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Update

Got back from the beach on Friday, and (thanks Molly and Cat) everything is pretty hunky dory. I think I've managed to massacre all the propagation plants I was hoping to plant out in the next couple of months, a few newbie mistakes.... But live and learn! I have plenty of spare seeds anyway, they come in packs with hundreds of seeds so I can try again soon.

Newly planted beans, beetroot and basil are all going swimmingly. Must be a letter B thing I've got going on.....

Today

Not much going on today. I found out that potassium is good for beans (which I didn't know) so I gave our butter beans out the back a fistfull of potash.... I dug up the second ornamental spinifex bush thing up the front, freeing up a small area of dirt (2m by about .8m in all I think). It was fun. I like destruction.

Next

Well, there's some re-sowing to do come Feb.... But I've got a better idea of what I'm doing now, so hopefully we'll get better results. I'll be re-sowing most of the vegetables, so yay! I've also now opened up that space in the front.... Rosmary bushes.... Yeah.
shamo: (Default)
Today was a simple planting day, or so I thought....

Update

We ate our first tomato today - a single cherry tomato on one of the bushes that was ripe. It was good! That is all. Otherwise things aren't dead.... I think I can see some eggplants and capsicums starting, and we're definitely about to get butter beans round 2.... Basil seeds are definitely not dead too, which is nice. Next phase: Rosemary....

Today

I planted out root vegetables today using our propagation tray mostly. Planted beetroot, parsnip, turnip, kholrabi and Sweedes. All supposed to be pretty hardy - should make good replacements for summer crops. Beetroot were direct to the pot they'll live in, the rest were in propagation trays. I also emptied the bottom layer of the work farm, always a fun job. But the beetroot seeds are going to find themselves in probably the richest soil we've ever put together....

Next


Not much really. Maintenence period. I've planted everything I want to plant this month, the idea is that will see us through to winter with winter vegetables. Unless I get inspired again... Of course if any of the sowing fails there'll be more to do in Feb, but I've got lots of spare seeds. Need more dirt, I've got some plans for rocket and other lettuce varieties in vertical growing bag things, but I need more dirt to do it.... Dirt dirt dirt.... yay!

shamo: (Default)
UPDATE:

Not much to say. The water's been good for some plants, not so good for others.... Generally things are unchanged. Everything's a little bigger, some plants are saying "NO MORE WATER FOR A BIT PLEASE..." and others don't give a rats one way or the other. There are a couple of things happening with the seeds sown earlier in the week - a bunch of them are sprouting, although I quickly realised I have no idea what's what...  But that's okay! I think the stuff that's agressively sprouted is cabbage.... I'll find out when they're a bit bigger I guess. Newly planted coriander is sprouting too. So yay!. The exciting news is that our basil appears to be sprouting left right and centre - who knows, maybe for once we can grow it without killing it.

I hear 2 opinions on basil:
1) It's easy to grow and basically unkillable, or
2)It's delicate and snails eat it within 3 seconds of it emerging into existence.

Our experience is unfortunately in line with the second....

TODAY:
I didn't water. I haven't watered in days, there's plenty of it about. What I did do was plant out more seeds. I ripped out the bean plants in the front (ave atque vale beans!), and spread compost over the site again. Not just any compost but our "Bokashi" compost. It had been burried for about 4 weeks after its time in the fermentation bucket. So it's ready. It was thick, a bit smelly and generally pretty soil like, so win there!. I then sowed new beans into the front. A combination of Scarlet Climbers and bush beans. We'll see how they go!.

I also planted a couple of other new seeds, cauliflower and brocolli. Theyr'e in the tray out the back, should be good.

NEXT:
More planting. Root vegetables this time. Beetroot, turnip and some other stuff.... I forget. Anyway that happens before we go away next week. So yay! winter seed sowing is just about done. Go garden!
shamo: (Default)
Update

Everything is pretty dandy. There's more tomatoes coming now, nearly 20 all together, and the existing ones are getting larger and larger whichis good.
The transplanted silverbeet is looking a little tired, but it'll pick up in this wet, I hope....
What's more exciting is the current state of the zucchini's, with things starting to happen there,and some fruits starting on the stems.
Our capsicum's are starting to flower too.
Our broad-beans out the back are flowering again, so hopefully we'll get another crop off them soonish, and with a little luck it'll be a bit bigger than last time...
Other stuff is pretty much unchanged, I'm a bit worried that we've planted a bit too densely for our root vegetables especially. Root vegetables aren't the biggest fans of containers to begin with.... But they're also very very hardy, so transplanted them here and there hasn't caused any issues.

Today
Planted new seeds for some new crops: Leeks, Cabbages and Celery.
Also planted some new herbs: New basil seeds (please let them work for a change, pretty please!), and coriander. If the gods smile on us, we'll have them up pretty fast.

Next
Plant out the next batch! I think it happens in about 4 days.... Can't remember, but I've written it down somewhere.

I've also got a big shovel so we can dig out the stupid spinifex/grass bushes out the front and replace them with something useful. That'll be hard yakka, but once they're gone we'll have room for something substantial if we want it. Partly shaded area, with good afternoon sun.... we'll see what we can come up with for it. The soil will probably need some work before it's ready though....

shamo: (Shado)
So, in light of a recent new years resolution I'm going to track my gardening activities here. Feel free to heap praise on my efforts, also if it sounds like my activities are going to kill something, feel free to speak up!.

I'm going to format this thus: A quick update giving the overall state of play of the plants, an outline of my activities for the day and a note about future plans:


UPDATE:


Looking over the pots things are looking reasonable:

We've got about 14 tomatoes coming, all very green and quite small at this stage, but that will improve.
We have butter beans out the front, that I think have now done their dash.... Time to replace them with something!.
Zucchini's are flowering a lot, so hopefully we'll see some fruit soon.
Capsicums look healthy, one of the containers of chillis looks about dead, but that's okay, there's plenty more.
Cucumbers, carrots and onions all look pretty stable to me.

Our worm farm looks like it's about ready to have the bottom tray rotated again, which means MORE FERTILISER! (not really caps worthy, but I'm excited), which would be a good idea. Haven't given the plants that kind of feed for a while. Just worm juice weekly....

Today:
Today I got something out of the way, I finally transplanted the silverbeet. We had 6 plants growing in a foam veggie box, and they were a bit cramped. The soil in the box was also too shallow, so I topped it up. We now have 3 silverbeet in a round pot and 3 in the original container. See if that prompts some more growth.
I watered them in and gave them some worm juice to keep them happy/alive. Also gave everything a water, so that should keep things ticking along.

NEXT:
The plan is to start planting out some of the winter things in the next couple of weeks. We're going to grow from seed this time, so we're giving ourselves a chance to propagate and then plant into containers. We'll see how it all goes....

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