Thoughts for late summer

I know what to call the grape tomato that's gone insane over Bed #1: Fifty Shades (of Grape Tomato). It needs regular tying up!

Bed #2 will need to go to green leafies over the winter - no heavy feeders since it spent the summer with zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum, pumpkin, and sunflowers. And then after the leafy greens, I might do a winter green mulch.

Basically, I need to work out my rotation planting sets better.

The last zucchini in Bed #1 is not doing so well - it's reached the end of its useful life and probably needs composting. I'm uncertain as to whether to try for seeds from it or not. My instincts say 'not' because it was very prone to mildew, even if it was crazily productive.

Bed #1 is generally a problem: even once the tomatoes come out and I replant out the lemongrass, there are still carrots and...other things in there. Although now that I pulled out the potato (got a couple of nice little new potatoes), maybe I don't have to worry quite so much about it?

A bunch of photos from the last week:

Good Bug Bed

Fifty Shades (of Grape Tomato): it needs regular tying up

The potato bed. I think it needs more potassium to really do well - that, and mulching.

Spaghetti Squash. This is the furthest along, but there are several others biding their time on the vine.

Squash, strawbs, and a chilli.

Ong-Tsoi, or Chinese Water Spinach.

Corn.

More Tomatoes.

Takeover vine - I think it's a pumpkin, but no sign of any fruit yet.

Kumera, with a multi-graft apple on the right and a dwarf avo on the left:

Sunflower, beans, and passionfruit.

Garden facing east:

Garden facing south:

There's a lot in there, and I'm trying to get even more in! And what isn't going to be fruit is going to green crops. Lots of mulches - I need a way to keep the soil healthy without having to repeatedly import things.

not much happening - the late summer report

The garden is producing, but I haven't really been maintaining it. At this point, it's mostly harvesting and a little bit of prep/planting for the winter.

The tomatoes are a mad tangle:

But are producing as much as we can eat! The plan for next year is to get a few different varieties going - the only ones that have been really productive this year are the grape and the cherry.

The potatoes are not holding back:

I would really like to mulch them up to get more potatoes, but I don't have any compost readily available right now. Hopefully they're forming potatoes under the mulch though, and not just doing leafy te2000 hings.

After repeated sowings that were eaten by...something I know not what, I finally have another crop of corn. This one is Crop #3, and it's going to be a very late crop, unless I can seriously nurture it along. May need some manures to give them an extra boost.

I am wondering if next year I should seedling the corn and then plant it out - it would give me better control over the placement of the plants - this year's crop tended to be a little bit everywhere. The very earliest planting died of heat exposure (my fault), and several of the recent plantings didn't get beyond the first sprout stage, since something ate the kernel and the seedling both. I kept these ones from being eaten by putting a plastic box over them to 'hothouse' them.

The spaghetti squash is producing at least one squash:

I'm kind of looking forward to this - I just have to work out when to harvest it. And does the skin need curing? I have a garden shed that should get plenty of sun for it! There are a couple of others growing, but they're not quite so well-advanced as this.

And, frankly, the spaghetti squash is doing the best out of this year's curcurbits. The cucumbers aren't quite growing, the Waltham Butternut is mostly rotting, and the Golden Nugget is just sitting doing nothing. So, yeah. This year's pumpkin attempts, not so great.

Also starting to produce - the strawberries!

I'm thinking that next year I'll grow a bunch of strawberries from seed. Apparently you need maybe 500 plants per person if you really like strawberries, and it would be lovely if we didn't have to keep buying strawberries for my sister.

You can barely see them, but here are the start of some borlotti bean pods!

They're in the front garden - I grew a few of them as green mulches more than anything else, and they're doing okay - not great, just okay.

The fruit trees in the front are all doing 'okay'. But I'm worried about this peach graft: is it getting sunburned?

I was kind of planning a 'front yard chill spot' that I figured would give the medium-chill fruit trees a chance to actually produce. Basically, a little grove of trees on the south-western side of the house, so it's shaded by the house to the north, and by the jacaranda the rest of the time - with the exception of that brief leaf-drop that jacarandas have in the middle of summer.

Thinking about produce goals for next year:

1. not have to buy any:
- basil
- coriander
- thyme
- mint
- oregano
- sage

2. through summer/autumn not have to buy any:
- tomatoes
- pumpkins
- corn
- cucumbers
- zucchini

...although the tomatoes are easy peasy - this is just this year, and from a random sprout out of one of the fruit tree pots:

3. through summer not have to buy any
- avocadoes
- lemons/limes
- stonefruit
- apples

4. through autumn/winter not have to buy any:
- potatoes
- carrots
- pumpkins/squash

I need to work out some more perennials that I can grow and eat.

Harvests

Last of the first corn, three cucumbers, the start of the tomatoes:

It'll be interesting to see if the second planting of corn produces anything. There's only four plants and two cobs at this stage, and I'm not sure they got adequately pollinated what with the rain and the pumpkin.

I've planted out a new batch of corn - late autumn corn. They'll probably need a lot of feeding, so I've got the worms eating scraps like crazy, and a new compost heap quietly steaming away.

Still no actual work on the orchard bed.

pests, weeds, and harvests

The worst part about garden maintenance is the question of what to do about pests and weeds. It causes all kinds of issues in my indecisive brain, along with the eternal guilt of "maybe if I ignore it, it'll go away?" And the permaculture principles which is that weeds are plants in the wrong place, and pests are a food source for predators in your garden and therefore to be encouraged.

The biggies this year have been mildew on the zucchini (thankyou, Bunnings) and pumpkin (thanks to the zucchini), slugs on the corn (dealt with via beer), and now pests in the corn silks - including a few worms in the ears.

The mildew is being dealt with thanks to bicarb soda spray - 1 tablespoon bicarb, 2 tablespoons olive oil, mix well, add 2L warm water, shake and spray. I do need to do the whole garden a thorough going-over but with some cutting and trimming and spraying it's being dealt with. Mostly.

I put a whole bunch of mildewed leaves (as well as the zucchini stalks) into the latest compost which seems to be getting pretty hot, although I don't know if it's hot enough to kill the mildew. I had to pull up the zucchini to make space for other plants - they were getting outtahand.

The slugs eating my corn silks I got with beer traps. Most of them. They seem to be somewhat fewer these days - possibly because the caterpillars, bugs, and ants have moved into the corn silks. I tried spraying with vinegar and the corn husks went yellow and dried out. But it seemed to slow down the pest activity. However, recommended was to rub the tops of the corn together to kill the pests in the top which I will be trying with the corn in future. Or maybe a drop of olive oil.

But by far the worst offender - not in the backyard garden, but in the frontyard orchard, is what my mother calls 'onion weed'. The stuff is a noxious weed all over the place, whose 'use' is mostly attracting pollinators. That one's going to be a horror to clear out, because you need to pick out all the little bulbs and there are a lot of little bulbs! *sob*

Finally, my multicitrus graft is not doing so well in its new position - I'm not sure if it's because it's not getting enough nutrients or something else, but I'm going to have to take action soon...

In more positive news, the garden is producing madly: the zucchini are still huge and flowering and producing like crazy.

The gherkin cucumbers are growing so fast I think I"m going to have to do some urgent pickling pretty damn soon.

The pumpkins have been trussed and are being trained up lines and across gardens.

And, pests or no, the corn is ready!

And delicious!

The tomatoes are ripening - I seem to have tiny red grapes, tiny red cherry, and larger ones growing in the front orchard. Some of the seedlings I was growing back in November have finally gotten big enough to be planted out, so hopefully there'll be a harvest from them later!

In the area of neighbourhood foraging I found a lilly pilly overhang in the walk-through on the way to the station. Might nip out and grab a few berries for a try this evening!

And I have a lovely-smelling plant that I think is lemonbalm but which I'm not entirely certain...

how much difference a summer month makes!

Bottom of the garden on the 6th December:

And the same angle, one month later:

Dats a lotta growth! Not that I'm complaining. Although next time I will leave more space for the zucchinis, because I didn't realise how much of a space hog they are in the ground. (My mother's ones, grown in pots, always seemed a little more restrained.)

A corner of the yard planted out with the "good bug mix" - a little flower patch. Not sure that just digging up the grass and planting it down was the best of ideas but oh well...

And up close and personal with a zucchini plant!

fruit trees and animal manures

Manures at Gumtree:

Loane Equestrian Centre: link
Cicada Glen Rd (corner of Walter Road), Ingleside
$1/bag, or free shovelled
Bonus: TRIP TO BEACH FIRST!

Bulk chicken manure: link
Camden
(delivers)

Will need a load for composting the fruit garden space, and also for along the fence (bare root tree planting come winter: macadamia, pomegranate, lemon, almond, fig, mandarin, avocado)

Mix up the trees in the front garden (multicit, dual multistone, fuyu persimmon, cherry?)

Apple: need to find out the varieties and their chill hours.

Cherry: is going to need better chill hours (more than the apple) - will have to pick the absolutely coldest place in the garden. RESEARCH NOW.

Chill hours note:
300 chill hours = 2 weeks constant, or one month of cold nights
600 chill hours = 4 weeks constant, or two months of cold nights

Depending on the winter (mild or cold), we might get up to 600 chill hours in our area? So medium to low, certainly.

Three months of gardening

Day One of the garden:

One month:

Three months: