22 Monday Apr 2013
Posted in Celebration, Friends, Growing
It’s hard to believe, but we have been caretakers of our little patch for a whole six months.
In what was probably a first for many of us, we attended a party at the Patch to celebrate the event and ‘brought a plate’ with us – ideally made with some of our home-grown produce.
Amazing what a few candles in jars can do…
07 Sunday Apr 2013
It’s officially Autumn. Cool nights and brisk days have arrived. There is excitement around the Patch, with pretty much everyone planting new crops – walking around the crates is a guessing game of what-do-you-think-is-that-seedling?
On our list this season:
Snap sugar peas (handy to have our tomato trellis already installed)
Snow peas (Lisa likes them loads)
Lettuce (Cos)
Carrots (yes, we’re trying them again)
Chives
Baby spinach
Mystery interloper:
Kale – two plants have mysteriously arrived in our patch. Unknown source. We think we’ll eat them anyhow.
The Big Lesson #1 – Don’t plant too much stuff
The mystery plant, Kale (in front of Craig, not where he is pointing)
New plants on the block
23 Saturday Mar 2013
Last call for Summer
It was time to say goodbye to our Summer crops. Although the tomatoes, beans and capsicum were still producing a little fruit, we wanted to give the soil a few weeks to relax before we launched our next attack of seeds and seedlings.
So out came everything (aside from the our capsicum) and into the compost it went. We dug the bean plants back into the patch, added a couple of bags of compost, watered in some worm wee and sprinkled over a handful of organic compost.
We’re going to let that soil have a break for now.
So the final tally was:
Corn
Disaster. We finally had to accept the fact that they weren’t growing well, and pulled them all out. Not a single corn cob to be seen.
Beans
A handful every few days meant we were relatively happy with these plants, especially considering they had been overshadowed a good deal by the much larger zucchinis and pumpkins. As they got bigger, they did become stringy, if we plant them again next year we will be harvesting them younger.
Capsicum
A late bloomer, but worth planting. Once we had culled all the nutrient hungry pumpkins and zucchinis, this little plant was finally able to thrive. Every few days there’s a new capsicum starting to grow. We’re hoping to keep the plant through Winter, depending on how much room we need for other crops.
Tomatoes (Black Russians)
When they finally began to produce, they were absolutely stunning. Gorgeous flavour, large fruit and heaps of them. Would we plant them again though? Unsure – it was difficult to see all the early-flowering smaller tomatoes and not feel very jealous!
20 Wednesday Mar 2013
Waiting, waiting, waiting…
For a while it seemed that we would only ever be eating pumpkins and zucchinis.
Thankfully by late-February we were starting to harvest our plants every few days, with tomatoes, beans and capsicum starring at dinner. Having planted some lettuce seedlings in the gaps left by the zucchini plants, we were harvesting them too.
All in all we are pretty happy with our first few months.
(Weather note: According the Bureau of Meteorology, daytime maximum temperatures were much warmer than those usually experienced and averaged 27.4°C – departure from normal 2.1°C. Total rainfall for the past summer – Dec 2012 to Feb 2013 – was 108 mm, this being slightly less than that usually recorded)
Take a look at a few of our harvests…
Almost ready…
Pumpkin flowers, Black Russian Tomato (green), Green Beans, Pumpkin
Black Russian Tomatoes
Pretty much a meal!
A bagful of goodies
14 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Growing, Pumpkins, Vegetables
Finally, our plants have started to come into their own. Streaming over the sides of the crate, there are clear signs that we’ll be making pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin and even perhaps a pie (for our Canadian friends) sometime soon.
Pumpkins: Exhibit A
And when they decide to grow, they don’t mess about. With the amount of sun and rain they’ve been getting, I would estimate they grow easily an inch every few days. Somewhat surprisingly, they seem quite happy to grow all over the concrete carpark flooring, not caring the least bit that the surface isn’t soil. As long as their stem is watered, they’re happy chappies.
Pumpkins: Exhibit B
24 Thursday Jan 2013
I admit, the tomato stakes were pretty haphazard. Planted in a state of plant emergency when it was clear our one plant was spreading all over the ground rather than growing up, it’s become necessary to give it (and the patch) a spring clean.
So with a bit of help from master Carpenter Craig, we now have a much better looking tomato plant, with a strong trellis ready to support all those tomatoes that we hope are on their way. The really nice part about having a well built structure is that we can stop continually tying up the branches to various stakes. Instead, we just thread them through the nearest support and let them do their thing.
Trellis support
Crop Report
Along with the new trellis, we’ve revamped and re-arranged. We’ve added a heap of mulch to keep more moisture in the soil (around 2/3 inches thick) and got serious about culling.
Zucchinis
After attending a workshop run by Lucas from Libertas Gardens, we decided that the zucchinis had to go. As much as we have loved eating them, the plants are simply so big that we feel our other crops are suffering, either not getting enough sunlight, or possibly nutrients. We wanted to give them a fighting chance.
Beans
Whilst our bean plants are looking healthy, they’re not producing many actual beans. We’re going to give them a few more weeks to see how they go with our new look, but beans, consider yourselves warned.
Pumpkins
With their main competitors out of the picture, these guys are doing just fine.
Capsicum
We have only one plant, it has a heap of flowers, and just the first sprinklings of little capsicums. Fingers crossed.
Corn
Ripping out some of the weaker plants will hopefully allow the others to really thrive – we can feel the corn starting to grow, it’s just a waiting game now.
Carrots
Complete. Disaster.
No access to sun (see above mention of zucchinis). Too many other plants growing around them. We’ve completely given up on these guys.
Our new trellis in action, our new mulch and space for a lettuce maybe?
24 Monday Dec 2012
Posted in Growing, Tomatoes, Vegetables
It’s been 2 months since we planted our one and only tomato plant, and all we can think is C’Mon Dude!
All around us patches with various types of small tomatoes: cherry, grape and pear – all of them are starting to really bear fruit, and heaps of it. Whilst our plant is clearly healthy, and there is some fruit appearing, we can count on one hand the amount of tomatoes we’ll be able to eat over the next few weeks.
We’ll wait to see if this is a type which flowers much later in Summer of course, but if we’ve learnt one thing from this season (aside from not planting too much stuff) then it would be to consider planning short-to-long flowering combinations.
Our tomatoes, we hope.
20 Thursday Dec 2012
Posted in Eating, Growing, Vegetables, Zucchini
During December it seems that our zucchinis are becoming masters of the patch, easily dwarfing our carrots, beans and even the pumpkin plants. Even though we culled some plants in November, there are still four plants going great guns.
We’re starting to wonder if we shouldn’t have planted less…
Our next crop of zucchinis
14 Wednesday Nov 2012
Posted in Growing, Vegetables
…and so do our plants.
Turns out the apple crates are the business – looking around the rest of the car park, most gardens are flourishing. Those who decided to plant salad leaves are harvesting already. Ours will take a little longer, but we’re pleased that almost all of our transplanted beans have survived (toilet rolls and all).
07 Wednesday Nov 2012
First lesson learnt from the patch: think carefully about what (and how big) your plants will grow. This week we realised that our zucchinis are growing so well they have dwarfed the pumpkins, the beans and the capsicum.
Unfortunately, this means that we had to cull some plants, all for the health of the patch. Whilst savvy gardeners may be well used to this, it broke our hearts a little to see them go in the bin 😦
– Super useful wheelie-rubbish-compost bin
We’re also finding quite a few suspicious looking foreign plants in our patch – they look quite a lot like snow peas. Unfortunately for them and as pretty as they are, they’re not wanted, and as many a gardener has said before me:
”If I don’t want it in my garden, then it’s a weed.”
– Ladybirds mean we’ll get lucky, right?
From Little Seeds Big Things Grow 