Chickens dig up the garlic. They like to eat them too? I was hoping could save space for other crops when we have chooks.
Sorry, fat fingers syndrome might occur.
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Chickens dig up the garlic. They like to eat them too? I was hoping could save space for other crops when we have chooks.
Sorry, fat fingers syndrome might occur.
we have great success growing garlic. We have roses (not as many as we used to) and I read that planting garlic under roses helps keep aphids at bay, so we started planting any garlic that has started to sprout. Now we have heaps in, and some from last years harvest ready to go on as well. We just plant and walk away. And rarely have issues with aphids! Bonus!
Oh BG I love that idea! We inherited a rose bush when we bought this place, we were pretty intimidated by it at first, but now I love it! Definitely going to try it.
oh great! Me too. Thanks BG!
We have heaps of roses that were very average but are going great guns since we got here. The ground around them is pretty bare though, so this will be a definite improvement.
haha Audax, that's so cute and very very clever....mine could never be that restrained. I've had to put the strawberries in hanging baskets so at least a few make it inside.
Wind has killed the mesh over the strawberry bath. I think I'll have to add that to this weeks list of things to get. Going to run some wire between the fences (heavy wire for safety) and attach some hanging CDs to it. The ones that didn't work on burning. Apparently it Scares birds off. Have also read that owl ornaments do the same. Found one yesterday that could hang over the garden if we can find a way to hang it. Well, them really. We'd need a pair of them!
Good idea abt the roses & garlic! Thanks BG!
Sorry, fat fingers syndrome might occur.
bought some marigold seedlings yesterday to plant near the tomatos
i have no idea if this companion planting gig works, but i'll give anything a try
am also researching worm farms and compost bins - i like the idea of getting as much of the food waste recycled as possible.
was eying off a worm farm in bunnings yesterday - would cost about $160 to fully set up, but with the amount it should save us on liquid fertiliser, i think it's worth it. i think... lol
proper compost bins are significantly more exxy - not sure if i can justify it
Hey BG, I saw this chick talking about compost bins at the garden expo this year. She just get plastic garbage bins, te ones with the big round lids that you can clip the lids on. She cuts of the bottom and digs it in an inch or two into the ground. Then she puts it in her garden wherever she most needs the compost and makes it up there. She uses layers of Different things to get a great compost and then adds lots of water and some liquid fertilizer. She said it was way cheaper than the fancy bins and that it is best to keep it in contact with the earth.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk..... I'm probably feeding my cherub :)
BG: basil is good for tomatoes too for companion planting.
Sorry, fat fingers syndrome might occur.
Toddling gardener is no longer so restrained! A strawberry went in the gob today... Still white. Gross, but cute.
BG our compost setup was $100. We're vegan, so heaps goes into it, it has been amazing though. We've had it for just under a year. They've had tumblers on Play School ths week (always an excellent source of knowledge) and they look pretty good.
A new hop vine Has come up this week, but it is really struggling. No idea what to do with it.
We have to be careful what we add that can't be easily moved given its a rental. Not that we have short term plans to move but we have to be prepared just in case they sell out from under us. I like the idea of the tumblers but I'm starting to wonder if combination of rabbit eating leftovers and worm farm would be enough? Although composting they bits the worms and rabbit don't like plus grass clippings and weeds etc... Sigh. I'm torn lol
Spent part of my evening watching videos on how to set up and care for a worm farm. Friday night thrills! We were going to get one at old house but it never happened. I think I've just embraced the garden as a positive focus after lots if negativity. It's good that E can be involved too. Makes it a family thing
Think we will need to erect some temporary puppy fencing to protect the garden doin. E's godfather is getting a pup from someone local (he lives 3+ hours away) and may need us to collect puppy and start his training. I am kinda excited but don't wanna have a destructo mutt destroy all we've done so mixed feelings. Will be nice to have a pup for a few weeks though. Will get an excuse to start walking every day again. Between the motivation with the garden and with some walking DH and I might finally start getting properly over the dramas if the past few months.
Onward and upward.
Wish it didn't take so long to get food out of the garden though!
Audax. Gotta love toddler gardening antics!
worm farms are great and we get rid of heaps of scraps that the chckens dont eat in there
We have 2 farms and so far in 3 months I have got over 20lts of worm wee from the 2 farms!!!!
liquid gold!!
you then dilute it 1:20 so allready I have 400 litres of liquid fertalizer ready to use on my garden!!!
they are so worth it
Make sure if you do get one- get your worms from a good quality worm farmer and get between 2,00-3,000 worms per farm
Also if you put meat in your farm- be aware that you have to wait 6 months after you harvest the worm wee to use it
I am nearly ready to let my worms go up a level so will be able to make some worm tea with the casting soon too!!
We have a simple Gedde compost bin that we use. the only advantage the tumbler ones have is that you can turn the compost alot easier. We have a spiral looking tool that you put in and it turns the compost oer, but its labour intensive. If you can afford to get a tumble one- then I would
Ebay is a great place to get second hand farms and composts cheap!!!
I would live to have chooks but given the fact the lease says no pets and they've let us get the rabbit and care for dogs short term, I'm not gonna push it. We are also in an area that is fairly new and the fixed haven't learnt it's totally a no go zone yet lol. I've heard putting chooks over the garden at the end of the season is good for digging everything over and feet losing so maybe I could do that. Just borrow them short term lol
Not sure we can afford a compost tumbler. But its something to aim for. We now have one less car and DH has given up the idea of a trailer to replace the ute so that may be something to aspire to around Christmas when rego would have been due - wont change the savings budget before then and see how we go
Out this way, I don't think we will have much option but to get worms from somewhere like bunnings.
What type of warm farm do you have? We were looking at a couple that you can get at bunnings - a round one or a rectangular one. Can't remember the brand but the website was tumbleweed (has lots of info about composting, worm farms etc. normal au site)
i missed this one the other day - just shared with DH - we ahve some of last seasons garlic still out the back so we might make up some of this in the near future:
does anyone have any natural remedies for rust on fruit tree leaves? will go google now, but wondered if there were any tried and tested ones.
may have to buy some UHT milk to use on the roses too (not that they are really edible, but it's all tangled up with trying to keep the garden as natural as possible) - milk and water spray helps with powdery mildew...
I had a compost bin - till I burned it to the ground with ashes from the fireplace that I thought were cool enough!
Getting rather impatient with the caulis which are not really showing signs of forming a head - any ideas on that one, how long do you reckon they should take? Cabbages just starting to form hearts, chooks enjoying the spinach and potatoes looking good.
I bought tomato, corn and zuchini seeds last weekend. Will plant corn and zuchini direct when there is space, might plant toms in pots to get them going earlier.
ausgirl - our broccoli took AAAAges to get heads. Starting to get too late up here in QLD (although out your way sprobably different) - when did you plant them?
Bummer about your compost!
Our broccoli took ages, then went from nothing to seed very quickly if we weren't checking regularly
Cauli we've not grown for a couple of years. We only got small heads from it when we grew it last time.
This might be a stupid question.... But what does 'gone to seed' mean?
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Well brocoli and cauli flower is actually the flower buds, so if you leave them long enough, they shoot up really tall and flower then form seeds. Brocoli has yellow flowers, not sure about cauliflowers. The cabbages actually split in half and the flowers shoot out from the middle, kind of alien style!
BG they;ve been in about 12 weeks I think.
I think cauli just shoots long stalks with florets in top.. I think...
Last time we did cauli we got no heads at all ever. But Brissy had a ridiculous August heat wave that year, I reckon that's what did it. Tempting fate to grow it here anyway, I think.
Great thread! We're getting our fence put up soon (fingers crossed!) so we're starting to plan our back yard. At the moment it's a dirt/weed farm that stretches 50 metres or so to a paddock :lol:
Our fence will be 14 metres across the back, so we're planning for a water feature in the centre with a potted plant either side, then one of those raised garden beds (the colourbond kind you get from Stratco) then another plant, another garden bed then a tree/plant arrangement in the corner. So four garden beds all up.
We're still looking into what should go into each one but I'm getting plenty of ideas. I also love the idea of a compost bin/worm farm - I'd love to teach DD about sustainability.
This thread has me really keen to get started!
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
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.
I really wish my shallots were ready to go. Had to buy some for a recipe got $3!!! Hard to do that when you have a stack growing out the back!!! By the way, how do I know when they are ready , same for the carrots?
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that's hubby's job! lol
carrot we loosen the soil around them and see how deep they've gone - and only pick them when we're ready to use them. i find they don't keep very well for some reason - but given we eat carrot every day, it's not a drama to eat them straight away.
The soil has come away from the top of the green leafy top on some of them and I can see a small portion of the top of carrot which has recently turned orange. Tried to pull it out but it wouldn't come out easily and wanted to come out with about three other ones that weren't orange yet so I left it. I don't want to pull it out if it's not ready or if it's going to damage other ones. This gardening business is tricky stuff!
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Yeah it takes some research and instinct. I research hubby has instinct. It works for us. I'm thankful we have that.
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It'll be soon. We ate our whole harvest in two meals!
Using recycled materials for garden bed is both a blessing (recycling lol) and a curse (more work). It would take 10 minutes to go to the hardware store and ask for sleepers cut to x length. Instead we are recycling fencing materials and making garden edges that are essentially mini fences. 30cm high. So we gave to cut five and six foot palings into 30cm lengths. And then assemble said mini fences. 4.6m down 5.1m to go for the main bed. 8m ish for the secondary bed. And if we do the other one he wants it will be another 16 or more
Back to it I goes!
Well I pulled that bunch of carrots out and they look like mutants. All curled around each other and different sizes, mostly small. 2897 (Hope I can post a photo, not sure if it will work anyways. ) Have I done something wrong or were the carrots just not ready yet? They are baby carrots by the way.
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Likely planted too close together in soil that wasn't cultivated deeply enough. If you plant carrot seeds you need to thin them. Soil needs to be cultivated deep to encourage downward growth.
I bought them as seedlings from bunnings, also what do you mean by cultivated? We freshly made up the soil in the garden bed with lots of different soils and fertilizers added before planting. Is there something else I should have done? The garden bed is quite deep.
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Cultivated means preparing the soul deeply. It may. It have been that. But I know we had problems like that when the roots didn't go deep enough.
The seedling trays from bunnings need to be separated over a fair amount of space. Can't recall off hand how far apart but I know I was surprised when I read it!
thats probably more the problem then i think, the spacing. i bout them in you know the little black tray that has 6 mini compartments. when i planted them i just put them out in 6 places thining i had seperated them but maybe i should have gone further and seperated each plant in the 6 mini compartments. (does that make sense). Bum!! now none of my carrots are going to grow properly! :-(
We were told carrots are best sown straight in ground and thin out. Coz their roots seek water to grow. So if it isn't deep enuf they go sideways. If that make sense.
Double post.
the old man next door says the same - sew the carrot seeds strait into the ground and thin out
Question dose any one know a "natural" way to try and minamise fruit fly? up here in NE VIC we have them - so we cant prevent them - but i dont fancy spending $80 on a small bottle of spray that may not even give me 80% of a crop KWIM?
We are on the new house and my avail garden space for a veggie patch is bigger than I remember! Yay! As soon as the house is sorted I hope to get out and get planting! Dd wants snowpeas and tomatoes.
your DD is gonna be an easy kid to grow things for! tomatos and snow peas are almost fail proof!!
Here is a pic of the garden bed that we have on the go at the moment. DD is sick, so it's slowing progress a bit, but it's now at the point we can line the fence with tin (yay or friends in the right job - costing nothing) to stop damage to the timber, and put in the no dig garden bed - just gonna take a bit of work to coordinate borrowing a trailer, collecting hay, and getting the soil in - the hay we can do any time (sil's brother is giving it to us) but the rest is difficult to do on the weekend cos they have limited opening hours... i know how much the soil is from one place, but we have to pick it up ourselves - might ring around other places and see if we can get it delivered