Lightning... Flooding... Yet something SURPRISING!

Tomatoes!

After the nights storm and flooding we had, with at least a foot of water surrounding the house and a few waterfalls coming from the property above us - I really didn't think my poor pin-tacked greenhouse would be in survival mode!

 

But shock! Look at these babies that got lightning shocked out of hibernation!!!

 

The stunning day that followed the lightning filled night meant that opening my greenhouse was also followed with a burst of heat escaping!

 

Fantastic stuff for that germination!

 

 

I can’t believe how fast my cucumbers have shot up – less than a week after being under a plastic cover in the greenhouse!

 

Cucumbers!

I really was surprised! I was just grateful that it was still upright and intact to be honest! But this was a welcoming sight!

I did think the ‘greenhouse’ was officially all the cover they needed (since my greenhouse is only about a foot wide and a meter long!). I also thought that putting bags and covers over things in it was a bit over-kill! But now, I’m a firm believer of how SUPER fast things grow with the extra help!

I’m now going to get grabbing the plastic bags and put all those seedlings into them for help!

I might have to get some more of those covered seed trays! ;) 

You say potato... I say Oca?

Two things that my family LOVE are Kumara and Yams! There is nothing like a roast dinner with sweet potato and yams mixed with gravy :) mmmmmm... makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

I've never seen them in the shops to grow though... and as I've found out - they are hard to track down! There isn't much information out there - especially on Yams. The American's call NZ's version of Yams the sweet potato...... so that makes it a bit confusing trying to find information about how to grow them.

What I did find was several different methods to grow the kumara (sweet potato) which mostly involved using sand and sounded rather difficult! For Yams...... the only method I found was to put them in dirt?!? 

Most of the websites said you could just use the ones you buy from the store... 

which is good as I can't find them anywhere else!!!!

So I thought I'd do a trial with both the red and gold kumara using the three methods I found and just see what happened! Bring back memories of College Science Experiments? :)

Method One:

Put the kumara into a jar of water, changing the water every three days until sprouts appear.

Method Two:

Put the kumara in dirt and cover!

Method Three:

Put a 10cm layer of dirt on the bottom of the pot, followed by sand. Place the kumara in and cover with sand.

All of the methods second stage is to wait until the sprouts grow approx. 10-15cm and then break them off and plant them out. They all also recommend heavy non fertile soils for best results. They take about 5-6 months to fully mature in a good long warm season... so we are in for a wait!

The race is on!



Yams are a different story - Put them in a container of dirt, cover them and wait! They don't flower until 3 or 4 months after planting and then don't send out tubers until autumn..... So again, these plants could have a long wait ahead of them! They also need room temperature to sprout... so they might be joining the capsicums in the house if it doesn't warm up soon! :)

What's more exciting then trying something new?!

Planting the first seeds...

According to the books, although I've been somewhat sceptical - it's time to start planting some seeds to be ready by the end of October to plant out into the garden.

Although most of the things I want to plant are probably not going to thrive with this cooler weather around at night still, they recommend planting out tomatoes, capsicums, silverbeet, spinach, beets and radishes among others.

Somewhat harmless to try - so off we go!~

As you can see in the pictures there are a few things sprouting up that I planted a week or so ago along with my cuttings that are still alive (yes... a lot didn't! Doh!).

 

My onions that I planted about a month ago have sprouted up and are now hardening off. :) A bit late to get them out into the garden - but I'm just happy that I got the shallots to germinate this time around! Onions were one of my "didn't have enough of veges" from last year - so this time I've gone all out! Hopefully I'll be able to store them properly so they don't rot. Watch this space!
 

• My goal for seeds this year is to accurately label, no matter how painstaking it is!

 

One hint I have seen is to put all those warmer liking veges like tomato and capsicum into the hot water cupboard until they sprout.

Will I forget about them and let them sizzle? Probably! Could work if I somehow remember to keep them alive! I think I'll give them a go in the greenhouse first before I take over the hot water cupboard with plants though! :) Our house doesn't really have window sills to use to keep them indoors unfortunately either.... I don't trust them on the floor with nosey children (& cats!) around that they wont be upturned!

I hope my poor little greenhouse can give them the warmth they need!~ Fingers crossed!!!

Out with the Old... In with the SPECTACULAR New!

I had a great adventure last week - making new bean supports! I wanted to still be able to rotate the beans... so I needed the support to be stable and sturdy, but able to be moved from bed to bed.

My good old bamboo trellis from last year has this rather bizarre unknown black sooty looking substance on it. Google couldn't help me. Neither could scrubbing. So I don't trust it to not kill off everything I grow with some random mutant disease, so out it goes! Instead a much better-on-the-eyes apparatus has been erected! I just hope it's stable enough, but it should be! (Fingers crossed!).

The best part about it was that it only cost $20 to make! Much cheaper than endless fancy bean supports. It was super easy to do, and its completely movable for next year (if it stays up - which of course it will!!! :P)

Just for a splash of spring - here is a picture of the blossoms that burst this morning on my plum tree! :)

Fruit tree heaven!

I'm finally feeling like I'm getting the structure of the garden under control. I've made various sections about the place - vegetables, fruit/orchard, a cottage garden and 'native' entertaining areas. After the longer autumn-feeling weather we've had - they have had a bit of a random burst of growth and are finally starting to take shape about the place! A long way to go of course! But does a gardeners paradise ever feel completed? ;)

My Grapefruit Delight!

After hubby allowed me to buy a Golden Special Grapefruit tree last month (YUM!) - I feel like I have almost everything  in the way of trees(who can say for sure they have enough fruit trees?!) that I want to eat throughout the year now! Pity most of the trees are only a meter high, so the yields are obviously not going to be that much for at least a couple of years! But if everything takes off and gets fruit on it - we should theoretically be self sufficient for most fruit seasons over the year! That's the goal anyway!

We do have a mandarin tree that was here when we arrived and that gave us about 3kg of fruit and its only 1.5m.... so I have high hopes for the rest!

I've separated all the citrus trees and stone fruit trees into different areas and after a few re-arrangements I'm finally really happy with where they are all placed. Sounds like a lot of effort - and it is! Taking into consideration the final size of the tree and that I wanted some to provide us a bit of privacy from other houses - it was quite a tricky expedition! Guess that's the blessing of being in a city and not rural!

Poor Mr Avocado

My avocado trees are looking a little bald..... I'm in the hope that they have lost their leaves due to shock and will re-bloom fabulously come spring time!

Buds!

Peaches, apples, plums and nectarines are all starting to bud! Whoop whoop! Time to get out that copper to control the fungus!










Look at this! Poor Mr Loquat tree had a dire case of black spot all over it and was not a happy tree. In fact I thought it would die after it lost most of its leaves. But after many Bravo (Yates fungicide) applications over the last year - the black spot has definitely become less, although not completely gone yet. It even has a single bunch of fruit and new leaves!!!!! WOW! Can't wait to see what they taste like!

Brilliant! Some fruit!

Its that time of the year again!!! :)

Well its that time of the year again to prepare the beds for the next exciting summer vegetable garden! :) 

I'm feeling like I'm not as in the dark as I was last year - so I have much braver plans on how to use the space in my garden this year. We wasted space last year with failed crops and crops that we didn't fully use or preserve, so this year I plan to use everything that comes out of the garden - through better planning and more preserving mainly!

Still.. a lot to learn! I used growveg.com last year as a planner and it was fantastic. This year I'm trialing plangarden.com and I'm finding it no where near as good as growveg. Much harder to use, no guide on numbers of vegetable plants to put in the space you have/square foot gardening, and no colour co-ordinating vegetables/plans/years so you can monitor the rotation of crops. On the plus side it does have facilities to communicate with other gardeners and add photos of your garden. But it's free for a month so we will persevere!

Draft plan 2013 Summer

Here is my draft plan for the summer. I've tried to do a bit of rotation planting as well as companion. But going from different websites - its actually quite hard as there is conflicting information! So, it is what it is :)

Some of the additions this year are; eggplants, corn, melons and more herbs (not on the plan). I'm also going to get those lettuces growing! They failed last year.... how can lettuce fail? Not sure... apparently easy to grow... well not for me! haha. This time around there will also be less beets and zucchinis and more cucumbers (that were a dire failure last year!) and potatoes (which lasted for months after harvest!).

Its funny - you never have enough space! But I better not take up more of the valued cricket pitch!!

On a very exciting note - the compost has been successful! The whole layering and adding compost enhancer plan has paid off. So when we went to see if it was usable, a lovely rich, dark, worm filled compost was there - much better than the random rotting fruit that stunk to use last time! Definitely a winner there!

Something that did surprise me was that the raised garden beds dirt had 'disappeared' basically down to ground level. They weren't full to the brim to begin with, but it did surprise me that the dirt had reduced that much. Lucky for the compost! :) Is this normal? I have no idea! I was under the assumption that the dirt would get bigger or at least the same each year with all the compost and plants added.....? Maybe it's just because they are new and the dirt settled down over the months of no use? Bizarre!

So, I've put a cover of compost, sheep pellets and clay breaker (gypsum) in each bed and turned it (Thanks Mr Hubby!). It looks fabulous! A nice rich dark soil, compared with a dusty clay/grey bed. It will need some time to settle and mix in ready for springtime. I would love to add some blood and bone to fertilise it, but its rather expensive so not in the budget this time around!

This winter has been truly bizarre - no rain now for about 3 weeks here, then suddenly it pours continuously for a week and floods the place.....??! So now, it's time to get rugged up as winter has arrived~! Good time to settle next to the fire and plan Plan PLAN! :)

Don't they look gorgeous?!

Renovating the Pond

Well... not much happening in my garden! I can honestly say the winter crop has been a dismal failure! I found a stray potato plant looming there with a few beetroots. Carrots have been eaten by bugs and my my brocolli and Kale have disappeared from either slug infestations or random alien attacks! 

Nothing much I can do now for a couple of months when things get warmer and start growing again!~  Except of course - PLAN! haha. Always big ideas there!!!

So... its a good time to do some renovating around the garden while we wait!

Bit blurry sorry! But here is the ghastly hole-in-the ground. 

The pond was a massive ugly hole in the ground. With toddlers around it had to go! It had a concrete rim which you can see hubby smashing out so we can flatten it out.

Hubby working Hard smashing down the concrete exterior.
 Looks like the dead of night, but its only 5pm!

Finally we got it all flattened and added the much needed dirt to the hole! Now it looks fabulous! We will grass it and hope that the grass will grow in winter! :) I've put a row of gardenia's and grasses along the edge just to give it some sort of landscaping!

Finished!

A great result for a weekends work! :) 

I'm so excited to be getting some much needed chores done around the place!
But now, it's time to get inside and put the fire on!!!!! :)