A walk around the vegie garden

I haven't posted any pictures lately, and yet I've had so much growing.  Here's an overall view:

top tier: pumpkins, leeks, spring onions

second tier: globe artichoke, fennel, tigerella tomatoes, bok choi, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, rocket, lebanese cucumbers, lettuce, mesculin

third tier: multiple types of tomatoes including Roma, cherry, Grower's Delight, Digger's [something], Lenah Valley market unidentified; basil, dying passionfruit, unidentified curcubit.

fourth tier: failed cauliflowers, dwarf beans, white beans.

 From another angle.  You can see the rhubarb in the top right corner.

Crazy pumpkin plant, stretching over two garden beds.  I had to build a 'bridge' between the two beds:

My lone artichoke. I thought I'd try one and see if it survived before trying more.  It's growing like a fiend, so I think I'll get another:

A few young fennel plants. Only four survived the snail feast:

The only cauliflower (out of 10 plants!) that has actually produced a flower: 

Rocket:

My two faithful cucumber plants.  They look a bit scungy now, but they're still growing and producing about four cucumbers a week between them:

Beans.  Also looking a wee bit scungy but they've got a second wind and are producing slowly:

tomatoes

 

My cute tigerellas (so stripey!). Still waiting for them to go beyond the green faze...

Rhubarb

Unidentified Curcubit:

Young broccoli seedlings, with my trial dog-proof snail poison box based on a suggestion by Hobart Kitchen Gardens.  I've never used snail bait because I don't like the idea of poisoning the soil or my dog, however I've lost so many seedlings to the damn creatures that I was willing to compromise

Bok Choi and Spinach plants:

Herbs including flat and curly leaf parsley, rosemary, basil (my better basil is cuddling with the tomatoes), coriander, chives, spring onions, dill, oregano, lemongrass thyme, and mint. Oh, and a scungy orchid:

Last but not least, my cute little fig tree who has more fruit than leaves. I know I should be taking the fruit off to encourage it to grow, but I feel mean because it's trying so hard!

thank goodness for Salamanca Markets

I finally gave up on my coriander, sage and curly-leaf parsley seeds.  They just didn't want to sprout.  My flat leaf parsley sprouted, so that rules out anything being wrong with the soil or compost.  So on Saturday I trotted down to Salamanca Markets, to the lovely woman who runs a stall in the middle opposite Salamanca Arts Centre, and purchased some pre-sprouted curly-leaf, coriander, some bok choy and some broccoli.  The broccoli has already been devastated by snails. grrrr....

On the upside, my beans seem to have got a second wind (of course, just after the markets), and I've had a few good meals of beans this week  (woot!)

at the mercy of nature

Maybe I'm being a wee bit dramatic, but for the first week in a few months I haven't had that many vegies.  Why this week? Well, Sod's law says that if I've got a market stall this week with the intention of selling some of my vegies, then the beans will dry up, the tomatoes remain green, the cucumbers are slightly too small, and the pumpkins, albeit massive, are not ready for picking.

Today was the second Lenah Links market, and the organisers were really keen to have some fresh produce at the markets.  I initially planned to sell only my pipecleaner creatures, but ended up selling a few of the produce I had that was sellable: rocket, rhubarb, the herbs rosemary, parsley, oregano, basil and thyme.

I also got up early, despite a hangover, and picked a massive bag of blackberries which I made into tiny blackberry pies for selling.

I stupidly didn't get a photo of today's stall or the pies, but here's the blackberry pie I made last week from the same lot of blackberry bushes along the rivulet in Lenah Valley:

what do you do with your vegies after you pick them?

• beans

• basil --> pesto

• potatoes --> gnocchi (the potatoes were my friends' - I swapped them for some beans and cucumbers)

Beans, Beans, Beans

I'm currently distributing my beans throughout the land (well, friends and neighbours and the freezer, at least).  I did a big harvest last night because I had heaps of big beans on all the plants, and not only were the dwarf bushes straining under the weight, but I've discovered that big beans don't taste as good as small beans.  Here's my harvest being washed in the sink:

I'm so happy.

I also made a big batch of pesto from my thriving basil plants.  I planted some 'control' basil in a couple of pots, then some in the ground next to my tomato plants (companion planting at work), and it turns out that they much prefer the ground.  The pot ones are all runt-like, whereas the ground ones are mega.  They were all struggling a bit at one point (pots and ground), but I gave them a feed with some Seasol and they turned a dark green and grew rapidly.  So that's what they wanted (I'm still learning....).

Mistaken Identity: the white beans

I recently posted about my neighbour who has been handing excess seedlings over the fence.  One of the first things that he gave me was what he identified as 'Broad Beans'.  Now, I don't like Broad Beans, but I thought I'd stick them in (hey, they were the right price) and see if homegrown ones were okay.

The plants have grown lovely creamy white beans, the same size as regular green beans.  Yesterday my friend Mary came around and told me that they weren't Broad Beans (because she's grown them before), but they looked like regular white beans that are ready for eating.  I then spoke to Peter who insisted that they were 'broad' beans (that they were long), not Broad Beans (as in the type). He then clarified and said that he just found an old packet of beans in his father's cupboard and stuck them in the ground.  Oh dear...

I thought I'd give them a go anyway and picked some for tonight's dinner, and had a munch on the way inside.  The skins were coarse and hard to chew, and not very tasty.  The beans inside were green and a bit better.  I could've probably just eaten the beans and not the skin raw.  However, I thought perhaps that I'd steam them and see if the skin softened a bit.

the cooked bean

The skin didn't change at all, however the beans went brown.  The beans were edible still, but the skin definitely not.  I'm not a fan of kidney beans, baked beans, berlotti beans and their texture was kind of like that.

the darkened beans inside the cooked bean

Oh well, I still have my green bean plants. They're happily producing lots of baby beans at the moment.

Dwarf Bean plants, with the two mystery white bean plants top right.

The Seeds are Sprouting

You'd think at the age of 29 the excitement of seeds sprouting might have dwindled, but no, the sight of seedlings is still gloriously thrilling.

My spinach seedlings have been shooting:

 and beans:

I took the above photo this morning.  This evening when I was watering my tomatoes, I noticed that they'd grown immensely during the day and they looked like this:

 

You can use the mushroom compost lump (with the white veiney things) in the morning and first evening photo as a size reference.

Even though I've been getting a whole heap of intentional seedlings, I've also got these patches of seedlings that I'm sure I didn't sow.  The weird thing is, they're all in clumps as if I deliberately planted them.

Here's an even bigger clump surrounding my basil seedlings.  The two basil seedlings are on the top left and right of the picture (the bigger leaves):

The question is, do I rip them out now or should I wait and see what they grow into?

Part of me thinks that as the beds were full of weeds only recently they're probably just weed seeds, but what if they're self-seeding from the previous owner's vegie plants?

And what about the areas that I planted in - how do I know whether they're the intentional or unintentional seedlings?  Because I haven't grown a number of the vegies before, I don't actually know what the seedlings look like....

oh the joys of mushroom compost

So after light-starving my inaugural three garden beds (shown in the previous post) in the hope of killing any stray weeds left behind, I uncovered them (hazaah!) and started mulching them with mushroom compost.  Now, at this point I should point out that before my vegie garden course, I didn't know what mulching was, or what mushroom compost was (in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't even know of the existence of mushroom compost).  Luckily, the course has been jam packed with compost theory and mulch obsession, so I feel that I know a bit more now  (did you know that there's a difference between dirt and soil?!)

Anyhoo, I mulched, then decided to stick in a couple of tomatoes, one of which was given to me by my garden loving neighbour, who has millions of seedlings in his backyard in various yoghurt tubs, plastic cups and bottles.  He just passes them over the fence.  Sweet.

broad beans

I also planted a couple of his broad beans, and I'm hoping that the broad beans that I loathed as a child turn out a bit nicer in adulthood.  I transplanted a passionfruit from the rhubarb bed, which I'd temporarily stuck there, and also put in a few cucumbers (although I now know that cucumbers grow a little differently to how I thought - across, not up - so I may have to move them).

I had sat down originally with my Lost Seed packets to plan out a vegie garden.  I had my companion planting list, my crop rotation diagram which should, theoretically, determine what I plant together as well, and my entire garden map that I drew up a couple of weeks after moving into the house.  Of course, the companion planting and crop rotation groups were totally contradictory, and so I decided to plant things as I went, just as I always have done.

Just a quick note: Lost Seed are a Tasmanian company that make non-hybrid seeds (yes, something else that I learned in my course). Apparently if you want to grow things from seed the following year you're best off getting non-hybrid seeds.   They've got an amazing array of weird seeds.  Luckily for me they have companion planting summaries on each seed packet, listing a plant's likes and dislikes.  I tried to comply, and ended up following the companion planting far more than the crop rotation.  What does that say about me?

The images below show the three beds, with a weedy one in the foreground:

On the top bed, to the left, I have planted some 'Tigerella' tomato seeds.  The stakes make me look a lot more optimistic than I actually am.  They are simply marking the spot where I planted so that I can identify if they don't come up.  Of course if they do come up, the stakes can have the joyous job of holding Tigerella, the stripey (yes!) climbing tomatoes.

Oh, I should point out, on top of the tap thingy, there is a punnet of parsley that my earlier mentioned neighbour passed over.  I must remember to plant so as not to offend, for one of the major disadvantages of having a neighbour who can look down into your backyard  is that they can identify if you haven't planted their carefully raised seedlings.

Next to the Tigerella are some spinach seeds, the cucumbers (to be moved), and then 2 rows of lettuce.  I managed to show some restraint and only sow 2 rows, following the advice on the packet that wisely suggests staggered planting.

On the middle bed, there are (from left to right) the passionfruit plant, celery, some basil and the tomato seedlings planted a couple of weeks ago (this post actually covers about 2-3 weeks activity).  Along the eastern end of the bed are sown more tomato seeds, this time 'Gardener's Delight' of the climbing variety.  You can see more overenthusiastic staking. 

Then on the bottom bed there are the two mystery broad bean seedlings, a heap of dwarf bean seeds (as a gift from my mum), and some cauliflower.

With the exception of the spinach, tomatoes, celery (which was disasterous!) and basil, I've not attempted to grow most of these plants  before, so I'm quite excited to see what a cauliflower looks like, and I'm almost wetting myself over the Tigerellas.