Photos by Em

Emma took these this arvo. Going to try and ripen some of the peaches away from the fruit fly. Also, featuring: Lettuce, beans and corn.

Water, Growth, Some Seedling Success

This week saw a nice little flush of heat and rain which meant the green stuff in the garden has shot up. Emma (wife) went out to Caboolture markets to fill out some of the blank spots in the bed, so there is plenty of produce to look forward to. Spring onion, cucumber, corn, basil, dill, coriander, lettuce from the markets, and tomatoes from my seed raising. It looks goodish!! Most of it will bolt pretty quickly, but it will give me some time to refine my seed raising.

Speaking of, pak choi came up fast as usual, and we are seeing heaps of beans, beetroot, royal oakleaf, and a couple of cucumbers. Still waiting on corn (grrr...), eggplant and capsicum. This round of raising has been moderately more successful, which makes me think its the temperature that might be holding the little fellas back. I will persist!!

Fixed the watering system in the bed so it has more pressure from the pump (making more of a closed loop. Thinking about it now, I might put some taps in to increase the pressure to some areas if they need a spray from time to time. Thats where this blog comes to the fore as a garden diary. I just have to read it later...). Anyhoo, its more of a spray than a drip feed now.

Found a peach with some colour on it on the ground, alas, already fruit fly infested. I would have thought it was too early, but what do I know? Almost nothing. The peaches seem to colour before they are ripe so it gives a good visual target for the flies to lay eggs. Maybe this seasons peaches will be chook food? I'd like to at least get one of them untouched.

September Holidays

I was away for the first week of the holidays, so I didn't get to plant what I wanted, but this week a whole round of seeds went in. Lettuce, beans, corn, beetroot, pak choi, zuchini, capsicum, cucumber. Probably other stuff too. The things that are in the garden look ok, while my advanced seedlings (tomato, capsicum) are at a friends house being looked after. They'll go in next week.

I made the biggest compost pile i have made so far, with a trailer load each of dirt, sheep poo, and grass clippings. I'll wet it down today and cover. I am hoping for a 4 - 6 week turnaround, and I can use that compost for planting the seeds that went in today.

Pak choi gets a far amount of slugs on them, but it hasn't bothered me, as I only really plant it for the chooks, and they really love slugs! Better the pak choy than the lettuce...

Emma did the egg photo. She is awesome.

finally its hot

Planted out beans, beetroot and dill. That is all.

Oh yeah, and some more capsicums came up and a zuchini. So it turns out my seed rasinig issues are temperature related. Hmmmmmmm...

Mid September...falling behind

Stuff of late include things such as:
- tomatoes out of the shade house and soaking up some rays in a compost mix
- beans are finally going good
- went away for the weekend and all the capsicums died
- Finished off the washing water irrigation thing
- possum ate a young dill, and is now having a rest in the shadehouse
- i need a bigger shadehouse.
- just once, i would like to do a project only once, rather than 3 redevelops
- spring onion from seed is a waste. they do fine going asexual.
- sometimes i can just not figure out why the hell some things won't freakin' grow. if anything, all i do is stunt growth. Eg: mint is out of control. spring onion from the chooks scraps grow better than my careful seed raising. the best tomato plants i have, have come up on their own. i found some parsley under the stairs. no idea how it got there.
- got to try again with cucumber, zuchini and corn...

Spring Oh Yeah!

Update: Transplanted some tomatoes and beetroot.

Wins and Losses

This week I potted on some pak choy, and finally saw some of the seeds come up. Tomato (only one of the varieties), beetroot, and some lettuce are up, but zuchini, cucumber, spring onion, beans and other tomato are massive fails. That is not a very good hit ratio. I will try again with the same stuff tomorrow, and see what happens.

In other news, i cracked, and went and bought $30 worth of soil, which filled in the entire summer garden. Could have saved some angst by doing that a month ago, but whatevs. I think I will persist with the seed raising thing until I get awesome at it, but i the meantime i am off to the local organic seedling supplier to get this garden looking like a garden.

There are water pipes all over the place, but now that there is a bed in place, I should be able to lay it out in a permanent kind of position... I don't know why I am writing this, it is supposed to be a diary, not a wish list...

Also got a solar water filter thing for the pond, and the pond actually is starting to look ok. The strawberries, thyme and sage look healthy sitting around it, so it is good to have some wins. Peaches are about the size of a marble. The litttle ones.

Update: So all the tomatoes are on their way now, but all the other stuff is still a fail. i replanted everything again, but in more senstive seed raising mixes. i think temperature was probably the issue, and maybe pH also. A little too alkaline maybe? Put some corn in too.

A few things...

Not much action in the garden this week. Snow peas have finally started fruiting after being sown in May...is that normal? Lets say it is. The seeds I sowed in my experimental greehouse have been a monumental failure, with only the pak choi sprouting. So I re-sowed the lettuce with a new packet, to rule out the possibility that the seeds were bad. See how they go. Also put some beans straight into the garden bed, and gave them a soaking. More finger crossing needed.

Got some bits and pieces from a large outdoorsy store, and now have a pipe that runs into the backyard, that can be redirected from the greehouse. The pipe doesn't go anywhere yet, but i'll hook that up once the garden beds look settled. More sheep poo needed!!!

Update: Put some capsicum, tomato and beets in seed trays, and stole some soil from pots to plant some cucumber and zuchini seeds.

Spring... Spring has sprung.

I may be jumping the gun, but I'm calling it. Spring is here, it's time to get your gardening game face on.

Today I moved the chooks from their palatial garden bed, back into the old chook dome. I enclosed the main garden bed, and put some garden edging in for a built up garden. Now to fill it in!

The biggest roadblock at the moment is compost. I need heaps of it, and I refuse to buy it. It shall take several trips out to the sis-in-laws house to get some sheep poo, and a thorough scraping of the park for clippings. I have stolen some fill from around my yard and have only done about a metre and a half, out of 8 or so. Sad face.

The other thing is raising seedlings. It's hard! As far as I know I have the perfect environment for raising seedlings, but only the pak choy has come up in a week. Maybe the seeds are old, i don't know, but it's never as easy as what the Internet tells me it is. I'll press on anyway, put some spring vegetables in this week, and threaten them with extinction if they don't come up.

In other news I visited the northey street nursery this week, and fell in love. I got some strawberries and thyme to go in around the pond, and some cress, duckweed and something else (?) to go in the pond. I need to get a solar filter thing so the mossies don't breed.

PS enjoy looking at the photos sideways, i'll fix that later...

Getting pumped for Spring

I want to get into seed raising, with a view to be the local seedling supplier for maybe 4 other people...and then the world!! I have hooked up  system that collects washing water in a 24 gallon drum (filtered), and from there i am pumping (see pun in title) collected water into a greenhouse (which is really more of a cupboard). I put some holes in a garden hose that sprays randomly around the greenhouse, hopefully giving the seed trays a good sprinkling.

Today I planted some all season things like pak choy, spring onion, beans and lettuce, just to see if it works. In 2 weeks, if all goes well, I will begin spring planting in earnest.

I had an epiphany while pottering about that this blog might actually be more of a "Mistakes That Ignorant People Make In A Garden" type thing, but as long as I'm improving my green thumbs I am happy. So mistakes I discovered today are:

• There is a lot of water run off in the greehouse that seems wasted. I am going to try and catch it in a channel type thing, and put a potted fruit tree next to it.
• My worm bathtub doesn't drain enough. I should have put some wire mesh in the bottom that is raised slightly. I will get all the soggy matter out of there, chuck it in with the chooks to break down al naturale, and then start again with some sheep poo and grass clipppings from the park.
• I don't have any compost to pot on to if the seedlings do come up ok, and not enough time to brew some up...no solutions yet...

In other news we have some baby peaches that are budding. In a few months time i am sure i will be competing for them with the possums.

Update: Half way up the green house cupboard i put an extra bit of plastic stuff, that slopes down to the side, and comes out on to a potted orange dwarf. So i have saved a little excess water, but still the bottom half of cupboard water to be saved...
Also, I filled in the rest of the tyres that surround the pond (i think i need a solar air filter thing for the pond...), so the bath tub is empty and ready for remodelling...next week...

Permaculture 101

The impetus for wanting to start a garden revolution in the backyard was when I started thinking about consumerism, and how it is such a sad, unfulfilling way to live. The need to constantly have more stuff, on demand, for the soul equivalent of a sugar fix is no way to go about life on the planet. When you look at a plastic toy that came out of a cereal box that was made by some Korean toddler, and you think about how much work went into its production, and how much I paid for it, and how much I value it (very little), it is clear that there is an imbalance. I don't need toys in my cereal. So anyway, I mused for a while (a year or something. On and off. Not a year of constant musing.), and I decided that I was unhappy to be part of a system that is constantly sapping energy out of the cycle.

So a garden is my small way of seeing a stable system operate, in order to restore my faith in humanity and so forth. I know it doesn't make a difference to carbon emissions, but I hope I have some small ripple effect so that at least humanity's decline into energy deficit is somewhat stunted.

So permaculture is a way of operating in life so that you have a neutral impact on your surroundings. It is being aware that we should be part of a stable ecosystem, rather than the plunderers of said ecosystem. I also think our package-dependent society has a disconnect with our fundamental needs, and reconnecting to the things that we most desire is a more fulfilling way to spend your years. So food is the first step, then I plan to build a house, make some clothes, get off the internet and socialise for real, and become a spiritual guru/cult leader. If I only get as far as food, I'll be satisfied.

First Post

This is a blog about my garden adventures, and is also a record of what happened in the garden because my diary skills are bad. Enjoy.

So the system is that I have two gardens, a summer one and a winter one. I have made an enclosure that will either be the chook run, or the garden, depending on the season. At the moment, I am setting up what will be the summer garden. The chooks are running around there at the moment, and will be moved on midway through August.

At the top of the garden is a pond made out of tyres (thanks cousin Dale), and Vinyl (thanks Led Zepplin...). The pond is to bring some extra kinds of creatures into the garden, such as frogs, birds, sharks etc. Inside the tyres will be the more perennial herbs and goodies. Might try and grow some water cress in the pond too.

The back of the yard under the Mango tree is our old bath tub perched precariously onto concrete blocks (thanks Dave), in which I am making compost, and hopefully growing a worm population. I collect sheep poo from my bro-in-laws house, and collect grass clipping from the park on the other side of the fence. Any other organic matter the chooks don't like go in here.

I also have a small greehouse on the side of the deck for rasing up some seedlings. This is watered by a pump from the washing water that is collected in a 20 gallon drum. I don't have a way of making seed rasing mix yet, so i'll have to buy some.

So that is the system. I'll post when I plant things, what is going well, what sucks, and muse on why things are the way they are.