The Greening of Gavin

My Garden Beds

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I had a comment the other day asking questions about Garden Beds which I promised to answer in a post;

SherryGreens left a new comment on your post “Around The Summer Garden“:

You have such a beautiful garden, everything looks so lush and healthy! I have just turned over a new fresh environmental leaf, and really want to grow food this year. This is silly yet simple question – why does food grow better in the wicking beds? Does it allow the water to percolate through? Also – do all your beds receive full sunlight? Thanks!

Hi SherryGreens.  Firstly, there is no such thing as a silly question, just silly answers.  Secondly, I have found that since August when I first constructed salad greens do pretty well in the wicking bed.  Everything I plant in it is a seedling, and for the first week I water from above until it has a chance to develop its root structure and find the water table in the bed.  After that it is on its own, with the bed getting a single water once a week whether it likes it or not!

The water is fed through a single pipe, which is joined to agricultural pipe (slottted) that traverses the length of the bed.  Then the water seeps into the sand reservoir where it is then wicked into the compost layer then into the roots of the plants.  Not much to it really and very little maintenance.  The only maintenance I have given the wicking bed is a top dress with dynamic lifter before I planted my second crop of salad greens and a light rake to mix it all up, then a big water from the top to help the organic fertiliser to break down.  I have found this type of garden bed to be extremely water wise, and forgiving if you are a part time gardener.  I love the fact that I only have to water it once a week and it takes care of itself for the rest of the time, and that it is made of 100% reused materials.

All of my other garden beds receive at least 8 hours of full sunlight a day in summer and 4 in winter.  I find that this is enough to grow decent crops all year around.  Most of the other beds are irrigated with low pressure drip irrigation and occasionally from the mains if I am running low on rainwater.  I mulch heavily up to at least 5cm in all beds with sugar cane mulch after I have cleaned out the chicken coop to stop evaporation from occurring.  Not only does the chook poo help fertilise, but I find this is a must when relying on drip irrigation due to the low flow and coverage.  I use compost to improve the beds twice a year, and improve the soil in each bed once a year with blood and bone.

My veggie beds are all raised, because the soil we have around here is heavy clay, and takes many years to build up into something worthy of planting vegetables into.  You can read about how I made the beds and my first crop at this post called “Reducing Food Miles part 1“.

I hope I have answered your questions okay.

A Dry Patch

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Here in Melton West we have had an unusually dry spell.  What am I taking about, this has happened for the last 8 years!  The last time we had any rain to speak of was 10th of December 2008 so you can imagine how dry it is around here.  Before that, it rained in July.  I have never seen the ground so dry and dusty.  Thank goodness for a rainwater tank, and the privilege of being able to water the garden two days a week from mains water whilst still on water restrictions.  I have to supplement with tank water about 3 days a week just to keep the fruit and vegetables alive.

The lack of natural rainfall tends to stunt the growth and yield of the harvest, but being a keen as ever, I simply plant more seedlings to compensate.  Here is an example.  My brother Scott sent me a photo of his sweetcorn.  He lives in South East Queensland, and they have had tonnes of rain lately.   Check out the height of those things! They remind me of Day of the Triffids.  

Well done Scott, but I expect the rain has helped just a little!  In comparison,  here is my crop of sweetcorn.  Small, but 40 plants in total to make up the stunted growth.  The tallest is about 120cm tall.

The taller plants have two ears of corn each, and are maturing quickly.  In this bed I have two plantings, one month apart so to enjoy a longer harvest. 

Just the other side of the tree to the right is the other bed I planted in the front yard.  It contains cucumbers at the front,  and to the rear are watermelon, rockmelon and African horned melon.  They are growing steadily as I am using gray water from the washing machine every other day on these.

Here is a different angle.  You can see the melons better.

The bed behind that one is the next plot that I intend to tackle, and the one behind that is where I am going to pull out a dead bush (can’t remember the name of it) and plant two blueberry bushes.

Leaving the front yard now and through the gate you can just see above.  Kim and I took out one of the veranda trellis to give the illusion of more room in the east side garden.  It certainly worked, because it now feels like a much bigger space.  We can even see the chook house in all its glory.

Just behind those pots to the left of the shot above is my Dwarf ANZAC peach tree that is two years old.  It has cropped in the last week and we harvested about 40 peaches.  They were the best we have ever tasted.  Small, sweet and juicy.  Click to enlarge.

The tree has grown so much in just two years.  It is grafted onto Dwarf root stock.  I bought the plant from the Diggers club.
Here is some of the fruit just before we picked it all off.  I did initially begin to just remove the fruit we needed day by day, however a funny thing happened.  The chooks had been ignoring the fruit, possibly because they didn’t know it was edible.
Kim decided to go up to the tree when Edwina was watching her and Kim bit into the piece of fruit.  The chickens went berserk! Edwina started pecking at the low hanging fruit, and then all the other girls ran over and got stuck in as well. 

Kim started screaming and tried to nudge them away with her foot!  Well that didn’t work and I came outside from making my cup of tea and saved the day.  I picked the three pieces of fruit they were attacking and threw them about two metres away, told Kim to guard the remaining fruit, and then proceeded to pick up each chicken whilst they were distracted and put them all back into their run.  Crisis over, and I laughed so hard!  I then went inside, got a bowl, and picked all the fruit, which we ate over the course of the last week. 

The next bed which is beside the chicken coop contains purple Russian tomatoes, Jalapeno chilies (2 years old and going strong), and rainbow chard.

Around the other side of the house where the main veggie patch is located are beds.  In the first bed we have the pumpkin and zucchini patch, which is going well.  I am just starting to get small pumpkins and zucchini developing now.  Note the two blueberry bushes in pots at the head of the bed.  Those are the ones I am planting in the front yard.

I have noticed a lack of bees on this side of the garden, so I am having to pollinate all of the cucurbits by hand. 

Before I started hand pollination, I notice that the Golden nugget pumpkins would develop flowers and then shrivel up when the flower died.  I now have a few big fruit since I took over the sexual relations for these plants!

The next bed are the lone eggplant (aubergine), and 3 varieties of tomato, Tommy Toe, Black Russian, and Tigerella.

 

The citrus trees in the pots behind are receiving about 3 litres of water a day each from the water we save from the pre-hotwater in the shower.  It keeps the fruit from dropping off with a daily water.  I noticed last year that when I watered them twice a week, the pots dried out so quick that not only did the forming fruit drop off like lemmings over a cliff, but the leaves went yellow very quickly.  This year I have avoided both problems.

Bed number three contains the sole capsicum plant from last year, and is cropping well.  It has bigger fruit than last season.

It also contains the wicking pots surrounded by the lettuce I planted about 6 weeks ago.  They are so healthy that we have such an abundance and I can’t even see the pot lids anymore.  I think I planted too many seedlings, because I usually have such a bad strike rate.  I fill the wicking pots only on the two days a week I use mains water.  The soil stays nice and moist.  You can even pick the lettuce in the heat of the noon sun and they are still crisp.  In this bed I also have red spring onions, mizuna and snow peas at the back.

Bed number 4 contains more tomatoes.  I have a Tigerella, a Effie, a Mortgage lifter, Tommy Toe, and two unknown from a mixed packet of tomato seeds.  It will be a bit of a surprise when they fruit.

 

Deep inside the mass of tomato vines, there are my first ripe tomatoes.  No prizes for guessing which type they are.

 

The last bed has two small capsicum bushes, Yellow current cherry tomatoes, and rainbow chard.  Strawberry pots and Rosemary in front of the bed.  The strawberries are developing runners, so I will have to buy a few more pots and plant them up.

All in all, not a bad garden for bugger all rain! Here it is in all it’s glory looking from the front.

And from the rear.

A lot of work has gone into the patch so far this year, especially with keeping the moisture levels up.  All worth it though in the long run, and I get a great feeling of joy knowing that very soon I will be harvesting lots of home grown produce.

Working My Patch

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I had a bit of a delay in posting this one.  I thought I would spend a few evenings with Kim as she hasn’t been well of late, so therefore I really haven’t had time to write a big post.  She has been having a troubling few weeks with fatigue due the her MS and it has been wearing her down.  I am helping out, of course, so with a bit more rest and time to heal, she will be right as rain again.  It just takes time with this sort of thing.

Anyway, I worked hard in the garden on Sunday while she was resting in bed.  Planting, watering, fertilizing and a little bit of weeding.  Not too strenuous, but enough to work up a bit of a sweat.

I harvested all of the onions and left them of the deck table to dry and form their outer skins.  Here is the bounty!  I haven’t counted them, but I know I won’t need to buy brown onions for a while.  I will pickle the smaller ones on the weekend, and use the larger ones over the next month or so. Click to enlarge any photo.

I made a trip to Bunnings and bought some recycled plastic stakes for the tomato seedlings that I have grown.  I put in one each of Elfie, Mortgage Lifter, Tigerella, and Tommy Toe.  I also put in 5 Purple Russian tomato plants in the chooks veggie bed on the other side of the yard, right at the back of the bed so they couldn’t reach them through the chicken wire fence that surrounds it.  Them chickens is organised and clever!

The lettuce is doing well and the wicking pots are working like a treat.  I also made a trellis in the same bed and planted snow peas at the base of it.  I was sick of the way the peas did not climb up the tee pees that I usually make out of bamboo, so thought that this might work as there are more wires for the peas to grab hold of.  They have already burst through the soil, and I am very impressed at how quickly they have germinated.  Also in this bed I planted red spring onions, mizuna and freckles lettuce.  It is a real summer salad bed!

The first bed of tomatoes and a single eggplant are doing very well now, after a slow start.  There is so much fruit already on the vines and many more flowers yet to form fruit.  These are the self seeded tomatoes from in the citrus pots that I transplanted.

The rainbow chard that I planted from seed is growing very quickly now.  I will have to transplant it on Saturday in the bed that I pulled the onions out of.  I will add a little composted chook poo to the bed to give them a good feed.

The pumpkin patch is growing very fast now.  We have already had a flower on the golden nugget, and some forming on the butternut.  The Kent are not big enough yet to flower, but at the rate they are growing, it won’t be long.  I have one rockmelon plant in the same bed and it is just beginning to creep and flower.  This will be the first successful rockmelon I have grown (fingers crossed).  The earwigs and slugs ate the other 5 seedlings I grew. I also have two zucchini plants growing well centre front of the bed.  I had to cover them every night with a plastic bowl to keep the slugs off of them until they grew large enough.  The things we do for our veggies!

In the new bed in the front yard, I planted watermelon (sugar baby), rockmelon (prescott fond blanc) seeds, which have germinated already, and transplanted the 4 African Horned Melon that I managed to get to germinate in black pots (they like it hot).  No photo, but I have been watering them with the grey water from the washing machine.  They love it and are growing quickly now they are up and running.  In the same bed, I have managed to keep 7 cucumber plants alive, and they are also growing well.  All of the sweetcorn is at least 30cm high, some are about double that size, and all healthy.

I have the old onion bed to prep on Saturday and I will put in the rainbow chard, and the remaining few tomato plants I have left.  I have yellow current, tommy toe, and one other variety that was from a mixed packet.   I have two capsicums that are going well from seed so they will go in the same bed as the tomatoes. 

All the fruit and citrus trees are bearing well and laden with fruit, except the new apricot and the Jonathan apple tree because the chooks ate the flowers.  Naughty chickens!  I will net it early next year and it should grow high enough so they can’t reach the flowers.

I reckon that should just about do me for the summer crop, unless of course I decide to convert another bed in the front yard over the weekend!  Who knows, I might just get bored and have a spare hour or two up my sleeve.