Edible garden chatter

corn doesn't take up a lot of room. you're best to plant it in blocks though, rather than rows - it makes for better cross pollination. ideally, for the varieties you can buy locally, they need to be about 9 inches apart - we tend to plant a row, offset the next row (so they are only about 5 inches apart) and then plant the next row the same as the first. never had a problem with them

with watermelon, rock melon, pumpkin and cucumber, we plant them on the edge of a raised garden bed, and as they grow, encourage them into the grass. that way, the root system is protected, and it's only the actual plant that has to spread out. it should be ok to let it take off. DH won't let me have any melons this year though - says DD is too young to understand if she loses part of her yard to fruit plants that are creeping, given it's not a huge yard like we used to have. i REALLY want to plant pumpkin too, but he said no. tempted to just get a pumpkin seed and stick it in a pot, and if it takes off, so be it - i'm sure she'd learn to live without that bit of room lol

Oooh, I never thought of letting things like pumpkin grow out of the garden bed! We have a tiny backyard (after alfresco we have 3m to the fence - part of which is paved. Do u think something growing out of a garden bed would object to growing on pavers???

DH said he's done it before and it was fine - the only thing you have to be wary of is how much heat radiates back up from the pavers, cooking the leaves and "feelers". pumpkin (in his experience) will grow up and over fences

this has given me ideas - he is not happy with my ideas! will have to see if there is a variety of pumpkin we can grow upward instead of outward! investigation taking off now...

Oooh! Up is a good idea! If you (or anyone else) has good ideas for things I can grow upwards, please let me know!

You can train tomato to grow up instead of out. Peas and beans having climbing varieties...

DH built our raised bed on the weekend :) So happy! He did it from scratch and it looks awesome :) The dirt is in and next weekend we are PLANTING! So SO excited! DD had an awesome time helping him - she is such a cool kid :)

How are all your gardens going ladies?

Ours is looking fantastic. We've got flowers and the beginnings of veggies on so many things. Lettuces are ready for harvest as we need them, with seedlings ready to go in the garden bed tomorrow. Dd and I have shared strawberries every day this week. Fruit is forming on 8 of the ten fruit trees. Have picked a few pea pods. Snow peas will be ready soon. Kiwi fruit is taking off. Passion fruit not so much. Sun flowers didn't get planted til two weeks back. Waited til what we thought the worst of the cold weather was over. Has such bub ish weather the weekend after we planted them, we expected a cruddy germination rate but to our surprise it looks to be greater than 90% have taken! Each hole had two seeds in it so another fortnight and we will have to thin to the strongest seedlings. Will probably full any gala with the ones we pull out and may plant the others elsewhere. If we can find somewhere to plant them lol.

Wow! Your garden sounds great!

Mine doesn't seem to be doing much.....Nothing is dying but I don't feel like the plants are getting much bigger or producing anything.... I'm hoping it'll change soon. It's a little disheartening...

It can take a while for everything to take off. Last year we had a shocker. This year has been better but still nothing like the success we had at our old house. I actually said to dh today I'd be interested to see if we can top the gardens up with a mix of ash and red soil next year as that's what we used at the old place. Might be harder to get seeing we have no way to burn wood and stuff cleanly here, and the red soil was a fluke given he was driving a tipper at the time and got it from prime spud country for some reason. I can hope though, right??

On the downside, we've never had problems growing beans. Ever. And none of them are doing any good this year!! We have four varieties in! Not happy!!

Well I'm a bit disappointed. Fit about 4 snow peas then the plant died. Lots of zuccini flowers but no zucchinis. Actually one did start to grow but then shriveled and died. Shallots have not gotten very big. Strawberries were the best. Got a few tomatoes growing and ripening. Cos lettuce was good too. I'm a bit over it now. Lol

My zucchini seem to have grown well, mind you only leaves. No flowers or vegies. Same with corn and carrots. Capsicums have been nibbled, and now seem dead. Tomatoes have started to sprout from seeds so will be able to transfer them shortly. As well as a few cucumbers. Parsley is doing well too. Still a way off producing anything edible yet, but looking forward to it. Not too bad for a first timer.

I'm very excited - DP and I have finally decided on and priced materials for building 4 raised beds over the one little patch of lawn in our garden. 400x400mm concrete slabs, standing upright around the edges, with angle iron frames holding them together and silicon joins between them. We've paid for the slabs, second-hand, and will buy the angle iron new. Hopefully we'll put them together in the next week! Then to get a delivery of soil to go in them, and finally I'll get the area of vegie gaden i've been hoping for, and won't have to squash everything up really tightly like I have been so far.

When I said that not much is happening veggie wise above, I forgot to say my herbs are going nuts! I'm constantly on the look out for new ways to use them.

Ours too chody! Dh even has parsley that self seeded in the concrete grooves near the garage door lol

We have strawberries daily. Lettuces is amazing. Snow peas and peas that aren't making it inside cos I snack while I walk around. Flowers in everything. It's awesome!

My lettuce has barely grown. I thought I'd grow some from seed (DD loved planting the seeds) but they aren't growing fast! The bean seeds we planted have grown well though and I'm just about to plant them into the proper garden. I have a measley 2 cherry tomatoes growing and nothing on our regular tomato plant. The various veggie plants seem to be flowering quite a bit but nothing is resulting in veggies - any tips?

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The various veggie plants seem to be flowering quite a bit but nothing is resulting in veggies - any tips?

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sorry, have just seen this - do you have bees in the garden? some plants may need manual polination if you don't have bees visiting. we have flowers (roses, marigolds) to attract bees to the garden as well as the fruit and vegie flowers. some need to be cross polinated - you may need to google the plants you are growing to see if they self pollinate or need some help

ours garden is going great guns. we've had a rush of lettuce (which has been heavenly - can't believe the added flavour!), brocolli will have to be harvested soon, and probably replant some. peas and snow peas have been going great guns. so delish! strawberries going crazy. think we may have to harvest and freeze for smoothies... mmm nom nom nom. too many to keep up with! fruit trees - all the citrus trees have fruit starting to grow. one of the apples (or maybe it's the nashi pear - we've lost the tag oops!) has a HEAP of fruit on it. sunflowers going great guns and about to head out and thin the crop so they have room to grow properly.

our owls are working brilliantly - no birds nicking our food! yay!

We do have bees around on other plants in the garden.....do you think it had something to do with temp? We've now started to get some things growing - 5 cherry tomatoes and 1 capsicum. Not much, but its a start.

Yesterday I transplanted the beans and zucchinis I grew from seeding into the garden.

Your garden sound great! Can't wait til we can start harvesting!

Cold and wind are stunting the growth of some things. It's really depressing. Am outside now. Will take some pics of garden development. Poor dh is moving things, staking things, weeding and just looking generically blah. Mud covered man should have done all this BEFORE he watered the garden...