Spring stuff

 Who says lettuces can't be decorative?

My first cherries have started growing, as have my apples. You have no idea how excited I am.

cherries

baby apples

Behind the fruit trees we've put up a trellis for the kiwi fruit plants and passionfruit.  My sister had the wonderful idea of using plastic coated clothesline instead of wire so they don't get too cold in the winter.

 We've been overrun with snowpeas, which is not a bad thing really.  I just wish they came in small doses throughout the year, rather than all at once.

It's that time of the year, and some of my peas and snowpeas have started getting the dreaded white mold on them.  I have a number of peas dotted around the garden, so they're somewhat quarantined, but I remember this happening last year around this time.

Lastly, I originally made this sign for my beetroot, but it kinda fits for the red onions.

Snail Poison Castle (and more)

Today, furious that many of my seedlings planted last week are now skeletal stalk, I upped the ante on the snail war.  I made a snail poison castle, complete with moat drawbridge (edit. moat is such a lovely word, my mistake) for easy access:

you can see a few cabbage stalks behind the newly installed weapon

The reason for a castle, rather than a scattering of blue pellets, is due to my small fur child, who for some reason quite likes to eat dirt.  I also don't like the idea of the poison getting into the soil.  My initial model (1.1) didn't have the drawbridge over the sharp cut edge.  I thought it was a nice touch, even if only aesthetically....

The seedlings that this castle is protecting are broccoli, red cabbage and mini cabbage. I have a few more broccoli plants growing a few beds away, and they're just starting to sprout:

Over the last 8 months that I've been working on this garden, I've discovered that while the beds are relatively small, to access the plants in the centre of each bed requires me to step into the garden bed. I have heavy clay soil and so when I step onto it, I compress it, which makes it harder to dig into later.  So in the newly planted beds, I've been lying old planks along the centre of the beds.  When you step onto the planks, your weight is redistributed slightly, and it means that you don't get dirty feet either (I have a bad habit of walking out in ugg boots to the garden patch at night to get last minute vegies for dinner, then having to wash my ugg boots when I come back in. Der)

Last weekend's planting of garlic and beetroot seeds 

between the planks.  Plus leeks, spring onions.

Access planks in my cabbage/broccoli/established cauliflower bed

On another note, my rocket and one of my lettuces are going to seed.  I've never seen a lettuce go to seed as it's the first time I've successfully grown them, so I thought I'd sit back and watch the show!

seeding rocket in background and foreground, 

a seeding lettuce centre left, and some happy lettuces separating

The cucumbers have started hatching!

This afternoon I took a closer look at my Lebanese Cucumber plants and discovered to my surprise that I have quite a mature cucumber on my larger plant, measuring 12cm long!

It has little spikes all over it, and I'm wondering whether the spikes fall off when the cucumbers are fully matured, or whether they're just 'despiked' before they appear in shops?  Obviously I've never grown cucumbers before.

When I looked at the flowers on the rest of the plant, they appear to have little cucumbers ready to take off between the flowers and stalks:

v. cute.

I also have pictures of the only two lettuces that survived the snail attacks when they were babies (note the space around them filling with weeds - that's how many I planted and lost!):

And my relatively more successful spinach:

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.