Review and Renew 2009

I have been thinking about the garden what went well and what didn't go quite so well and what I want to try in 2009.

Went well

• Compost - composted all household compostibles
• Lettuce (I had home grown lettuce most days)
• Mint - great but has now passed its best lasted about 3 months
• Rosmary - can't fail with this
• Dwarf broad beans - I harvested a few and killed them and left in soil (fixing nitrogeon)
• Garlic (from sprouted cloves)
• Basil - good but bolted quickly

Almost Worked

• Peas, tomatoes - started well but got rot
• Cabbage, broccoli - started well be savaged by snails cabbage moth & slugs.
• Broad beans some looked promising but rotted or just died
• Strawberries, grapes (produced but eaten by birds)
• Chillis (from from chill seeds from kitchen) kept getting eaten when young
• 
  

Failures (didn't grow at all)

• Soybeans (maybe the seeds were bad)
• Grow from seeds they kept dying

Things I have learnt

• How to use mulch
• How to water

Year 2 - Garden cleanup

I will be on holiday soon. In melbourne it will be getting very hot and with our brick yard the back garden will get very hot indeed.

My garden is looking very sad at the moment. The lettuce that was looking so good has now bolted and the cabbage and broccoli is annihilated by pests. Heres what it looks like now.




I need to protect my plants from drying out and without watering them for a week or two. This is why I have decided that I will need to mulch. Using a stray mulch is supposed to keep snails at bay so I will be using pea straw.

Today I bought pea straw here are photos of my garden before and after mulching.

Slugs are being just greedy

Look at the state of one of my cabbages!

As much as I want everything in my garden to be happy and harmonious. I am finding the slugs to be particularly greedy. This is just taking the pss. Any suggestions?

More Planting and warmer weather

The weather is starting to heat up and my garden is in abundance.
Highs

• Strawberries have started growing!

• There are snap peas on my 3 pea plants

The silverbeet is (although very holey) quite large

Big cabbages, big cauliflower (just starting to curl up) (although very holey)

The mint and parsley have gone crazy

The tomato plant I bought is doing lovely

Lows

• All the rocket has gone to seed
• the realestate have removed the rosebush now the plants have alot less shade
  
  
  
  BEFORE
  
  
  
  

AFTER

My next challenge will be making sure the hot weather doesn't kill everything!

A food forrest in Borneo

I was http://www.weforest.com/network.php

Garden Update

Things are going pretty well. My next project will be to control pest - mother nature I am afraid is not quite cutting it.

Death toll

• All the broccoli (apart from one in the front garden) has been killed by the possom.
• Silverbeat is looking very holey (apart from the one near the fence)
• Lettuce is similar
• Possoms were eating all my parsley.The parsly is now behind bars (a milk crate) and growing quite nicely

below is a photo story of my garden to date (its on a 7 second delay)

Garden update

Garden update

here it is!

It's been wet and my garden has flourished

Bought seedlings!

I have bought some seedlings - cost me $5 for all these plants (they had been attacked by the chickens at CERES)

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

I have now planted them
some in the front garden (where I dug up the soil and added straw to improve drainage because the siol is quite compacted)

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

about 6 weeks ago I chucked some broad ben seeds in the frot garden in the vague hope that they might grow. I have done no soil preparation in the front garden and am not going to water it at all. So if the beans didn't grow I thought fair enough, I thought though becasue its been quite wet recently I might be able to get some things started. (the beans are below)

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

I have put the seedlings in everywhere and I have put them in little crators these I fill with a bucket twce a week as per the "square foot gardening" book. In some paces I have also muclched them with newspaper (to try to reduce the amount of  weeding I need to do)

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

From Garden 26/07/09 10:17 AM

SGA Pod meeting

I went to Sustainable Gardening Australia Pod meeting on Nicholson St. I thought it was a good way to share some learnings and seedlings etc. It was the first meeeting of the Nicholson Pod and was a very good afternoon there were some lovely people there and some people with a lot of gardening experience. A few people with be-hives and a few people that are growing food forests (this is something I would like to do in future).

There was a lovely spread of cakes and hot drinks too.

Setting up a square Foot Gardening

KEY LEARNING'S

Need better organization

Need to be better at cultivating from seeds

Need to sort out the ph balance of my soil

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED

Bought the "square foot garden" book

DIARY COMMENT

My garden has produced a few items so far

• A small qty of green beans
• 3 large pots of rocket
• 3 basil plants (lasted 6 months)
• A few spring onions
• A few garlic plants
• 2 Silver beet (very small at the moment)

But failed to produce quite allot. I thought it was time to take stock. Part of that was to measure the pH of my soil however my planting has been sporadic and my success planting from seeds has been pretty poor (nearly all died).

-Square Foot Gardening

I bought the book square foot garden the other day and it looks pretty good. I hope it will give my garden a routine and structure - it's all been a bit messy and ad-hoc up until now.

-Killing off My beds

The beans I grew earlier in the year have stopped producing beans and the beds are filled with weeds (this was due in part tom my random way I planted which meant I was never sure if the green shoots were weeds or what I had planted).

I thought it was a good time to kill off the beans and reorganise things along the lines of the square foot garden. I covered all my beds with newspaper and then poured soil onto in.

BEFORE

From Garden 5/07/09 2:29 PM

AFTER

BED C JULY 2009

I have also marked out with string approximate 1 foot squares. Once I have read a bit more I will then start planting.

The soil I poured on is a mix of mulched leaves (that had been in a bin bag since January). 8 bags of star-bucks coffee, and the rest (which would be about 60% by volume) was compost from my heap that has been composting since January and the newest addition was about 1 month ago).

BED B July 2009

BED B July 2009

BED C JULY 2009

From Garden 5/07/09 2:29 PM

BED D JULY 2009

BED G "Not on diagram" July 2009

Check soil PH

KEY LEARNINGS
Starbucks coffee grounds are acid (a pH of around 6-5.5)
Bed C is alkali pH of around 7.5
Bed B is acid 5.5

My compost is acid 5.5

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED
Used a pH test for the garden

DIARY COMMENT
Things don't seem to be growing as well as I had hoped I had a hunch that maybe my soil was too acid so I bought a PH test. Below is the chart and the results (the main bed I was testing is the splodge in the middle)

From Garden 5/07/09 2:29 PM

From Garden 5/07/09 2:29 PM

PH 5.5 LEFT TOP- Used Coffee grounds
PH 5.5 LEFT BOTTOM - Used Coffee grounds (decaf)

PH 7.5 CENTRE - BED C

PH 5.5 RIGHT TOP - My compost heap
PH 5.5 RIGHT BOTTOM - BED B

As you can see by the test my soil is quite alkali (not acid as I thought). It seems that most is about neutral (around 7) but spots of strong alkali (8-9). I have also been taking advantage of Starbucks policy of giving away used coffee grounds and been adding to the compost. (see below)

From Garden 5/07/09 2:29 PM

It says on the coffee that the pH is neutral. I heard that coffee is often a bit acid so I tested it.As you can see they came out fairly acid.

So the coffee might work well to neutralize the alkali in my soil. Any thoughts?

Killing back a bunch of beds

My beans are now at the end of thier life.

To improve the soil I have covered them with newspaper and mulch

Inspiration into action

I was watchng this the other day

Its inspirational so much so I sorted out the garden - I will do a proper blog entry later in the week

I've trashed my soil!!

KEY LEARNINGS

Don't dig ciore mulch into your soil for use in a vegetable garden. It will draw nutrients out of the soil!

The best combination for mulch is Pea straw or (@@ I'll find this out in a bit)

DETAILS
There is a page on Mulch in the palm much is a classed as a woody type of mulch and below are some of its charactristics from wikipeadia Excerpt " Wood chips, are a byproduct of the pruning of trees by arborists, utilities and parks; they are used to dispose of bulky waste. Tree branches and large stems are rather coarse after chipping and tend to be used as a mulch at least three inches thick. The chips are used to conserve soil moisture, moderate soil temperature and suppress weed growth. Freshly produced chips from green recently living woody plants consumes nitrate as they are decay, this is often off set with a light application of a high-nitrate fertilizer.


Spring daffodils push through shredded wood mulch
Wood chips are most often used under trees and shrubs, when used around soft stemmed plants an unmulched zone is left around the plant stems to prevent stem rot or other possible diseases. They are often used to mulch trails, because they are readably produced with little additional cost outside of the normal disposal cost of tree maintenance."




HOW TO FIX IT
Replace the soil. I spoke to a nice chap at the CERES nursery about how I fix my problem. I have put approximately 180 litres of coir mulch on my garden so far. So I guess I have stuffed up approximately 250 litres of soil ouch!!

I will talk to Bullen art & Garden about dropping off a few meters cubed of high quality top soil (This will have to wait until approx. June as I am very busy this month)

DIARY ENTRY
Bugger it! My first proper disaster! I was looking at the way my garden is panning out and was concearned with the slow growing of my tomatoes and realised that all the areas where I have added palm mulch to the soil have done really badly (see below)

From Garden 13/04/09 4:28 PM

From Garden 13/04/09 4:28 PM

From Garden 13/04/09 4:28 PM

compare that with this (no mulch added)

From Garden 13/04/09 4:28 PM

I

Harvest Time!!

I have picked 100grams of green beans today to put in our lunch - this came from around 10 bean plants (they will continue to produce more. See pics below

From Garden 1/04/09 8:01 PM

From Garden 1/04/09 8:01 PM

a 500g bag of green beans from safeway is $1.50 this means I have brought 30 cents of income in from the beans.
GARDEN STATS
CASH SPENT $161.51
REVENUE
YEARLY Basil $30
Grean beans $0.30
Total Income $30.30


TOTAL FINANCIAL NET POSITION OF THE GARDEN SO FAR -113.21

OTHER STUFF
I have added 60 litres of mulch to the beds in the front garden and am going to plant carrots and leeks
I looked up this site before I did it to look into what I need to do


I have also modified the blog (added a google calender for me to put in my actual planting plan)

Corrianders Dead - Although I have beans!

KEY LEARNINGS

Seedlings are delicate! Don't leave out in direct sunlight for very long

Label everything otherwise telling the difference between weeds and what you plated becomes tricky

Mulching well is essentaial before you try to grow anything

Apart from good drainage potting mix is important as it doesn't have any other plants in it (when growing seedlings it is important you have no other competeiion or you are likely to end up watering weeds!

Read the labels on the seeds. I've been growing "dwarf beans" - how pathetic.

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED

I put in the palm mulch (I mixed it with compost and stacked it up over my beans)

I have worked out a better way of putting compost nto the seedling containers

Used all my seedling containers and planted
- Corriander
-Mint
-Parsley
-Chives
-Ferns
-Basil
-Basil Lettuce
-Brocoli

DIARY COMMENT
Negatives

Seedlings are all dead - I got them out and left them in the middle of the yard for two days and most of them died!

Tomatoes are taking there time!

Postives

Beans are producing beans!

From Garden 14/03/09 10:11 PM

Most of the plants are looking pretty healthy

From Gardening 22/03/09 12:47 PM

I worked out what this tray is for!

From Gardening 22/03/09 12:47 PM

HOW TO QUICKLY PLANT SEEDLINGS
1. Get seedling containers
2. put in the tray (in pic)
3. Empty potting mix onto containters
4. Remove containers from tray (then repeat with this with as many seedling containers as you need to
5. Water all pots thoroughly
6. Get a thin stick (bit bigger than a cocktail stick
7. make holes for your seeds (it is quicky if you have all your pots lined up and work accross all the pots in one go.
8. drop seeds to try and get them into the holes
9. Get a handfull or two of potting mix and shake it to cover the seeds
10. Viola (this took me about 30 mins for about 20 seedling containers


GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
Today gave some of my tomato seedlings to another community gardener

Moon Gardening

I saw this blog on planting to coincide with different phases of the moon. I look foreword to seeing the results

http://themoongardeningexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/02/seeding-stage.html#comments

I'm loving my veggie Patch - Just spent money

KEY LEARNINGS

To buy seeds economically I would have been off buying online will try http://www.cornucopiaseeds.com.au/ next time I buy seeds

With the use of canes I was able to train my grapes to offer some shade to veggie patch C (This needs more shade)

Plants get discounted alot in kmart I bought two rather sickly plants for $1:18

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED

I have bought stuff (I spent $66 AU which brings my total to $96.83 (AU) (see my spreadsheet with all costs to date)

I have bought some flower seeds (they should bring nice bugs into my garden)

I have bought some petunias (they were 59 cents AU)

I have change my potting mix to 30% cane mulch 30%compost and the rest dirt and leaves (from the lemon tree)

I have now planted for the first time in the front garden (I planted rocket - I like rocket)

I have bought a plant to shade patch c

DIARY COMMENT
I decided I needed to buy a few things to make my garden a bit better

1. Plastic label sticks (my paper ones were curiling and getting in the light of my seedlings
2. 5 black plastic buckets (they will form part of my self watering containers

From Gardening 14/02/09 7:01 PM

The next picture shows how I am using it. Buy simpley putting a pot in the bucket and the adding water to the bucket I am making sure it gets lots of water. I may drill holes in the sides of the containers in future but I will see how these go.

From Gardening 14/02/09 7:01 PM

I have done a bit of work on bed c below is a picture you can see that I have planted a shrub ($10) that hopefully will give a little more shade. I have also put in poles to guide the grape vine to give some shade too.

From Gardening 14/02/09 7:01 PM

Lunar Planting

I have been talking to a freind about lunar planting see lunar planting guide enclosed.

I may give it a go sometime - I will put it in the links

More Planting and very hot weather

KEY LEARNINGS

Compost makes very good mulch - I am now just putting the compost on top of the soil (rather than digging it in). The compost is pretty course so it is working pretty well as mulch

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED

I read a book on composting. It reccomend screwing up newspapaer and adding it to the compost heap to keep it well aerated. I have done this this week.

I read a book on self watering container gardening. It suggests that some vegetables can actually come out better in self watering containers as it gives a constant feed of water. Vegetables that are good to grow are those that usually use alot of water. Tomatos, cucumber, capsicum etc.

I have added carrots and chives to my beans as they are supposed to grow wel together.

I have planted some greens in a self watering container

DIARY COMMENT
Not good weather for gardening

We had the states hottest day on record - getting to 47 degrees centigrade on Saturday. This has caused some of the worst forest fires in that Victoria that are still raging - it's pretty bad.

The garden took another hammering my beans I was lamenting over last time got burnt and a few died.

ADDING BEDS OF CHIVES, CARROTS & BEANS
They are all plants that like to be together (see the "2009 planting guide" "spreadsheet for companion planting guide)
I have composted all the beds and added a mix of beans , carrots and chives to the beds B & C and also added chives and carrots to bed D.

I have also planted some new seedlings (tomotos and corriander).
I ahave also planted some cornflower in a large pot

I have also planted greens in a self watering container I found in the garden. I read a book on self watering containers and it looks like they can be very effective when being used with vegetables - so we shall see how they go. They have a resivior in the bottom for thewater. I filled the pot with a mix of compost soil and mulch. (below see the hole in the middle of the container this is where the water goes )

From Gardening 8/02/09 7:08 PM

below are pics of all the beds as of today

My First Garlic

I was cleaning the kitchen this afternoon and found some sprouting garlic and thought I should plant it.

From Gardening 1/02/09 9:42 AM

below is the pot (with lots of much on top mixed with a bit of soil so it doesn't blow away)

From Gardening 1/02/09 9:42 AM

I think I'm getting better at preparing pots. I put a brick in the bottom and then a mix of soil and cane sugar stem mulch and compost in the pot. The top 1 inches had more mulch in it (to try to prevent evaporation and improve surface water retention).

Feb 2 In my garden HOT HOT HOT!

KEY LEARNINGS

Keep young plants out of the sun in Melbourne

Put piles of mulch on your plants when it is hot (it keeps the roots cool and prevents evaporation)

All new plants will be grown in the shade

NEW THINGS I HAVE TRIED

Grow tomatoes from seeds in a tomato

Put labels on my seedlings


DIARY COMMENT
Its been a hot month

It reached a top of 46 degrees centigrade 115 degrees Fahrenheit! this week - not good for my plants!
"
Melbourne, host city for the Australian Open tennis tournament, posted three straight days of temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in recorded history. The South Australian capital of Adelaide is experiencing its hottest streak since 1908.

“They could be people who are elderly who have succumbed to heat stroke or some exhaustion as a result of the heat,” Hill said. “The ones I am most concerned about who are isolated and live by themselves.”

Today’s forecast high for Melbourne is 37 degrees while Adelaide is expected to reach 40 degrees according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s Web site.

More than 500 firefighters are battling bushfires covering 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) in eastern Victoria, according to the Country Fire Authority.

In the town of Booolara, 15 homes have been lost, while there haven’t been any reports of fatalities, the News.com Web Site reported.
"
Full article here

GARDEN DIARY COMMENT
Its been pretty hot for a few weeks and all of my seedlings that I potted orignally have died. It was partly due to the fact they wern't shady and partly the soil wasn't draining well enough. All my plants have now got big layers of muclch on top and been moved into the shade where I can.

The basil I planted is bed C is doing pretty badly but not dead yet (the tomatoes seedlings I put into that bed died last month).
The basin in the pots under the tree is fairing much better. My plants don't like as much sun as they are getting!
below are my plants

Devestation

My Foray into gardening is having difficulties.

All my tomatoes are now dead. We had 3 40 degree centigrade days last week over the course of one the days they all died.

LEARNING

wait for the tomatoes to get bigger before I repot. Get them as sheltered as possible

6 weeks since I planted the results so far

I should have noted the date when I planted my first stuff bt it was around begging of December so that means it has been approx 6 weeks since I planted. Whats happend?

GENERAL LEARNINGS

• Must note down what I plant where I plant it and when - (seedings can look pretty similar when they are small)
  
• I didn't wait long enough for some seedlings to grow before I repotted them - they died
  
• None of the mint grew at all
  
• None of the carrots grew at all
  
• I almost killed an aloe vera cutting a freind gave me becuse I overwatered it
  
• Don't plant in pots of normal soil it doesn't drain well enough (I ended using a mix of soil potting mix and much (a third each) it seems to work better.
  
• My plants don't iike the heat - my seedlings are all in the shade now.
  
• My old compost heap wasn't composting I worked out why it was getting to hot. I moved it so it was under lemon tree and measure a 10 degree difference between the two locations last week.
  
• Green beans grow quickly!

Basil from seed - > growing I have 5 plants that seem healthy - bt small

From Our Garden

Basil plant bought from Kmart
They are growing well I found that the basil I have planted in the beds have been attacked by slugs. I have moved one such plant to a hanging basket to reduce slug attack.

From Our Garden

Chives
THey are growing I have 3 chive seedlings

From Our Garden

Green Beans

I dug over bed D last week and added mulch to the soil and then covered with mulch (to prevent evaporation and keep the plants cool). I then planted beans. I did this because as I don't have any compost yet I though it might be worth growing the beans to rejuvinate the soil ( I will dig the beans into the soil when they are grown).

From Our Garden

OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS

The back garden gets pretty hot (much hotter than the front - last week it was 40 degrees in the shade (this is about as hot as it gets in Melbourne). I think what is happening is that the brick floor that covers half the garden is heating up and eating the air. I need to fix this - not sure how though.

Soil contamination?

How could I go about checking this to make sure there is nothing nasty in my soil? Any Ideas?

Permablitz

I just sent an email to permablitz. A nice chap called Adam at permabliz

Permablitz is an organisation where they help you to build a permaculture garden

http://www.permablitz.net/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

2 months in and need to get organised

Its 2 months since I decided to start planning a vegetable garden

I was listening to the survival podcast yesterday morning (one of the best podcasts about modern chemical free gardening) and it occured to me that I was not really going to get anywhere with without some proper organisation.

So far I have planted some 

tomatoes, basil , chives, lettuce etc. 

Many items such as tomatoes will need to be planted throughout the year so I need to build a planting calender. I have also allready lost track of what seeds I planted where so I need to get organized hence the blog. I hope that documenting my progress will make things better for me and hopefully useful for other people too