We have a new neighbour!
The lovely folk (and Federation Square residents) at Melbourne Festival have become our neighbours this week. The patch beside us has lain empty-ish for months now, so we’re excited to say hello.
And, ahem, that, ‘interloper’ pumpkin that somehow found its way across the boundry fence, well, please consider it a housewarming gift.
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.
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.
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.
The word from the guys at the Little Veggie Patch was – Competition Time! Decorate your patch, measure your zucchinis, find a heap of caterpillars (the latter was, in fairness, more for the good of the plants than really for fun).
So we set to work, utilising newly required stakes for our sole Black Russian tomato plant as a makeshift ‘tree’. Finding a santa/spinning wheel/scare away birds feature, and in general giving our patch a bit of a ‘pimp’.
We were rather pleased with the result, it wasn’t hard to find our plot glinting in the sunlight. Take a look at some of our competition…
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…
