Gardening

[RubY]

Hi all, I would like to know who else is into gardening or more to the point vegetable gardening. For me it all started when my boyfriend had this awesome idea that we should grow Tomatoes and a Lime tree. It was a great idea, we cleared away some lawn and any other spare patches of sand we could get our hands on.

Long story short I now have a veggie patch speed over the entire backyard. I use the term yard loosely as it is more a courtyard. So far I have got three varieties of Tomatoes growing, Dwarf Beans, Peas (Sugar Snap and Snow), Strawberries, Lettuces and heaps of other stuff growing.

Please share what you have got growing and how you found it all works. Im new to the whole veggie gardening thing so tips from other peoples trial and error would be great.

[R160]

subscribe to organic gardner, well worth it. we currently have a lemon, lime and mandarine tree down one side, and peach, apricot and nectarine down the otherside of the back yard. the stone fruit tree's are currently LOADED with immature fruit :-), they are only a few years old and they are booming. best fruit Ive ever tasted, garden beds were running wild with lemon grass, various parsley's (they are popping up all over the lawn), various heirloom tomato varieties, rocket, coriander, lettuce, chilli's, pumpkin, patatoes etc. we often let some go to seed for next years crop, and also just let some self seed via wind disperion, and have crops popping up everywhere :-).
Idealy rotate your crops around to prevent disease and rest a vege bed every 3 years ( so if possible have 2-4 beds going). get a compost pile going, we also cold compost, fill a bucket of kitchen scraps and bury it around various places in the garden beds, a few months later all sorts of things spring up, capsicums, onions, tomatoes etc.

get some rock dust and HEAPS of organic material/ compost into the soil and blend it in, especially if your on the sandy coastal plain. Charcol certainly helps with nutrient retention in the soil, and visit a farm supply shop like city farmers for some powdered bentonite (its used as a animal food supplement), bentonite is a expanding clay, turn it into the soil for better water holding capacity.

Check out the "Diggers" website, lots of heirloom vege varieties i bet you have never heard of that just annihilate the usual shop varieties for taste. give the "black russian" tomato variety a go, awesome!! plus planting green manures prior to seeding the proper crop heaps, green manure are nitrogen retaining crops, you plant them, let the grow a bit, then turn them into the soil for added nitrogen source plus they add organic matter.

I also use Gardeners Direct (google em) for awesome bulk compost home delivered, its pretty exxy but its black gold for garden beds. and mulch with lucerne hay, cheap and one bail goes a long way, end of summer just fork it back into the soil.

[cowasaki]

Loves her garden... I have a chat to all my vegies every morning they are mixed in amongst the fruit trees and normal garden plants. I have a brilliant veg patch that is a whole 10cm wide. Figured that I would do something with the space between the retaining wall and fence. Anything that grows on/up can be put in that wee space. You dont need a huge area to have lots of fresh home grown stuff. Have barrels full of herbs/spices - companion planting removes the need to toxify the world. Am a fan of compost and have megga worms everywhere as a result. Prob just as well we are on a smallish block or I would end up as my own market garden.. if there is a space its planted *L*

[shan]

Love it, bring me down to earth

[drsnow]

hehe ruby, didnt think u were a little green thumb too! I also got into veggie growing recently. Ive always wanted a veggie patch but my backyard is so sandy and the lawn is, well, very patchy and full of dandelions and winter grass.

It all started with some chilli plants in pots a couple of years ago, and i scattered some seeds over a little area near the side fence. Last year my friend gave me some baby spring onions and help planted them into the ground. He added cow manure into the sand, dug that in with lots of soil wetter as my 'lawn' is very very hygrophobic. Spring onions r still going.

Last winter i tried dwarf broccoli in some pots (failed) and snow peas (yumm yummm!!! even the snails love it). This spring i've just planted some tomatoes and cherry tomatoes seedlings, dwarf beans from seed and some corn from seed hoping they till grow well. Not too sure how big the corn will grow, will be interesting to see the result

Im thinking of also putting in some zucchini, and cucumber soon?

[RubY]

We have crappy sandy soil too. Beans and peas are good for poor soil because they fix Nitrogen from the air into the soil. Probably why the tomato plants have gone crazy. they are almost as wide as they are high. Got out there and pruned them today, hope to get some fruit instead of heaps of leaves. I have chillies and capsicums growing they are in sand pretty much. I might plant some beans in there when it cools down again.

Apparenty cucumber are really easy to grow like tomatoes. Have a look at companion planting. I planted most of the garden out pretty well in the way of companion plants. Hence why the tomatoes and beans have gone crazy.

[drsnow]

hmm im gonna get some herbs going too. growing basil from seed, got some rosemary and parsley too.

So tomatoes and beans go good together eh? Hehe i have tommys on the left, beans in the middle and corn on the right.

[redrocket]

I also use Gardeners Direct (google em) for awesome bulk compost home delivered, its pretty exxy but its black gold for garden beds. and mulch with lucerne hay, cheap and one bail goes a long way, end of summer just fork it back into the soil.

good advice Nathan!

Lucerne hay is good, but id recommend pea straw as the lucerne is mainly grown as animal feed. Plus the pea is the green manure and about $12 per bale. Quickgrow Garden Centre in Neerabup sell and deliver bulk manures

[chew]

Heard an older gardener once say that companion planting means plant marigolds with everything. They fix nitro to the soil, keep pests off the veges and control nematodes (root pests) in the soil.

We havent bought lettuce and carrots in ages and have seasonal fresh stuff like Peas, Broccoli and Tomatoes in a raised bed near the fence. I am having a crack at Potatoes via the old tyre method. We have one that is four tyres high already and another that is three high and I get to look at bike tyres in the garden. Thanks to Tyres for Bikes for the old tyres. Will post photos and let you know how it goes.

How to Use Old Tires to Raise Potatoes | eHow.com

Dad always had a vege garden and we spent a lot of time in the country when I was young so we always had a vege garden. The organic thing resparked my interest after a friends father got cancer and they went the organic vege route before it was fashionable in the late '70's, which gave him a good year before he finally gave up and moved on.

A lot of our veges are devoured raw by whoever can swipe them first, raw and straight off the bushes.

[Diesal]

We have about 20 sqm across three spots in the yard, loads of vegies, three mini fruit trees, a heap of potted veg and herbs and an aqauponics system...obsessed I spend most of my free time in the patches and can't get enough -its very therapeutic

I've done it for the past few years but was put off between the pests and a mad retriever. Its now all fenced in and I've read up on organic pest control. I missed spraying the fruit trees with a copper fungicide this year (due in winter iirc) but they seem to be doing okay so far and we have dozens and dozens of tiny lil nectarines growing. I'm not planting any broc, cauli or cabbage due to the amount of catapillars they attracted previously. Some other things I've tested:

Raising seedlings - I used a $30 Bunnings hot house to raise the seeds and they grew really quickly (Baileys' Potting Mix). Some struggled when transplanting, you really need to do this late afternoon/rainy days
Seasol- great fertiliser, builds roots, helps with pest control
Dipel for catapillars - spray underside of leaves. They are absolute bastards of things and will eat and shit over your precious garden unless you kill kill kill!
Haven't found the organic chilli and garlic spray to be all that efficient tbh
Powdery mildew (peas, beans, squash and melon families) - spray 10 to 30mls full cream fresh milk mixed with 90 - 70 mls water onto leaves every one to two weeks. This disease will give you a lot of grief if untreated
Use a good weed-free manure (not chook as its too potent) and dig it in before planting if you can
Plant within the season - Perth has a Mediterranean climate
Companion planting ftw
Check areas regularly and keep them tidy - dropped leaves etc encourage pests and also make it hard to spot issues
Plant heaps of marigold to deter pests and a few flowers to attract bees for pollination
Use CD's on string to deter birds from pecking
Don't over plant as this breeds disease and small returns
Things take awhile to grow too, apparently. I ended up double planting tomatos as I thought they were'nt growing in the grow house - I think we now have 35+ plants
Stagger your planting so that you don't end up with too much of one thing at a time i.e. a lettuce every month, pumpkin every two months...


Anybody got any tips for mice control? Lost about 30 cobs a few years ago to the nasty buggers. Will put traps down soon but I'm not sure how effective they'll be?

[Geezer]

Hi there,

Well, I am a casual vege and herb grower for quite a few years, dont ask.

Besides the usual tomatoes and various lettuce (both of which are good), try these as well , all of which I plant each year (although it is a bit late to plant now),

Leeks - I love these and in some ways they are my favourite. While my home grown ones are never the size of what you see in the shops, the smaller ones smell and taste delicous, they take a while to reach maturity.

Peas - they have a short season, the snails love them, but they also taste delicous straight off the plant. These are the only green thing my daughters really liked over their younger years.

Silverbeet - need a bit of water through summer to be honest. Again my home grown are not as big as the shop version, but tastier.

Dont forget herbs, grab some leaves when you are outside and just smell them..

Oregano - very successful , perenial, survive the summer with a small amount of water.They do spread out after a couple of years
Thyme - seems to survive pretty well, I think because it is a small leafed plant.
Sage - have grown for the last few years, they tend to get old and die after a year, but nice in the odd dish. a bit of water needed
Rosemary - for your lamb roasts, toughest plant you will find

Comfrey - Mine is in pots but they prefer ground, I swear by this for muscle and other strains, I first used this after buying some from Tinderbox in Balingup a number of years ago.
Look it up on the internet. You cannot buy Comfrey ointments anymore for various reasons, but a doctor friend of mine says comfrey is very effective.

artichoke - a little unusual, but is a spectacular looking plant. It can grow largish and needs to be cut down at the end of summer. Needs a bit of water too. They last a few years and produce the chokes after one year. I have three in larger plastic pots.

Now when I say a bit of water, I mean that a hand water for maybe 5-10 minutes every second day is fine.

Good luck

gzr

[speed3]

Our new place has a vegie patch of approximately 150 squate meters with a lemon, mandarin, olive and mango tree all around the 3-3.5m mark in height. The lemon is about 4m wide. I'm transplanting them all except the mango before chrissy as they're planted on top of each other and I'll use them as screening plants along the fence as well as opening up room for a new outdoor area. Might have to do up a thread on the backyard project including the pizza oven and bbq I'm building as well as what I'll be growing and where. Blank canvas at the moment apart from the trees as the only other thing growing is weeds.

[R160]

go the dwarf avacado's, I would mind a sapote tree too, but I'm running out of room dammit :-(. olive trees and going off though :-)

[busa_bloke]

If you go to your local library, you can borrow (free) the gardening Australia dvd/video of organic gardening or vegie gardening. Peter Cundell did several of them.

Also you can download current and past episodes of the abc gardening australia program (legally) from Gardening Australia - Video.

[DINGO71]

i am a horticulturalist by trade and not a big gardening fan as like the mechanic who has the worst car on the road i have the worst garden. but i can help you out seasol and power feed is your best friend for all gardening put on when ever you like all natural and the best stuff on the market also use sheep poo as this is really good also stay away from dynamic lifter and chook poo manures the reason for this is that it is high in alkaline and our gardens are all ready high in alkaline those products work great in the eastern states as their soils are acid clay base soils and it helps bring the ph up but over here it will just raise the oh and make it look great for a couple of weeks till the ph is high and everything goes yellow . the Tyre trick is great for potatoes . worm farms are great helps put worms in your garden gets rid of the scraps and you can use the water for worm wee fertilizer as well. a good snail trap is dig a couple of ice cream containers into the ground and fill with old beer works a treat
hope this helps you out

[RubY]

We already gave the beer traps ago, just got cabbage moths and caterpillars having ago at the green stuff. I use season and powered on the garden every few weeks. I have mulch down to help keep the soil nice and moist, seems to be working pretty well. Lime tree is pretty unimpressive at the moment but its still young and I know Citrus is really nutrient heavy so I'm keeping and eye on it at the moment.

[DINGO71]

another trick for the lemon trees and any citrus and this will sound disgusting but it works very well is if you have a male in the house or a party get all the boys to pee around the citrus trees this work like you will not believe

[RubY]

Do believe, Burt Munroe did it. Yeah cat normally pees in the garden he stays away from the lime tree though.

[cowasaki]

LOL my husband is loving your advice Lippy, he loves to garden pee.. and instead of me yelling to stop.. am now yelling PEE ON THE TREE DAMMIT okay why not limes?? am concerned as I have a dodgy lime that is producing yellowy leaves??

oh wait you said cat... is husband pee on lime tree acceptable.

Waits with baited breath, am going to have to re-direct said hubby to the lemon tree if I am leading him astray !

[RubY]

Can get boyfriend too as well. Cat is home with me more often.