Edible garden chatter

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?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah it takes some research and instinct. I research hubby has instinct. It works for us. I'm thankful we have that.

:

---

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!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

---

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.


-------------------------------------

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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.