Summer success stories

Despite the last post, it wasn't all gloom and doom in the patch this summer. There were a few success stories.

Beans

We had two different bean varieties this summer. Rattlesnake beans, (below left) which are a climbing variety, where planted in the front garden to climb (and help cover) the bit of lattice underneath the front porch. The other variety is a butter bean called Sex Without Strings (below right), which is a bush variety and was planted into the main vegie patch in a couple of beds where we had space.

Both beans have gone well, with the Rattlesnake beans being the most productive. We only have two plants going, but have probably yielded just over a kilogram of beans so far. I've started to write down the weight of each harvest so we can have a better record.

The Sex Without Strings beans have been pretty productive per bush (we've got 4 going), but probably overall half the yield of the climbing beans. And true to the name, they are a lovely stringless butter bean. Both beans are very tasty and have been a regular addition to our dinners.

Basil

The tomatoes may have failed, but the basil has been going off! I transplanted around 6-7 basil seedlings in around the tomatoes and all have thrived, to the point that I had to seriously cut back some of them as they were smothering the tomatoes and capsicums.

The basil harvest has already been turned into a few jars of basil pesto, some basil butter, and some diced basil frozen into an ice cube tray for use later in the year. And there is still loads in the patch, which the bees love and we'll let go to seed.

Lettuce
We've tried to get in to the habit of have a couple of lettuce plants on the go so that we've got lettuce for salads and meals. The best variety so far has been one of the freebies we received from Digger's Club, Australian Yellow Leaf (left).

It has bright yellow-green leaves and is a 'cut and come again' type of lettuce (non-hearting). Crisp and delicious. We've also been trying some heirloom varieties (middle and right) from a mixed pack. These have been nice, but in the crazy summer weather have tended to bolt to seed.

Strawberries

The strawberry patch was quite productive, and when we managed to beat the birds, slugs and labradors to them, we were treated to the tastiest luscious red fruit. I don't think that many made it to the kitchen, it was too tempting to eat them straight from the garden.

Rhubarb

The two rhubarb plants I put in during winter, which I was so worried I'd killed, sprang into life in spring producing thick stalks and enormous leaves that were so heavy some of the stalks were coming off from the weight of the leaves pulling them down.

We'd read that in the first year you shouldn't harvest any stalks, to let the plant establish and feed the crown, so we left it to grow. It has recently died down to nothing, which I'm hoping is just what rhubarb does and that with all the rain and humidity the crowns haven't rotted. The crowns do look very much like they did when I bought the dormant crowns, so hopefully they'll burst back in to life next spring.

Onions

Last winter, on the winter solstice, we planted a number of onions. We had two varieties of brown onion - Creamgold and Australian Brown - and one red onion. To experiment a bit with yield, we sowed a row of Australian Brown directly into the bed, and sowed the Creamgold and red onion in a seed-raiser tray, then transplanted them as soon as they were big enough to handle. The direct sown seeds certainly produced larger onions, but the others were a good medium-small onion.

We harvested them on the summer solstice (following the traditional planting guide of planting on the shortest day of the year and harvesting on the longest), which was just as well as we got them out before the deluge of summer rain hit. We strung them up in net under cover to dry out, and are now storing them inside in mesh bags. The yield was around 3.8kg of brown onions and 2.4kg of red onions.

Garlic
Like the onion, our garlic harvest went reasonably well. We got around 12 good sized cloves of red italian garlic, plus a few bonus garlics from the compost heap. Interestingly, none of the italian red garlics flowered. We had read that you wait for them to flower before harvesting, but they never did and the stalks just seemed to die off, so we pulled them out. One of the compost heap garlics did flower and the flower ends up producing seeds that look like tiny garlic cloves.

We've probably got enough garlic to last us until next crop, when I think we'll plant some more of the italian red garlic and also try some of the seeds that we saved from the compost garlic.


Other successes in the garden have been the carrots, which continue to grow well though we need to remember to keep sowing more seed to get a progressive crop. The herbs in the front garden are also doing well and it is nice to be able to just duck out the front to snip a few when cooking.

The war on slugs

Just when I thought our vegie patch was rather blessedly free of garden pests, we have had an invasion of slugs and the rotten buggers have targetted our strawberry patch.

Around a month ago, one of our strawberry plants started to fruit prolifically, producing what looked like they would be big luscious fruit. Then to our great disappointment, just as the fruit was ready to pick, we'd discover that some rotten little pest had gotten to it first! At first we couldn't see any traces of the culprit and suspected birds, but then we found the tell tale silvery trails.

First we tried pouring coffee grounds around the patch, having read that the caffeine is enough to make slugs and snails keel over. That didn't seem to deter them though, so onto plan B - Beer!

We decided to try two different traps. One is the standard chinese container buried to ground level. The other the CPD came up with, which uses a cranberry juice bottle that is partially buried with an openning cut into the side. This one has the advantage of being relatively rain proof. That night, the CPD decided a spotlighting mission was in order to check the effectiveness of the traps.
The mission uncovered slugs that were indeed going for the beer...having a drink and then crawling back out! The beer was about a day old by this point so the CPD tried some fresh VB, which seemed to have the desired effect (i.e. slugs turning themselves inside out). So, mission accomplished, the CPD packed up the spotlight and headed back the house...and forgot to close the gate to the vegie patch, leaving it open for our two beer-loving puppies.

The next morning, there was no beer, no traps, no slugs, and worst of all, no strawberries! After all of that we've decided that a few spotlight missions and two bricks will do just fine for slug control.

Strawberry

I'm back home. The conference was great, though tiring. Many thanks to B&k who took me touristing through Christchurch on my last day before I had to fly home. Coming home to 30+ degree heat in Sydney and a mountain of work, not great. Having a long weekend to recover though was pretty good.

I've been getting into gardening lately. It started with pottering around trying to salvage some herbs from what was the herb garden three years ago which is now an overgrown mess. Then I got some cuttings from my parents and slowly the collection of pots on the front porch has been growing. There are now plans afoot for a vegie patch of epic proportions in the backyard. Ms D has kindly loaned me some books on gardening. Apparently it's a lot more complex than just shoving plants in the ground and hoping for the best.

Why gardening? It gives me something to do while getting my daily vitamin D dose from the sunshine and with the weather fining up and the days getting longer, I'm enjoying being outside more. It does not generally involve people, so is a good hobby for an introvert. I'm also starting to be a bit more conscious about food miles and would like to grow my own produce. And it really is quite rewarding when your plants don't die, but actually start producing.

I got the Cunning Plan Dept a little strawberry plant a few weeks ago and we've both been somewhat fascinated by the progress of the inaugural strawberry. Every morning I walk out the front door and check the strawberry. Every afternoon I come home from work and check the strawberry. It makes me smile. As the fabulous Ms Belle suggested, I should actually take some photos. Here is today's progress:It's a decent size and certainly larger than the piddly little things I remember trying to grow as a child. Unfortunately this is the only strawberry on the plant so far, though there have been flowers so I assume we'll get more strawberries. We have a second plant now as well, which looks to be getting lots of new growth. Might have to get more plants if the vegie patch comes to fruition.