Filed under: budgeting, city life, gardening | Tags: budgeting, city life, gardening
We had a little frenzy on the weekend, getting the first seeds in for spring/summer.
MrB planted his clumping bamboo seeds (we want it to screen our bedroom window from the street), and I planted 2 kinds of lettuce (Freckles and regular cos), some spinach (for the shady beds), and a punnet each of Tiny Tim and Tommy Toe cherry tomatoes. With our last two overcast/wet Sydney summers, we’ve had trouble getting larger tomatoes to ripen, but we’ve had good luck with cherries, so we’ll go with them again.
We’ve had bad luck with pumpkins, too, but being optimists we’ve started two varieties of non-running pumpkins in pots. We have lots of bees, so their problem isn’t pollination… they just rot on the vine. Maybe our luck will change this year.
I bought new rocket seeds, and some golden purslane for salads; and we’ve just ordered a replacement Fuerte avocado tree. The Hass tree has done well in the ground, but the Fuerte was never happy here… and finally died.
Our other trees are going crazy after nearly two years in the ground. The poor things were hammered by windstorms not long before we moved out of Newtown, and were a bit neglected last summer while I was recovering from my surgery. We gave them a big weed and feed a couple of weeks ago, and have started regular applications of EcoOil to start knocking down the leaf miners on the citrus trees. The multi graft stone fruit tree is starting to set fruit (though it needs some maintenance), and we’ve set out the fruit fly trap.
The multi graft citrus gave us 3 beautiful tangelos over winter, and now one of the other grafts is in flower (limes, I think). And the orange graft that was (accidentally) clobbered by the dog is recovering! The whole tree is looking much, much happier.
We’re still getting HUGE harvests of snow peas, broccoli, herbs, chinese greens and chills, though the lettuces are succumbing to the combined force of slugs and high winds.
And we’ve started our DIY Xmas gifts of mini herb gardens (in sterilised recycled pots). We bought premium potting mix, but very cheap punnets of sage, coriander, parsley, thyme and basil. We’ve added a cutting of our rosemary to each pot, and they’re lined up in the sun. We sound get 5 impressive home-made presents for an outlay of about 35 dollars (it would have been cheaper to start from seed, but we weren’t that organised).
It’s late winter here in Sydney, but starting to feel like spring.
The multi-graft fruit-tree is already setting fruit, and the citrus trees are budding like crazy. We’re starting to plan some seedlings, and keeping a watchful eye on the asparagus beds.
The lettuces that have sustained us all winter are starting to succumb to slugs (and high winds), but the broccoli, snow peas and chills are going strong, and we are still harvesting tons of asian greens. It’s all good in the garden!
(Yes, it has been MANY moons since I last posted, but I’m planning to lift my game for spring. New growth all round.)
I’ve been traveling again for work, hence the lull in blogging. However, we have been working in the garden, and an update is long overdue.
Last month we finally bought two half wine barrels and a ute load of compost, and re-potted the dwarf macadamia and lemon myrtle. We also topped up the beds in thefront yard that had become very compacted, and planted lots of mixed greens, beetroot and lettuces.
Today we pulled out the tomatoes in the end front bed, topped it up with more compost, and planted 3 bulbs of Italian garlic. We also cut back theasparagus, and mulched it heavily. I’ll give it a good feed in late winter.
We also did a lot of pruning and feeding on all the backyard fruit trees last week, which Mr B followed up with an overly ( to me) enthusiastic prune of the passion fruit vine. We had lots of fruit, but very little ripened, due to the cool summer.
We had an incident with our seedlings a couple of weeks back – a huge gust of wind knocked the mini greenhouseobverse, and only a fewbabies were saved.
I planted them out last weekend, and will get one more beetroot and fennel seeds in this weekend, and do some general feeding and mulching.
The weather has been delighful so far this Autumn… much better than our grey, miserable summer. We’ve still had a lot of rain, though, & the black taro is thriving in the back yard (though it doesn’t look quite as good as this stock pic yet!).
Having planted so much taro we thought we’d better try some, so we bought a tuber from the fruit and veg market. We roasted it in our usual pumpkin/potato/sweet potato combo, with olive oil, salt and pepper. It tasted good, & was super fluffy inside, but was very dry… the outside of the cubes toughened up while roasting, rather than crisping or caramelising like the other veggies. We speculate a sauce or gravy might be needed next time – though we’re still a long way off a harvest.
We also planted broccoli, collards, fennel, parsley, beetroot, coriander & leeks in seed trays; and more rocket, turnips & beetroot seed direct in the beds. So far the collards & broccoli are ramapging along, the rest is creeping along.
We sat down yesterday and planned our autumn plantings. We’re going to focus on our past successes, and on things we buy a lot. That means we’ll plant A Lot of beetroot, plus some broccoli, leeks, turnips, collards, taro, silverbeet, beans, snowpeas, and lots & lots of rocket.
This weekend has seen us undertake phase one: clearing out old buggy kale plants & replenishing the beds with lovely rotted soil/compost blend. We bought some beetroot seedlings to get things going, but will start seedlings next weekend.
In the clearout we harvested a couple of leeks, some beans, a ton of kale, some chillis and a pile of green cherry tomatoes (these cooked up beautifully in a veggo shepherd’s pie).
I planted more beans and rocket, and we also pulled out the encroaching grass from under the fruittrees, and mulched them with castings from my sister’s worm farm (we have mountains of her castings, but since her worms process dog poop we’re not putting it in the veg beds).
We’ve had a cool grey summer, and the veggies have been struggling a little.
The Tuscan kale is still going nuts, and we have purple king beans just ready to pick. We’re still getting small but regular harvests of jalapenos, cos lettuce and cherry tomatoes; and we finally have flowers and fruit on the red passion fruit vine. We’ll get a few small figs but probably not many.
Last weekend we took advantage of the dark moon to pull out the rest of the broccoli ( which was getting pretty bug infested), and do some major pruning, mulching and feeding.
Today I planted beetroot, radish, baby cos lettuce & some rocket from our seed. The seed is from the astro rocket, which I think is the tastiest rocket we’ve grown. I’ll keep saving seed from it, as it’s really delicious. I also planted a few more ruby chard plants ( aka red veined silverbeet). The leaves are a bit more tender than regular silverbeet… they’re especially good in curries, I think.
We’re officially self-sufficient in terms of salad greens, cucumbers, broccoli, kale and herbs at the moment. The tomatoes aren’t ripe yet, & the plants are being besieged by little green caterpillars. I’m reluctant to spray as the birds are hovering around picking off bugs… Unless the problem gets really drastic, I think I’ll just use the old fashioned search & destroy method.
We have two little zucchini growing on the compact plant in the front yard, & the blackjack plants are growing well, as are the chilli & eggplant seedlings.
A friend came by this morning with a small box of about a dozen stone fruit… She’s moving house this week, and won’t be able to deal with all of them. I’m considering trying out my low-sugar pectin & making a small batch of juice-sweetened jam this weekend…. But I may just bake a good old nectarine crumble.
A couple of weeks ago, Mr B & I got stuck into the front yard. We pulled out all the overgrown snow peas & other plants, harvested the garlic & added lots of goodness, including a topdressing of new humus (leftover from the cubic meter he bought for the new raised bed).
In the new gaps, I planted watermelon ( a compact variety),tatsoi & beetroot seeds, all of which have germinated this week. I also planted some eggplant & eggplant, which is yet to show itself.
This weekend we went to the nursery to spend a gift voucher I got for my birthday. I bought to blueberry plants, some azalea food to keep them happy, an advanced eggplant seedling ( so we get at least one plant), some basil seedlings (as above), some zucchini seedlings (since my homegrown versions were not very successful last year), and a jalapeño (ditto).
Today we cleared the no-dig bed out back where the broad beans, coriander & Chinese celery were going wild, topped it up with humus, and planted out 2 of the zucchini & the chilli ( plus some coriander seeds). I popped some of the basil around assorted beds in front & back, and added the last of the zucchini & the advanced eggplant in the raised beds in the front yard. While I was working, I harvested more cavalo nero & broccoli. After a drenching of seaweed was applied to front & back yards, my work in the garden was done for the day.
All going well, the next few months will bring us harvests of: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, basil, chilli, ruby chard, rocket, parsley, Chinese celery, coriander, zucchini, eggplant, lettuce (in the shade), beetroot, pumpkin, peaches and watermelon (& maybe even some limes).
I’m still contemplating where to plant the purple king beans. I loved them over autumn, but I’m starting to seriously run out of space.
I have been doing a lot lately… ‘life’ is finally starting to balance out ‘work’. I’m still doing a lot, but some of the cashflow issues my dept was having this year are easing, and work in general is much more satisfying than it was in the first half of the year.
And in the better home and garden?
The big news is we have a new 3000 litre rainwater tank for our back garden. It’s tucked in under the patio, & gets no direct sun, so we’ve gone for plastic over stainless steel this time. MrB & a friend plumbed it in on Saturday, and included an ingenious pipeline that will take the tank overflow out & along the raised bed to the pumpkins once the tank is full.
After our old washing machine died at the beginning of the month, we bought a front loader that only uses 56 litres a load, so with two tanks and much less water used for laundry, our usage should be much reduced this summer.
On the planting front, I sowed some ruby chard & rocket at the new moon, and it’s all pretty frisky now. We put the black passion fruit in against the shed this weekend, and Mr B constructed a magnificent trellis for it. He also fashioned a sturdy ‘dog guard’ from a piece of scrap metal, to keep the pup at bay.
We harvested another bag of potatoes last week, and I’ve started pulling up the odd clove of early garlic I planted in winter. We’re also still harvesting broad beans, chickweed, nasturtium leaves, snow peas, Tuscan kale, coriander, and parsley.
We have some volunteer tomatoes, plus lots of cherry tomato seedlings doing well. Now we need some rain for the tanks, and I’ll be a happy girl indeed.
Ms Betterhome 