Summer of rain and shine: A tribute to the fallen

Well, to be more accurate, it has been the summer where our poor vegie patch has been scorched and drowned, often in the same week. Back in late spring I was happily raising seedlings and anticipating a summer where our kitchen would be overflowing with produce. Sadly, like many fellow gardeners I've spoken to lately, much of our patch simply didn't survive the scorching hot days, followed by torrential rain, with mould, mildew, and disease inducing humidity in between.

So a tribute to the fallen of the Summer of 2009/2010...

Potatoes

Remember the great potato patch we made back in September? From strong beginnings the plants then seemed to suddenly wilt and die. I suspect either potato blight or black leg. After a while we decided to excavate and see what had happened. Many of the spuds had started well, but the heavy rain had compacted the sugar cane mulch and compost into a thick, wet, rotting layer and anything above that layer died. Our yield was a handful of small deformed potatoes.

However, on the upside, the potatoes that were voluntarily growing in the compost heap seemed to be unaffected and yielded a good number of decent sized spuds. And while some of the ones from the main patch weren't edible, they were possibly the rudest looking potatoes ever grown, so we got some giggles.

Tomatoes
Back in October I had started planting tomato seeds and by early November I had so many seedlings I was giving the excess away to family, friends and anyone who happened to drive past. Later in November saw us going on holidays for a week, during which we had several absolute scorchers and I came home to some rather scalded and sorry looking tomato seedlings. Still, we planted them out and thought they might just come good, only to have them drowned in rains, scorched again and getting every tomato affliction under the sun. A number have rust, much of the fruit has blossom end rot from the erratic rain, a lot of fruit has simply split or rotted while still green, and to top it off we've got fruit fly. I've tried spraying a Bordeaux mix to see if that helps with the rust. We've had a few good, if small, tomatoes from what I think is a Red Tommy Toe. Sadly, I think what I need to do is pull them all out to try and stop disease spreading further.

Capsicums
We had 4-5 mini capsicum plants and 2 regular size plants. They've been strong and early on had lots of flowers and fruit developing, but the insane weather has meant that most of the fruit are rotting before they're ripe. We have managed to get a couple of very cute mini capsicums, but don't hold much hope for the rest in this humid weather.


Corn
I really thought the corn was going to be alright. Sadly, the humid weather isn't great for corn either. A lot of the cobs had aphids and some kind of borer. The ones that looked okay were very disappointing to eat. They tasted like glue - bland and starchy. I don't know whether we didn't have enough of them to get good pollination or there was some nutrient deficiency, or both.

Cucumber
There is one lone apple cucumber that has survived against the odds. Two plants were lost when the dogs got into the patch and had a bit of a rampage. The other one succumbed to the rampant powder mildew that threatened to cover every curcubit in sight. Diligent spraying with diluted milk seems to have saved my lone survivor and we even got a decent sized and quite edible cucumber from it.

Rhubarb
The rhubarb grew to epic proportions with massive leaves and thick stalks. However, in the last few weeks, I think the rain and humidity has taken its toll as many of the stalks became rotten and I think the crowns may actually have rot from being too wet for too long. This is the first time I've grown rhubarb so I don't know if they're meant to die back at the end of summer or whether this is actually crown rot. There are still some new green stalks emerging from one so I'm hoping it will hang in there.

However, it hasn't all been bad and in many ways we've learnt a lot from those plants that didn't make it.

Vegie patch - now with soil!

While I know it seems a rather obvious statement that a vegie patch has soil, but up until a week or so ago, mine didn't. There was not enough dirt from the terracing to fill the beds and what was there was mostly clay and rock. The gypsum had worked a treat on the clay, but I simply needed more soil and the compost heap isn't THAT big.

So the Cunning Plans Dept went and got a truckload of soil, which was dumped on our front lawn. This needed to be moved down to the back yard. Given my feebleness it was fortuitous that my brother needed some extra cash in hand and was willing and able to do some manual labour. So he and the CPD spent a day using a small tipper to load soil into the trailer, attach trailer to tipper, drive down the neighbours driveway to the side fence of our backyard (after removing a panel of fence), dump soil into our yard, repeat. Once all the soil was moved to our back yard, the tipper was then used to transport soil to the vegie patch beds.

They also got the mulched the dead tree branches that had become overgrown with grass and weeds from sitting in a heap for so long. Plus some mowing and edging and the back yard is actually looking not to bad.

Now all that needs to be done is the edging of the ends of the beds, putting down plastic and gravel for the walkways and we'll be ready to start transplanting some of the potted vegies. I've drawn up the plans for the four beds. One will be for perennials (strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and garlic) and the other three will be annuals with rotating crops.

Meanwhile, vegie patch mkI is going berserk!

The corn have flowered and the first ears are starting to grow. Broccoli is getting huge, but no heads yet. There are bloody cabbage white butterflies everywhere and the leaves are riddled with holes, but they still seem to be growing okay. Carrots are still going well. The bonus compost potatoes and tomatoes are also growing fine.

We've also picked our first tomatoes! Some had a bit of blossom end rot, but that didn't really affect them. Nice and tasty and so red in the middle that the shop bought tomatoes literally pale in comparison. The tomato plants themselves have started to get yellowing in the leaves. I looked up some gardening books and google, but there are a apparently a lot of things that could cause yellowing of leaves ranging from the harmless, don't worry about it, to all is lost, please destroy your plant and the soil it grew in. They still seem to be growing okay and the fruit is ripening, so I'm just going to see what happens.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

Okay, I think I can officially say now that I have an abundance of tomato plants. The rouge de marmande and roma tomato plants in the big pot are rapidly becoming too big for that pot and fruiting like crazy.

The two remaining tiny tim tomatoes (one was gifted to a friend) are starting to fruit, even the one that suffered an accident and the main stem snapped. Two of the three tomatoes grown from seed saved from a shop bought tomato are going strong and starting to flower. The other one was a bit of a runt and has been planted into the front garden to give it one last chance. The riesenstraube seedlings are in desperate need of transplanting and I planted three of them out today.

Plus, when I planted out the marjoram and thyme into the front garden I brought up a couple of buckets of compost to dig in before I planted them. I now have eleven (!) tomato plants growing amongst the marjoram and thyme. I think they may have to go as that's not really the best spot for them and I have no idea what sort of tomato they are.

Tomato plant tally: 16 regular size, 9 tiny size. Anyone want some tomato plants?

Today involved planting out a number of seedlings and discover that I am running out of places to plant them as we still haven't finished the vegie patch in the back yard. We need to get a trailer load of dirt to build up the beds, plus I thinking of doing the layers of wet newspaper thing to kill of the remaining kikuyu. Seedlings transplanted included: marigolds, borage, basil, coriander, parsley, and riesenstraube tomatoes. There are a lot in the seedling trays as I ran out of potting mix.

I've also got a good number of sunflowers growing in the front garden. The first lot of seeds didn't have a good success rate with only two strong seedlings. The second lot has been more successful. There are now 8 of them plants in two rows in the front garden.
They should grow to about 120cm tall (short variety) which is just above the lattice. In the photo you can see the little wind breaks the CPD very kindly erected when we had strong winds the other weekend.

And in breaking news, the Cunning Plans Dept has just come in with the first carrot of the season. It's just a bit bigger than "baby carrot" sized and seems to have grown straight. I was a bit worried that where we planted them might not be soft enough for them to grow straight (oh okay I confess I was secretly hoping for a bifurcated carrot). Tasted a little bit bitter though. Wonder if I need to add some fertiliser or something. They've just had compost and worm wee so far. The broccoli and corn are still going well, but no sign of broccoli heads or corn ears yet.

Vegie patch terracing and fencing

The Cunning Plans Dept did a bit more work on the terrace edges of the vegie patch and also put the fence up. The weather wasn't so great so not a lot of work got done.

On to the pictures.This shows the terrace edges of the four beds.

The wood is all recycled, most of the long planks you see are the joists from the spare room floor that was ripped out recently. We will need to get some extra bits from somewhere to fill in the gaps.
The fence isn't overly attractive, but will serve the purpose of keeping the two destructodogs out. Next stage is to mark out the paths clearly and then cover the bed area with some plastic to solarise the ground and hopefully kill the Kikuyu. We'll also need a trailer load or two of soil as there isn't enough there and we don't have enough compost to bulk it up.

The vegie patch mk I is still doing okay. The carrots, broccoli and corn are doing well. A few corn stalks broke in the high winds the other weekend and something is eating the broccoli leaves. Here have an action shot of me picking off caterpillars:
This one shows the irrigation system the CPD rigged up before. We pour in water at the top, which flows into the plastic container and trickles out the irrigation hose. Pretty nifty.

My seeds arrived from Diggers Club so on the weekend I set up a couple of propagator trays with parsley, coriander, basil, pyrethrum, marigolds, and borage. The sunflowers and riesenstraube tomatoes have started to sprout, but no sign of the yellow capsicum yet. Perhaps they're a dud. They were collected out of a capsicum I bought from the grocers so I wouldn't be surprised. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also transplanted a couple of mint cuttings I had propagating in water. The big tomatoes are growing great and there are lots of fruit appearing. The tiny tim tomatoes are also starting the fruit. One of them had a minor accident and the stem got snapped, but there are some lower shoots that will be fine.

We have tomatoes

Well the beginnings of tomatoes at any rate. The first rouge de marmande tomatoes have just started to form.

My tomato leaves are being eaten by little green caterpillars. This weekend I practiced one of the organic methods of pest control, i.e. sat down next to the plant, turned every leaf over and squished the little buggers. I'm thinking about getting some pyrethrum plants, both as companion plants and so I can make a spray from the flowers to keep the bugs down. Also got some whitefly, but they don't look like they're doing much damage.

This weekend saw a lot of transplanting. The capsicum seedlings have been transplanted into seperate pots. The thyme and marjoram have been transplanted into the front garden. And a couple of rosemary cuttings that had started to put out roots after sitting in water on my window sill have been transplanted into pots. The strawberry plants continue to do well, though I wish they'd produce more!

Something the Cunning Plans Dept did a few weeks ago was transform an old wine barrel that we picked up a few years ago into a water tank for the front garden. I finally remembered to take a photo as it is kinda neat.

There is a diverter on the downpipe, which goes into the hole that was there when we got it. The CPD has added a tap at the bottom. Unfortunately, the wood has been so dry for so long that it isn't swelling enough when wet to seal, so we're probably going to have a put a liner in it to make it more useful. We've also ordered a commercial rain water tank to put down the side of the house for more serious water storage.

Vegie patch planning

Today we mapped out the new vegie patch in the backyard. It will be around 5x5m, maybe 5x7.5 depending on how many fence panels I can score from Mum and Dad. Aiming for 4 long beds about 4x1m. G mowed the patch so I can see how big it looks (I'm crap with spatial visualisation). We dug a small hole to check the soil. Like the rest of the yard its mostly clay and rocks.

We popped down to Kennards Hire and got a rotary hoe (and said "Hi" to Dan). This turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The thing was a bitch to get down to the backyard. I then went off to Bunnings and when I came back G had the rotary hoe back up the top and Dan was getting it into the Kennards truck. Apparently grass, clay and rocks can defeat a rotary hoe. Apparently G chased it across the yard as it took off without doing much to the ground and when it did hit the ground, something broke. Fortunately he could just call Dan to come and pick it up and Kennards didn't charge us for it.

Plan B is to get one of the larger small tractor things (can you tell I vagued out when the boys started to talk large mechanical things?) It won't fit down the side of our house, but G is going to talk to our neighbour about taking it down the side of his house and through a panel of our shared fence. Hopefully that will work as the other option of manual labour will suck.

In other happy gardening news, my Diggers Club membership arrived during the week along with a book on raising heirloom plants and two packets of free seeds. They gave me some Reisenstraube tomatoes (little red grape tomatoes) and some yellow pollenless sunflowers. I'm very happy about the sunflowers as I'd been eyeing them off in the catalogue. I'm a little confused by the membership, but I think I also get to select some free seeds from a variety of their catalogues. Today I got some seed propagating trays and a few more window box pots for out the front. We're going to hang them from the fence. I think I'll put herbs in those, or maybe some lettuce or asian greens.

The carrots, corn and broccoli planted down the back garden are going well. We weeded the patch today and thinned the broccoli. We should thin the carrots, but it is really hard to tell the difference between carrots and weeds at this point.

Plan for tomorrow - start digging over the front garden. I'm going to plant the thyme and oregano (which I'm starting to think may actually be marjoram, I've never been great at telling the difference) so it can spread as a ground cover. They're rapidly overrunning the pots they're in.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be visiting Mum and Dad for Dad's birthday. I'm going to do some gardening with Dad, swap seeds and plants, collect fence panels, G is going to help him rig up some irrigation stuff, then we all have dinner. I love weekends.

The garden grows

It's Sunday evening and after another weekend the garden has grown. Admittedly most of the work was done by the Cunning Plans Dept because I was being feeble, but its a team effort. The old herb garden got dug over with some compost to make it more habitable for plants. Then a trip to get seeds. We've put in carrots, broccoli and sweet corn. The CPD also engineered a cunning drip line arrangement so I only need to pour water in a funnel on our top terrace and it will run down to a small tank and slowly ooze out the drip line (which is good since I'm not very good with stairs at the moment).

We also have two tomato seedlings (one Rouge de Marmande and one Roma) that are in a pot out the front (north wall, better sun).

Thank you to Anne for pointing me to diggers.com.au. I think I will order one of their mixed heirloom tomato seeds.

The couple of geranium cuttings I took and randomly shoved in the ground seem to be doing well. Plus the Flametree seems to have perked up. It was looking very pathetic for a while. Something had eaten at the leaves then in a high wind they all blew off! I thought it might be a gonner, but lo and behold it has shiny new growth at the top and on the side.

Other highlights of the weekend included Hudson going a round with the neighbours cat and losing, and some general lazy late afternoon weeding. While pulling clover out of the front lawn I got bored and started making daisy chains out of the flowers, like I remember doing as a kid. The daisy chain ended up on Rasputin, the house gargoyle (who is looking a bit worse for wear these days).

Looks like some bizarre pagan offering (which is funny since I'm about as irreligious as you can get). Maybe it will keep the mormons away.