend in October, and getting as much of it done beforehand is a good start.

Two things to line up: painters, and the people to do the floors.

I'm thinking I need to start on the garden ASAP, because I've already pretty much lost spring.

I did plant two cucumbers, four asparagus, and fifteen tomatoes on the weekend - in seedling pots at the current house, but not in seedling-mix. Speaking of which, I need to get some medium river sand to mix with the vermicast.

Considering chickens: I'd still like to do chickens, but at this point the major concern is working out how to integrate them into the garden. In the meantime, I was thinking I'd do a no-dig composting garden to start with - assuming I can find the ingredients around the place: animal manure, fresh grass clippings, pea straw or lucerne.

The grass clippings are easy enough; pea straw or lucerne is harder to source in the city, apart from buying it from Monstrous Hardware Store That Shall Not Be Named. However, we are about 20mins away from a right-on-the-edge-of-urbania farming area, which might have some places that sell the ingredients for no-dig composting gardens a little more cheaply? IDK.

Something to consider is also that I'll be doing this solo. My sister isn't interested in gardening (just what comes out of it) and has physical issues. And I can't imagine any of my friends giving up their crossfit sessions for gardening. (Crossfit is cool and trendy; gardening is hard work and grubby.)

To locate/source:
- river sand (medium)
- animal manures
- fresh grass clippings
- lucerne/straw bales

relevant links

Jackie French: The Magic Of Groves

Actually, her whole site looks pretty good!

I don't know that I want complete self-sufficiency, but as much fruit as we can eat and farm out to the family, along with a variety of tasty vegetables sounds exactly like my sort of thing.

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Lunar Calendar for Gardeners

Traditional Moon Planting

I need to start remembering what to plant when. And keeping track of the phases of the moon. Might also help with my own personal emotional/physical cycles.

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Settlement is in just over a week. I suspect that the day we get the keys I will go over and just sit on the stairs. Or inside. Or on the lawn. Just to get a feel for the place and the neighbourhood and the house and the yard.

...I wonder if the real estate agent will take the sign away, or if B1 and I will have to wrestle it out?

it's garden season!

I'm making lists right now, of things I want in the garden.

Starting with a 'hedge' of avocados, almonds, cumquats, and lilly pillies by the fence. Quandongs up the jacaranda, and apples and apricots and plums along the path. Corn along the north side of the house. Passionfruit under the front window and along the porch, raspberries and blackberries either side of the lattice, and I think I'll put up a trellis between the back verandah and the carport and try growing grapes.

I want to try out a small chook-and-vegie garden in the south-east corner of the property. And by 'small' I mean 'not more than 1.5m diameter chook dome' sized, and possibly not even 6 dome stations - possibly only five, or even four. The perennial/compost beds will be larger, and at least one of the fruit trees might struggle for sunlight, but it should present a good exercise in determining how to work the chooks in the garden on a small scale.

This is going to have to be done in stages, I think: the fence hedge and the fruit trees to begin with - spaced far enough apart that it's not an issue to mow between them, or fit a chook tractor. Get the chooks for the small garden and learn how they work, then plant through the late spring and summer and autumn and winter...

There'll be a learning curve; what plants work, what plants don't, where the sunshine is and how well the various vegies do without it; how to look after chickens, and whether I can stand having them under my window when they're not in rotation...

We're getting some changes made to the house - dependent on how much it all costs - but those should be done before we move in. And then...it's GARDEN SEASON!

A Plan For All Things

done

Two fruit salad trees - one stone (with apricot), one apple - both planted into pots.

On the stonefruit salad trees, the apricots are always planted on the bottom graft; it means they don't seem to get as much of the energy flow through the rootstock as they need: they're always the smallest and slowest to bloom, while the peaches just go hell for leather. I've lost about four apricot grafts before this one and this is my last try. If it doesn't work, I'm just going to get an all-apricot tree and go with that. Easier. Plus, more apricots!

doing

It's been a dry winter, so I'm watering the fruit trees fairly regularly right now. The bush turkeys have been digging up the dirt in the pots, though, and my sister put some roof tiles down on top of the pots, which seems to have worked in deterring them. Seeing as we're not going to ever use those tiles, it's not a bad idea!

plans

I'm wondering if I should start planting things now. I could probably make a little cold frame out of wire and glad wrap: or possibly just find a 25L clear storage box, upend it, and turn it into a small greenhouse for shoots, etc. But it would give me a small headstart on the garden when we take possession.

Clear and compost the woodchips, dig out the old rotted stump. Put down some mulch. The fruit trees are going in just as soon as I have a clear day.

Huh. I better start making some mulch for the fruit trees! And make sure the worms have good production going. MORE VEGIES!

Chooks are still in the plan. I'm a little daunted by the idea though. Living things in the garden. That I'm supposed to be tending. I definitely want the eggs and the mulch, but I'm not sure about the bother - and the neighbours, and neighbours' pets, etc. To say nothing of my two (indoor) cats. And there's the whole 'if I want a permaculture garden in the style of Linda Woodrow, at least part of it is going to be in the front yard'.

reading

I bought Jackie French's book about self-sufficiency. I doubt that we'll ever head that way, but she's got some good advice. And I like that the book is tips and tricks, not just a list of vegetables/fruits and where they should be grown, which is every other gardening book EVER in Kinokuniya.

Must remember to bring it on the commute so I can pore over it.

Big changes: a new house with new possibilities, and a (very) old dream!

In case three years of inactivity didn't clue you in, I gave up on trying to work the south-west facing slope in Turramurra. It was too much, too hard, and not a priority given everything else going on.

Things have changed a lot in three years.

To start with, the Turrmurra place has been sold, and my sister and I bought a house about 15 mins away on a flat block that's open to the north and the west, with large expanses of land that's just asking for a kitchen garden!

The house is in Sydney suburbia, a medium-sized block (600sqm), with a small house (125sqm). The house sits on the back part of the lot, with a large front lawn, a green strip down the side of the house next to the driveway with a frangipani in the middle of it, and a small lawn patch in the south-east corner of the block where the washing line and the shed are positioned. We have no plans to extend the house, and if we did, we'd probably extend backwards, since there's already slab there.

But there's lots of garden potential. LOTS. I've already started mapping out possible garden plans!

In preparation for the move and the change (we settle on the 1st September), I've pulled out my Permaculture Kitchen Garden book by Linda Woodrow and am avidly re-reading.

This book has been on the shelf for a long time! I bought it back in 1999, years before everything got organic and healthstyle and grow-your-own-veggies. And then I got stuck in a house that had no aspect at all, dreadful terrain, and gum trees all over the slope. It would have been a full-time job setting something up that worked and wasn't backbreaking labour all the way (completely defeating the point of permaculture), plus I already had a full-time job. (I still do, but this time, I don't think it will be quite as backbreaking).

At any rate, my permaculture kitchen garden has been waiting for this moment in the sun for fifteen years.

My sister's only request of the garden is that I leave somewhere for her to grow some freesias. Yeah, a bed of freesias won't be a problem...