New Year’s Eve – pretty nice view if we do say so ourselves
Happy New Year
01 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Views
Speed?
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.
’Twas the week before Christmas
23 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in Christmas, Friends, Vegetables
Tags
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…
Pimp our Patch!
Some of our stylish competition (and a very creative use of a tomato)
The nice folks from the Little Veggie Patch put on a rather sweet Christmas party
Day of the zucchinis
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
First crop
02 Sunday Dec 2012
Hope grows…
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).
A time to cull
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?
A view from the patch
03 Saturday Nov 2012
Posted in Vegetables, Views
Our veggie patch is located at Federation Square, Melbourne’s (newish) city square (the old one was on the corner of Collins Street and Swanston Street). In fact many people don’t realise just how close it really is.
So I thought it was about time I showed a few of the views from our garden – not a bad sight when it’s watering time!
Federation Square, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the Forum Theatre
Looking East over the Yarra River and the Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Watering Brigade
25 Thursday Oct 2012
One of the things I had to consider when signing up was how to ensure the plants were always watered. I don’t live in the city, nor work there, so the idea of heading into town every couple of days (or every single day when Melbourne throws those plus-40-degree days at us) was not something I wanted to do.
So may I introduce to you my watering brigade –
Craig
Alecia
Thanks guys, hopefully I can repay you with loads of yummy home-grown veggies!
Beans meanz heinz
15 Monday Oct 2012
Posted in Planting, Propagating, Seeds
Two weeks after planting the seeds, it became clear that the half-toilet rolls weren’t going to hold the rapidly growing beans for much longer. It was time to transfer them to our garden.
Carefully packed into a left over case of beer box, the beans got on a 67 tram to the city, amidst some curious peak hour onlookers.
We planted the beans in rows around the corn – the two types of plants grow well together – something to do with potassium, although I’m unsure which plant has it, and which needs it.
Bean seeds planted: fourteen.
Bean plants transferred to the garden: twelve.
We’re definitely counting that as success 🙂
From Little Seeds Big Things Grow 