This last week I have been busy with my new patch, which I’m calling the Mid-levels. It’s halfway down the hill towards the dam, and the site of my new veggie garden, watered from the dam with the solar pump.
Read MoreCategory: Vegetables
Compost – dam, slashing and chickens.
The soil in my vegetable beds could do with a lot more organic matter, so I’ve been on a compost mission in preparation for the next warm season planting. I had dug in some alpaca manure (very like sheep manure) for my beets, tomatoes and tomatillos, but wanted something more like a soil conditioner for the next bed. Another task was clearing some of the dam. It is very overgrown, and in order to launch our little boat to get out and fix the pump I first had to clear a…
Read MoreThree sisters
Now that I have space and chickens, I thought I might try growing the traditional North American trio of maize, beans and squash. A handy website Renee’s Garden outlines a planting scheme for a ten foot square patch, so I doubled that to 6 m x 3 m rectangle. The bed is up by the chicken coop, on a bit of a slope and well drained, so rather than using mounds I have made level patches with some cut and fill. The three sisters legend says that maize, beans and…
Read MoreLast of the winter lettuce.
My first sowing of lettuce grew to be a rewarding first crop. From a couple of June sowings and a slow start, they did well through the dry, cool weather and provided more salad than we could use. I got three types for Winter sowing; Australian Yellow, Lollo Rosso, and Marvel of Four Seasons, all from Eden Seeds. The idea was to get a variety of shape and colour to mix in a salad, and it worked well, although I reckon you could mix any 3 different types from the catalogue and…
Read MoreGrowing carrots; not the easiest vegetable
Maybe carrots are a veg that some people grow easily, but I’m having trouble with them. At least the few that I have pulled have been nice ones, but it would be nice to have more. The local ones at the community market tend to be gnarled, with as many arms and legs as a ginseng root, so I was expecting something similar. These are the ‘All seasons’ cultivar, which, according to my seed merchant is the most common commercial variety in the region. I also planted ‘Little finger’, which I…
Read MoreHow do you know your daikon is ready?
With carrots you feel round the collar, same for beetroot and turnips, but daikon turn out to be easier to tell when they’re ready; they stand up out of the ground. I had no experience with them, and harvested some small ones a while back, but these, planted quite densely on a small terrace, left no doubt when I pulled the leaves back. It was good timing, as I have plenty of wom bok (chinese cabbage) to pick, although it isn’t in classic heads, so I included most of the…
Read MoreNative bees.
Spring came right on time this year, today was beautifully warm and the insects were out in force. I will have to look up what some are, including the biggest ladybirds I have ever seen. But it was nice to see these old friends, native bees (Tetragonula carbonara, I think). We used to get them in Sydney, although it is a marginal climate for them there, but here they were swarming around some Bok Choi and Pak Choi that have gone to flower. There are plenty of european honey bees…
Read MoreSalad stars: Mibuna
Mibuna has been a great success over winter. A small 40 x 40 cm patch sown in late May has grown to a dense cover and provided as much leaves as I care to pick. And they are delicious. They go well in salads or can take a little cooking. I find the flavour and texture are a good contrast to lettuce in a mixed salad, where it is nice to have leaves from the lettuce, cabbage (the mibuna), endive and chicory families. In the picture here they are livened…
Read MoreFrisee, or moss curled endive.
Moss curled endive was a treat vegetable when we were living in an apartment. I didn’t often see ones that looked appealing to buy, and they can be tough and bitter. In Sydney they tend to be sold with the outer leaves pulled back and tied together, so they look a bit odd and inside-out. These ones from the garden have been quiet achievers. I sowed them back at the end of May and they sat in their half-row, not doing much but surviving the dry weather well. As with most…
Read MoreMaking kimchi from thinnings.
Yesterday I was out checking the veggie plot and thought I should thin the beetroot. Beets come as compound seeds, and so they can germinate in bunches, and because they have been fairly slow to get going I didn’t have the heart to thin them when I should have. Now I’ve got big plants squashed together. It’s not survival of the fittest among beets in the garden, so it was well time to pull the smaller ones to make room for the big’uns. Then I thought I should do the…
Read More