Edible garden chatter

[briggsy's girl]

cover looks good Ausgirl - i'm tempted to do something like that - but it would be a huge project given the bed we have at the moment is 20+ square metres - and the new one will be the same size

[~Kim~]

Oooh us this year. Funny you put this up BG, I was only thinking a few days ago that I should dig it (the thread) up.

We have a lemonade tree, a nectarine and a passion fruit in half wine barrels. We have a raised garden bed with carrots, pumpkin vines (will be moving these out into the garden), cucumbers, tomatoes and blueberries. We also have various herbs and several strawberries. Two are in hanging baskets and one underneath the passion fruit vine. It survived being destroyed by the chooks and has grown back from nothing.

Our seasons and soil are fairly extreme here in the desert so it's easier to manage stuff in pots. DS is so proud of our raised vege bed. We planted and raised the seeds ourselves. No mean feat for a little boy who loves to dig.
Our chooks are now contained in their fortress to stop them decimating everything. When the tomatoes get a bit bigger I will get some marigolds and am going to look into other companions. We are lucky enough to have very few pests and diseases here (cos nothing can survive lol). We don't have a whole lot of viable space but am keen to get as much as we can going. Fruit and veg are tediously expensive here so I will start with the stuff the kids eat the most of and go from there.

[Floweryfields]

I also have a neglected very old mandarin tree in the garden, a lemon in the garden and a baytree in a pot.

[Mother Goose]

I'd love to plant a lemon tree but DH won't let me. Not sure why. We are planning on snow peas, cucumber, tomatoes... I think rhubarb? But think it's the wrong time of year for that? We move this week but won't be able to work on the garden for a few weeks I don't think. Also need to sort drainage as I noticed it pools where we want to plant.

Someone suggested to me Sunflowers... dumb question (I can kill Cactus), but if I plant Sunflowers, how do I get the seeds you eat? Which is what I'd like

[briggsy's girl]

Not sure MG. will be something for me to research seeing we have so many to plant! Kmart had packets of dwarf sunflower seeds for $3 or $4 tonight

[luna moth]

We have two raised Vegie beds, a patch along the sideway, and some natives out the front.

We've just harvested all our swedes and carrots from the beds, and have planted out some celery, tomato and rocket. Alongside them w also have bok choy, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, kale and broccoli that we are about to yank.

Our passion fruit vine has a way to go yet, our blueberry bush is experimental and probably failing.

We have a hop vine climbing the wall, and a huge mint bush.

In pots we have parsley, sorrel, basil, coriander, sage and salad greens.

The natives are years off doing anything good, so no point talking about them.

My 20 month old DD is the best cabbage moth remedy we have! They had already laid up in our kale, so we have taught her to pick out the caterpillars. She loves them, lines them up on the back step and talks to them. Pretty cute.

[Mother Goose]

ooooo does the pack say how high they grow BG?

[briggsy's girl]

Will just get the kid in bed and go look

[Floweryfields]

I'd love to plant a lemon tree but DH won't let me. Not sure why. We are planning on snow peas, cucumber, tomatoes... I think rhubarb? But think it's the wrong time of year for that? We move this week but won't be able to work on the garden for a few weeks I don't think. Also need to sort drainage as I noticed it pools where we want to plant.

Someone suggested to me Sunflowers... dumb question (I can kill Cactus), but if I plant Sunflowers, how do I get the seeds you eat? Which is what I'd like

You let it flower and the head dies off - you can tell when the seeds are ripe, they are full and black and plump in the flower head. My chooks love a sunflower head!

[Razzberry]

I would love to start an edible garden! I am not very good with plats though so not sure how I would go as I don't know where to begin.

Where should you plant veggie garden? Does it need to be in the sun all day? or just sun in morning or arvo?

[2CheekyMonkeys]

i started a vegie garden a couple of months ago. i bought one of those colourbond raised garden beds from bunnnings, it the smallest one. the square shaped one. filled it with a mixture of garden soil, cow manure, sugar cane mulch, and some special mix of stuff for vegie beds (cant remember what it was called). i put in there some cucumber, zuccni (way to many, i didnt know how big they grew and i think they are going to take over the whole thing soon), snow peas (i didnt realise they would be wanting to climb up so i didnt put them near a trellis, silly me) tomatoes, shallots, carrots and cos lettuce. i have had to move the snow peas and i am afraid they are going to die now, their leaves are going a bit dried up at the bottom. i have also found that i have a bug problem. soemthing is eating holes in the leaves of my basil, snow peas and edges of lettuce. i got some spray from the garden shop but that doesnt seem to be doing much.

i am really not a gardner so i dont really know what i am doing. i will be reading this thread for tips for sure!

[Cass72]

We started laying out where our garden will go on the weekend. DH is taking Friday off to build some garden beds and hopefully some lovely dirt will arrive either Friday afternoon or Saturday. I ordered some seeds through a fundraiser at work (and they arrived today) so I'll be planting:
• Basil (mixed gourmet –Basil Genovese, Lemon Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil)
• Trio of Mints (peppermint, spearmint and penny royal)
• Capsicum (Marconi Rosso)
• Cucumber (Marketmore)
• Iceberg Lettuce
• Spring Onion
• Coriander (Cilantro)
• Dwarf Bean

[briggsy's girl]

spent a couple of hours out in the yard today - loosely marked out where the new garden bed is going, then cracked the poos at hubby for having no idea what he really wanted to do (he changed his mind at least five times in the space of 10 minutes!) so i got the measurements for the outer edge and sat down and drew it up in about two minutes and asked if that was what he wanted to do - not surprisingly, it was exactly what he was thinking but couldn't use his smarts to draw it up!! our gardens are oddly shaped - but not in a bad way - they wrap around the corners of the yard, and rather than having them square with the fence, we've created some angles and things to make it look better

quick trip to bunnings to grab some pavers to make a stepping stone path through the garden so we don't have to pick our way through vegies - grabbed some different sized stakes ready for tomatos and capsicums. found they had some burpless cucumber seedlings so grabbed them - we'll have a couple of varieties on the go, but that's not a bad thing - we've had success with cucumber in the past, but i can't remember which variety! Over summer we go through an average cuc every couple of days between salad lunch and dinners, so it's not like it won't get used up if we have a heap of them come in

came home and planted marigolds in the vegie patch between the pavers in an effort to get this companion planting gig on the go (the pavers run between the tomato plants on one side and border the plants on the other. potted the cucumber seedlings in bigger pots for a while until the new patch goes in. we have priced the worm farm bits and pieces and i reckon we'll be able to get that before christmas if we pull our heads in.

have re-checked the sunflower seed stash - i thought all the packs only had 25 seeds, but some have 75 - so i have 350 seeds here! 50 of them HAVE to go in this year or we will almost certainly lose them, the rest, i'll have to work out - no idea which ones they use for eating - maybe all of them - so i'll cultivate them all and see what comes of it. will try and keep some for replanting too.

hoping to harvest seeds from as much as we can at the end of the season this year too - we started at the old house, but a combination of pregnancy making me lose motivation, hubby working away, and a rodent problem out there, it just never happened.