The Greening of Gavin

Winter Garden 2010

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Winter is that time of year when fruit and vegetables still grow in our climate here in Melton West.  Even though it has been a bitterly cold week in the single figures (Celsius that is), the citrus is nearly ready, and the winter veg is growing well.  I have even cheated a bit with tomatoes, basil, coriander and chillies blooming in the greenhouse!

So, where are the photos, I here you ask.  Well as luck would have it, Kim went shutter happy on Tuesday and here are the fruits of our gardening labours (pardon the pun).

Mandarins (nearly ripe)
Lemonade (sweeter than a lemon).  Small snails ate bits of the rind when the fruit was forming, but the insides are fine.
Meyer Lemon, perfect.
Tahitian Limes, nice in home made Mexican beer.
Common Mint (great as tea)
Free-loading native pigeons who eat the chicken feed.  Look how fat they are!
Detroit Globe Beetroot
Leeks (two year old) and more beetroot seedlings
Lots of brown and red onions with a few more leeks
Broad Beans (fava) growing strong
50 odd garlic.
4 x 1 metre tomato plants (variety unknown).  If you look hard enough they have flowers!
More tomato seedlings rescued in the warm autumn.
Wong bok (back) and Pak Choy (front)
Coriander (front) and Basil (back).
Enough spinach to keep Popeye happy!
Rainbow Chard about 4 week from planting out.
Oregano to be put in a large container
Sprouting broccoli looking for a garden bed of their own.
Cayenne chilli still surviving.
The Faejoa cuttings starting to strike.  A few might not have made it, but I am still hopeful.

And finally, some dwarf sweet peas that I planted for Kim.  Can’t eat them, but they will look nice in bloom in a few months time and smell divine.
Unfortunately, Kim only took pictures of one side of the garden.  Over the weekend I will urge her to take a few more snaps of the chicken house side of the yard, and some of the front orchard.  But before I let her loose in the front, I have a bit of weeding to do.  Bloody soursops (golden oxalis) are everywhere!

Fruits ‘R’ Us

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Today I planted four more fruit trees.  That takes the tally up to 19 fruit trees on our 779 sqm block!  We have 10 in pots and 9 in the ground.

The four that we planted today are two navel oranges (centre), one mandarin (left) and one blood orange (right).  Here is a picture of them across the back of the fence.

This took Adam and I the good part of an hour.  We used a good organic soil mix that drains well and I added about 3 handfuls of worm castings over the top of each pot as citrus has roots close to the surface and feeds well by a top application of organic fertiliser. 

After lunch, I spent some time pottering around the new greenhouse.  I set up a 210 litre water butt that captured rain from the greenhouse so that I can water the plants inside.

I used left over grey water pipe that I had in the shed and connected it to the gutter with clamps.

I tested it with the hose, however all the water drained to the front of the gutter where I had blocked up the holes.  So a few bangs with the rubber mallet on the back of the frame soon sorted that problem out.  It now drains towards the pipe, and into the water butt.

I then put the frames of the old seed raising tents into the greenhouse so that I could stack the seedling trays on.

Over the next few weeks there should be many more trays of seedlings including some capsicums that I have in a pot about to flower and I will plant out a few pots of tomatoes.

It was quite hot in there at midday.  It got to about 37C on a 26C day.  A little too hot for most seedlings except for tropical fare.  I opened up the top window and the doors and it still only got down to 32C.  Trial and error will get the temperature control right.

Kim set up a nice arrangement with the cyclamins that I bought her today.  We found an old chair in the pool area and she set it up like this.

Very nice female touch I thought.

Tomorrow, as I am on holidays for a week, I will put a couple of pavers in front of the door and clean up the rest of the garage area.   I will also be up at the crack of dawn to clean out the chook house so that I can use the bedding in the fallow bed.  I will also add some coconut mulch to each of the new citrus tree pots to keep the moisture in the soil.

It should be another eventful day!

My Greenhouse

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What a momentous day!  The greenhouse raising was tiring, yet fun.  What a great way to spend my little part of the Plasma Bonus curtsey of the Australian Government.  We bought the kit in November, but have only just got around to putting it together.  It took us a total of six hours to construct, including about 30 minutes of breaks.  The Sun was fading fast as we put the finishing touches on it, but we managed to get it all completed before sunset. Everyone pitched in and no-one complained at all. Well done team TGOG.

I can’t wait to plant my first tomatoes over winter! Please enjoy the little panorama of images that captures the days events.