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.

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.