dilly dalley doolittle gardening

Planting the winter vegetables - update

It is now over 3 weeks since I planted the winter seedlings and my apologies for being so tardy in updating my blog. Particularly if you were following my progress. My gardening blog is like the canary in the coal mine. If the blog falls off it's perch something isn't well underground. Only kidding. Well sort of. I do find that with all my responsibilities as mother of young children, part-time public servant, keeper of the home and hearth, that it only takes one or two slightly disruptive things to knock me off the platform that has space for little stolen moments of photographing vegies, uploading to the internet, composing a piece and posting to the blog. I usually grab moments here and there and do one or two of the stages. And slowly a little rhythm of growing, recording and writing takes place. I have enjoyed the creativity and reflection of writing to the blog. But it must take a back seat sometimes when life gets wonky. My husband's accident last spring and more recently the death of the family pet were unsettling times and resulted in time out from posting. Anyway, I'm back - at least to  update you with the past. So here it is.

On Sunday 24th February I planted seedlings for my winter crop:

Cabbages: Red Dutch, Cuor di Bue, Savoy Vertus

Broccoli: Hong Kong, Chinese Broccoli 'Gai Lan', Broccoli Raab 'Spring Rapini', Green sprouting Calabrese

Cauliflower: Phenomenal Early

Kale: Dwarf Green

Spinach: winter giant,

Silverbeet: Vulcan Red

Lettuce: Red Cos

I bet you can't even see them. If you look closely you can see some tiny green leaves. They had been started in my propagator at home and I used jiffy pots for all of them. If you are a regular reader you'd know that when I first started doing this I wanted to grow everything from seed, but after valiantly doing just that for a few  years I succumbed to time pressures and spent most of last year buying seedlings. For these 2008 winter vegies I wanted more variety than was possible from the chain stores (bunnings, and other chain nursery stores) and so tried a labour saving method of growing my seedlings. It isn't particularly economic to use jiffy pots for everything but it did mean I didn't have to transplant anything before planting out into the garden.

I have scattered - very lightly - some lime on the surface of the bed. I really should have done the lime before planting and probably with a slightly more generous application but because I was applying it at time of planting I went a bit easy on it. Brassicas love lime or dolomite (I'm out of dolomite and have a huge bag of lime so lime it is for the time being).

I plant by sitting on my digging board and I use a triangle method for spacing my plants.

My children and husband helped me make these triangles. They are cut from wood. I think this one was part of an old children's easel that we no longer needed. My husband cut them to size and the children painted them with glitter paint. I planned to stencil on the size and from memory I think this is a 32 or 38cm?? I'd need to check. There are different size triangles for different size plants. Brassicas grow into large plants and so have a relatively generous spacing. The Kale, Silverbeet, Spinach and Lettuce can all be planted on a 20cm triangle. The principle of the spacings are that instead of planting in rows, you plant on a triangle grid and then the plants should grow up to completely shield the soil from sight. That is, they should form a "living mulch" that prevents weed growth and evaporation. If you have particularly well developed soil, full of nutrients and compost, and the soil is aerated (dug over or at least lifted with a fork) then the plants can sustain close plantings. That's the theory and I've been on the whole happy enough with the results to stick with the method.

I've placed some straw on the edge of the bed to stop the water from rushing off the sides. And on the other side of the bed is the climbing frame for the cucumbers. Funny though - this is me speaking on the 18th March - we're kind of over the cucumbers. I kept the lattice and vines in instead of ripping them out and having more space for brasscias but as the seasons turn I find my thoughts turning away from summer vegies. And we have eaten an awful lot of cucumbers - they are eaten by all 4 members of the family. Minor vegetable miracle.

I have other photos to post of the progress on the root crop and the progress on bottling the tomato crop. I'll update these in the next few days (fingers crossed). Sing canary sing.

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Winter veg

Again, I am still in catch up mode. Not long now and I'll be in tune - reality, photos, stories all as one. But for now, bear with me while I show off. Remember my winter beds? Well look at this beauty. I took this photo on the 25th of July. Isn't that an amazing head of broccoli? Big and tight and beautiful colours. I had a glut but alas that was yesterday and now I have none.

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Winter vegies - update

At the moment I'm still harvesting Kale, and now silverbeet, lettuce, asian vegetables and broccoli. And we're eating our way through the summer's potato harvest and the pumpkin harvest. At the end of my bed, the yellow, orange, gold looking plants are asparagus dying down for winter (rather slowly I might add - still that warm Autumn we had). And if you look closely you might notice a fellow community gardener going about some secret soil business. My new neighbour.

Getting ready for spring are: pretty little sweet peas, snow peas, and broad beans.

It has been a rainy week - thank goodness - so I've not been in the garden as much as I'd like but I took these photos before the grey, wet days arrived. No complaints though. I know it's flooding in Australia (up north in NSW), and flooding in England and parts of North America sound very wet but here in ACT, I've no complaints about the rain. I think so far for this month we're still only just on track for an average month.

I am going to need to sort those strawberries out at the end of the bed. They will need cutting back, mulching with pine needles (my contribution to an acid soil), and covering with straw. I should also pot up the runners for other gardeners. All tasks to do.

Isn't the light lovely through the peas and kale? Rich fields of glowing green. Yummmm.

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Behind schedule - preparing beds for Green Manure

As you know, we moved the chicken house and then it was time to dig over the beds and shape them ready for sowing the green manure seeds. I use seeds which I purchase from Canberra Organic Growers Society. They contain a mixture of Wheat, Winter Ryecorn, Oats, Field peas and vetch. I buy a bag of 500g for the princely sum of $2 and,  while it says it will sow 30sq metres, I cast one bag over just one of my beds. This bed  above is probably 7 metres long and 2 metres wide. I find that by the time the birds have eaten a bit, and some seeds have failed to germinate, the one bag does this bed quite nicely. I am very late this year. I usually try to sow the green manure early in May - so yes - late. It was a very warm May but now the cold has come and I'll be interested to see what sort of germination rate I get. As you can see it isn't so cold on a winter's weekend day that we need to wear long sleeves or coats! Well, actually I started in long sleeves and a coat but eventually dropped the coat. Tim, who thrives in winter, never even bothered with sleeves or a coat.

Here are the other two beds waiting for green manure (plus as a special bonus my enormous shadowy figure hovering over the winter vegies). Of the two beds at the back, the closest one grew the potatoes and furthest one grew melons. The potato bed was also slightly taken over by that rampant pumpkin vine. All gone now.

While we were gardening, Tess helped out and Nick practiced a bit of tennis on the structure Tim set up with a tennis ball on an elastic band. When he got sick of this he retired to the car to continue reading his C.S.Lewis novel, Prince Caspian. Remember those? Transported to another world...That would have been my childhood - hidden away in a car, nose in a book. We were down the garden for a good few hours digging and weeding and shaping beds so the children are remarkably patient. Tess found a fabulous worm and we were all most impressed with his girth. He was returned to the soil around Tessy's flower patch, currently with no flowering plants in it but with bulbs ready for the spring. We were amazed he'd survived the chickens. He must have dug deep.

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The chook house was moved

Please note the title. It was moved. I did not move it, in fact, I wasn't even in the garden. Tim and Cameron moved it. Last time though I was in the garden and I did help move it (though Tim and Nathan did most of the work). I wish I had gone. I would have done those fussy, girly things that always smooth the way. As it was, it was a busy weekend and so late on the Saturday afternoon the boys manhandled, prodded, dragged and forced it across to the next two beds. Then dark descended, they got in the car, drove it up the garden driveway and shined the lights on their wobbly structure. A few judicious pulls and then they hopped in the car and came home for dinner. Who knows what the chickens thought!

"Thanks for moving the shed", "No problem". However, the next morning, nice and early, Tim was up and back down the garden. As I finished my coffee and Sunday morning newspaper he arrived home, somewhat relieved to tell me the fox hadn't got into the many gaping holes left over from the previous nights' moving. Later in the day, we both went down and tidied up a bit - levelled the beds so their house would sit flat, sewed up a few more holes in the chicken wire, moved the hay bales into the new spot. For the next week or so, it took on a bit of lean until Tim had another spare moment and then he braced the structure a bit more.

You can see the two beds where it had previously sat. There's still a bit of hay scattered around and the ground has been turned over many times by those restless creatures. Probably the worms have gone but the soil has been fed and the weeds and couch have been dug up.

Here's the new front door, facing the other way. I read somewhere that chickens don't like being disturbed. Ours haven't complained in ways that I understand. I feed them organic grains, lots of greenery from the garden and almost all our fruit & vegetable scraps (lovingly transported down to the garden for them). The worms and ducks do get some of the peelings. Worms don't eat much and the ducks get to free range our home garden (at least some of the time) so as a compensatory mechanism I spoil the chickens. So far, despite the 6 monthly relocation experience, they seem pretty happy.

You can also see that I harvested all the pumpkins and built a vine mountain for the chooks to rake through. They climbed up on top of it at first but seemed disturbed by the size of it and then left it alone to do it's usual job of rotting down.

Then, while I was down in the garden I took these photos to mark the progress of the winter greens.

So, I now have two beds growing food for the family, two beds of chook house, and four empty beds - three will have green manure sown for the winter and one will receive the root crops - onions, garlic for now - later the rest - carrots, beets, turnips etc.

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Green thumb Sunday #7 - wattle in front garden

As it is Winter here in Canberra (finally it seems to have arrived), I do not have many flowering plants in my garden. I have decided instead to track the progress of my wattle tree. This tree is in the front garden and was fairly small when we arrived in late 2002. Wattles grow very quickly and about two years ago one of the lower branches, laden with yellow pom pom blossoms, was stuck out in a rainstorm and the weight of the water on the blossoms split the branch and it dragged on the ground. We were a bit shocked. We took a close look and decided that if we cut off the whole branch the tree would look lopsided for the rest of it's life. Instead we cut the branch back by about 2/3rds. It remains on the tree and still has the split right down the middle, along the length of the branch. Once the weight was removed, the branch just seemed to get over the split and it keeps on producing leaves and blossoms. After this accident,  I read in one of the native gardening books that Wattles quite like to be pruned after flowering. This is actually true for most flowering Australian natives grown in home gardens, but I hadn't really considered it for a tree! Since then, after the beautiful blossoms die back I get my secateurs out and trim him. I haven't ever used a ladder (at least not yet) so he's a little more trimmed on the sides than on the top.

Traditionally, the yellow blossoms of Wattles are Australia's native version of the daffodil. Here in Canberra, they arrive at the end of August and remind you that although it is still cold, this too will pass, and flowers and warmth are on their way. Given we've just had the warmest May on record there have already been sightings of wattle blossoms (????). My tree is also taking on a bit more of a yellowish tinge than I expected but so far hasn't managed to completely freak us out with actual flowers before Winter!

Here are some of the fledgling blossoms from two different wattles in my front garden....not great shots but you can sort of make out the tightly rolled green balls all over the stems. In the first photo they are riotous and bigger, in the second one they are discreet and dainty.

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22nd Feb - where am I going to put the winter vegies?

Even though it was still summer when I took these photos it is time to clear out the garden beds and put in the winter vegies. I have 8 garden beds which are on a rotational scheme. It took quite some juggling to work out my crop rotation plan. Initially it was straightforward enough - 2 blocks of 4 beds each - and I would follow Peter Cundall (Gardening Australia) guru's 4 year plan. Then we added a movable chook shed to the equation. The chook shed is based on the design of our family tent with cross over, lightweight, plastic pipes supporting chicken wire. Given the ACT regulations on the size of sheds for the number of birds, we needed a space of about 20m2. This meant we had to dedicate two garden beds of the 8 to chooks. Not really a problem, except it made the rotation plan very complicated.

Anyway, here are pictures of one of the beds I intend to plant my winter vegies in. You can see that there is not much bare earth waiting to invite seedlings in to the fold. In the background is the chook shed with it's grey, criss-crossing pipes. In the foreground are asparagus plants, a rambling volunteer pumpkin, and towards the end of the bed are some dwarf kale plants. I highly recommend dwarf green kale. It is much easier to use and tastes better than silverbeet. I find silverbeet almost inedible when just lightly steamed. It needs to be processed with lots of feta, or other cheeses and wrapped in phyllo or covered in some sauce before I enjoy it. Whereas the dwarf kale is really nice just lightly steamed, with a bit of balsamic vinegar and some olive oil. Some American vegetarian cookbooks refer to Kale but in Australia you never hear of it or find it in greengrocers. I was quite keen to try it when I found a pack of Eden seeds labelled Dwarf Green Kale. Try it.

The view from the other end of the bed is slightly more hopeful. From this end you begin to see that it is actually a garden bed, with sides and pathways for elves and children to skip past the rows of pumpkins. There is even some bare dirt. And the fork is resting against the bean trellis just suggesting work might be done. Might be done. On the right hand side of the picture is our rain gauge AND it has water in it! Looks like about 20mls. Phenomenal considering the desperate drought. In the foreground of the bed are crazy, wild strawberry plants. I struggle to impose discipline on my creatures. They usually take over and tell me exactly where they'd like to be. There were 10 strawberry plants planted here back in 2004. I have 4 strawberry patches all with different heirloom strawberry plants: Cambridge rival, Hokowase, Chandler and one Red Gauntlet (not heirloom). In the immortal words of Homer Simpson "hmmm, heirloom strawberries....hmmmm" complete with drooling sounds, and spaced out look. You wouldn't believe what they taste like. I know I do rave on about tastes for organic, homegrown produce and for me the incredible standouts have been rockmelons and strawberries. 

So to finish writing up this day, please enjoy the misty views across the early morning community garden. Raindrops through the asparagus fronds, raindrops on the trellis, mist in the air - everything soft and gentle. Peace and quiet with the vegies. No wonder the fork is resting.