dilly dalley doolittle gardening

Cauliflower: best of the bunch

Are you the kind of person who leaves the best to last? Or do you leap in and grab the most enticing thing and then slowly work your way through the less desirable? I actually don't know that I have any of these patterns in life but somehow this cauliflower was left till last, and quite frankly it is the best.

It is the last of my winter cauliflowers and will provide many meals. I am already thinking I need to get a hurry on and clear this bed ready for spring planting so eat up these winter vegies family, cause there's warmth in the air and light in the morning (but still pretty frosty and foggy) - typical spring weather.

I brought him home and left him on the kitchen table when I went out to work. I got home late in the afternoon and thought I should photograph him so you got some sense of his size in a domestic environment. I'm not quite sure why he is hanging precariously on the edge of the table. Maybe someone moved him to read the paper.

My son saw me taking this photo and suggested he could do a better job. His version is quite artistic. There seems to be a lot of movement in those wavy leaves. Cauliflower, we love you. Thanks for growing so nice and big and creamy. Soups, curries, gratins....mmmm.

Winter vegetables - we're eating them

My last report on vegetables was from June and as mentioned in my previous post, I've been distracted by renovations. In the period from mid-June to mid-July we were without a kitchen. But that's over now and so I thought it was time to update the progress on the vegies. The cauliflowers were a big success story. Somehow they managed to grow their leaves around the curds so that the lovely creamy white curds were protected from frost. In the past I've had to lightly tie cord or twine around the leaves to encourage them to protect the cauliflower. These cauliflowers have been big enough for many meals.

 

 The cabbages did grow quite as big but in some ways that was really helpful. With a small family a small cabbage is easier to manage. Coleslaw has been popular over the past few months. It goes nicely with chicken schnitzel sandwiches - at least in my house it does!.

 

Winter vegetables are growing (June, 2011)

Asparagus beds - weeding has begun

I cut down the Asparagus stalks during mid-May, in preparation for the winter rest. I need to weed the beds then feed the soil lightly with a seaweed preparation and then mulch over the top. In spring I should then have a lovely crop.There wont be much to eat from the garden at that time of the year, so, we'll be really grateful for the little spears of asparagus.

I have four beds of asparagus and so far I've weeded one bed. Aagh. It is going slowly. One of my neighbourly community gardeners came over to me recently and said "I think that looks like a mattock job". He may have a point. The work I've done so far, represents about 4 hours of painstaking weeding. Here's my progress. It may prove quicker and easier to dig up the whole bed, take a mattock to it, separate the plants and then replant them. Instead, I've stripped away all the top soil and weeded it.

I grew these plants from seed and each bed has 8-10 plants. I planted them in 2005 and harvested the first crop in 2007 and they've been producing great quantities of asparagus for all the years since then. Now in 2011, the beds really needed to be overhauled and the couch removed.

They are a fascinating plant and I think it looks a bit like a sea creature. There is a central crown from which radiate thick fleshy roots.

Here's one bag of couch, untimely ripped from the soil. It needs to dry in the sun for weeks before it could be added to a compost system. Most people wouldn't even bother with composting couch as it is so risky. Couch is a great survivor and invasive once it gets into garden beds. I don't like wasting any organic material and if there was a green waste trip going out soon, I might add it to that in preference. At this stage, it's drying on a platform on one of my garden beds, waiting to be disposed of responsibly.

 

Weeding the paths - silverbeet

I've pretty much let the Silverbeet do whatever it likes, ie self seed and then grow nicely. I've been harvesting it and eating it, as mentioned here. But recently I took a look at the paths between my garden beds and thought, enough is enough. When you look at this photo below, you probably don't even realise there is a garden path, hiding in there.

So, I came back the next day and 'weeded' the silverbeet into my basket and took it home for eating. It freed up the path, allowing me to move a bit more freely. I'm really diligent about not walking on my garden beds - it compacts the soil, making life hard for earthworms, plant roots and transfer of oxygen in the soil. Walk on paths, stay off beds.

And here's an update photo on the winter vegetables. The great big Silverbeet plant in the middle of the path next to the winter bed has been allowed to stay. I can access the bed from the other side and while the silverbeet blocks the path, I can approach the bed from either end - no complaints.

The winter vegetables are in

This bed had been a compost pile six months ago. It is now planted out with cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli, and spinach seedlings. We limed the soil about a week before planting. At this stage, I haven't mulched the surface but I will do so - if only to stop weeds. Usually mulching is critical in our hot, dry, drought ridden climate but this years' La Nina, which has brought so much flooding to Australia, has not really required mulching of the exposed soil. But we have habits and it does limit weeding. So we'll do it.

The petunias are left over from a summer planting and ruby red stems of the volunteer silverbeet are very pretty.

Would you like to see more self-seeded silverbeet?

How funny. Its everywhere. This is a view of the summer's compost heap and in the path between the two beds a little forest of self-seeded silverbeets has blossomed. We'll be freezing that.

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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