TIPS please for starting a new Vegie & fruit garden

[Shanti]

Hi,

We're moving in 3 weeks to our new house (yippeeeee!!) and will be starting to grow our own veges and fruit gardens. The soil at our new house will be that lovely red volcanic soil which we've been told is wonderful for growing veges. We have always wanted to do this but our current house we've been in hasn't allowed us the room to do so or a space suitable away from our dog

From all of you who have vege and fruit gardens at home, are there any tips you can give us before we start??

We will be growing..... tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkin, carrots, broccoli, beans, strawberries to start with.... then we'll go from there.

The boxes are already set up to go from the previous owners too! We're very excited.

Anyone know of a good website I can check out with info on it too??

Ta

[maz]

Oh I am so jealous!!!!!!

Maybe ask the people who were in there before what they planted???

IM going to have to google shade loving vegie plants. IM hanging to start on my garden too

[melbel]

me too..we found a man at our local craft market who does raised vegie garden things out of cut down rain water tanks. This means we can finally redo our vegie patch which is just a pile of weeds at the moment cos we cant plany anything there because the dog just digs it up!
He can even match the colour bond colour to the colourbond on our roof and They worked out cheaper and far less effort than hubby trying to build timber boxes...awesome stuff...I'm excited!!!

With tomato plants we are going to look into the heirloom plants...these are old style seeds that havent been genetically modified etc and apparently according to a couple of the gardening shows on the TV have oodles more flavour and good stuff....so maybe google heirloom tomaotes or heirloom seeds or something like if you are interested in that sort of stuff......I think you have to grow from seed packets though....not sure if anywhere sells them as actual seedlings yet.

ETA: foudn the place the tv shows recommended for seeds...is called the diggers club...if you google it should come up...they have lots of diff vegie seeds.

[LimeSlice]

Check out the gardening Australia website - Peter Cundall's is legendary! lol

Good luck! Keep your strawberries covered with netting when they start to fruit, the birds or possums will eat them before they have a chance to turn red

[briggsy's girl]

can you ask the previous owners what they had in and where? main reason i suggest this is, if they've recently grown tomatos you want to grown them in a different place this year and grow something green and leafy (like cabbage, maybe lettuce) where the tomatos were (so that the soil is regenerated - if you keep growing the same thing the same place, it will take all the nutrients and it's not being replenished

check what you're planting where - if it's against a reflective surface (shed etc) - you can grow things that climb, but put something between them (bamboo screen) to stop them burning

turn your soil over REALLY well - esp if it hasn't been used for a while. make sure it's nicely aerated
plan your attack method against bugs/snails/slugs - prevent attack if you can lol

have a bit of a squiz at companion planting -it's more involved, but it talks about planting leafy herbs (like basil) close to other veg - cabbage moth will attack the herb and leave your veg alone. we haven't started this so i can't say how successful it really is

ummm - make sure you ENJOY the garden - don't let it become a chore that drags you down. if it means planting a novel plant each season to "see how it goes" - do it. last year DH planted a pineapple (which we got fruit from!) - but it seems to have suffered from the frosts dammit! it gave us something different to work around though

[Astrid]

I second having a look at the Diggers Club. We spend ages looking over their seed catalogue, the variety is fantastic! We are giving so many different varieties a go this year. Check out Bunnings as they stock some of their seedlings and I have just noticed another heirloom brand being stocked as well.

Our main tip is that you can never grow too much, especially if you are growing from seed. Either freeze down or preserve excess. Giving it away is great, as often something will come back in return at a later date.

[Phteven]

Another great source for heritage breeds is Eden seeds.

Compost, compost, compost. You can turn your scraps and grass clippings into awesome plant food. As well as a traditional style compost heap we have a worm farm and those little guys do a gret job turning our scraps into worm poo.

[Crumbdad]

me too..we found a man at our local craft market who does raised vegie garden things out of cut down rain water tanks. <SNIP> ...They worked out cheaper and far less effort than hubby trying to build timber boxes...awesome stuff...I'm excited!!!

Melbel - can I ask how much he charges for the water tank raised garden beds? I've looked at them in the past (in Bunnings) and they weren't very cheap. If there is someone that does them at a reasonable price I'd be prepared to travel.

[somewoman]

Some great info here!!!

We have a fabulous book called "one magic square" that gives some awesome info (some of which has been mentioned in this thread). Thoroughly recommend it. You can google it for details.

We just built our raised garden bed from sleepers, metal brackets and timber screws. Cost about $200, and took about two hours for a 3.5*1.5m box at 60cm high. Haven't filled it with soil yet, but we plan on following a lot of the ideas put forward through that book. We can't do it yet as we're building the house, so the box is at the building site!! When we move in we will probably erect a second box and go from there. I can't wait!!!

[Phteven]

Instead of soild you can fill it with other stuff - google 'no dig garden'.

[New Dawn]

we made our 1st ever vege patch, and my only tip is to make sure you only plant what you will eat... we went a bit mad in Bunning and got way too many seedlings, we didnt really need 10 lettus, or 5 cucumber plants... they just went to seed before we had a chance to eat them... what we sould have done and will do when we next re-do our vege patch, is grow things eat alot of... for us that will be carrots, zuccine, bok choi watermelon, corn, and beans... just be careful some veges go MAD and can take over your patch ( mostly your vine type plants ) so only put in one or two plants / seeds and see how they go...

Oh and dont forget to fertilize not just water as we also didnt do this... poor plants

and like BG said the most import thing is to have fun, and enjoy your garden...

BTW BG we have grown pineapple before... its a beauitful plant isnt... we are growing another n=one right now... you did very well to grow one down there... next time I think you would have to make it a little green house to get though the colder times down there, I have only ever grown them in Cairns, and now trying crapville which with the heat up here they do wonderfully...

please excuse the spelling I cant spell to save myself, and veges have some of the hardest names too spell, I hope you can work out what I was trying to say

[briggsy's girl]

we were surprised the pineapple took - it really was just a gamble and a bit of fun! it's still alive but not as healthy as it was - we'll see how it goes with some TLC over summer....

no dig gardens are a fantastic idea - they reduce the expense of getting in good quality soil, and also help add nutrients to the soil as they break down... we were lucky in that DH was working for a tipper company when we built our gardens, and they'd recently cleared a house block where there was good red soil like you have Shanti - so he bought a load of it home here.

i'm going to do some research before next winter on growing green fertilising crops - apparently if you grow the right "weeds" when you're not growing veg (we have several beds so we rest at least a couple over winter) you can dig them over after winter and they fertiilise for you! am also contemplating getting a chook pen for over the gardens - they're all the same size so if we get a chook pen that moves from one to the next, they can clean up the garden and turn them over properly for us - plus we'll get eggs! i'd love to have free range chooks but we have no fences at the moment at the front and back of our block, and the local dogs have no issue coming into the yard and i'd hate for a chook to be attacked.... it's in the planning - just hasn't happened yet!

[beckoes]

some great tips, will keep an eye for more tips, just getting our patch going. going to look for that book. and more googleing!

[melbel]

Crumbdad...i cant find the exact price list at the moment but for one 3000x1200x800 high was about $400.
The smallest they do is 1930x700x400 slimline style and a heap of variations in between including round ones as well

The cheapest was well under $200. I think we were looking at one 2300x700x800 high and it was just over $200 (I think! babybrain is a bit foggy!)