A change of scene

Sometimes things happen.

Sometime it could happen that a confused husband was trying to create a gmail account, and in doing so killed mine. Well not quite killed it, in fact took it over. Princess Scarecrow became Hubby do good (from my point of view, not so good). I'm not particularly tech savvy, I couldn't get it back. The only way I can now write here on my own blog I've loved for almost 5 years is to get him to sign me in. Not convenient considering the only time I normally blog is when I'm awake very late at night or in the dark hours of the morning. Frustration and resignation has driven me to start a new blog thelittleblueshacksgarden.blogspot.com.au. It'll take me a while to get it going but I have renewed determination to go with the new blog. Please come visit me there.
I won't abandon this one completely, it's been like a personal creation, one I'm too attached to to let go of completely.
Hope to see you soon

Garden plans coming to fruition

I was just reading a post on http://wifemothergardener.blogspot.com.au/ about a hedge they've just put in place and I was thinking just how important your long term plans for a garden are. It's the long term plans that help shape what your garden is to become and give your garden it's structure. When we started our garden journey we knew very little about gardening, we watched, fascinated as grass seeds turned into lawn in just six weeks and thought, "wow, let's try a garden". There was no real planing involved, we just bought plants and put them in a sat back and watched. Needless to say, our inexperience led to a lot of frustration and failures, but it was a great learning curve.
Luckily along the way we have made some good long term decisions. Our fences took a lot of our time and money to put in place, but have protected our garden and chickens from neighbourhood dogs. Our wicking beds were a well thought out and planned project to slowly replace vegetable gardens on the ground that baked dry in summer and washed away with the rain.

Our first wicking gardening bed, showing the initial wicking layer, the hedge growing behind it and the fence. All took a long time to put in place but well worthwhile

Our chicken coop, designed to fit our wicking beds and integrate our gardening system has made light work of turning over and replenishing those same beds. Our first hedge along the roadside was planted to hide the untidiness of the original garden beds, but also offers protection from the coastal winds and helps to create a micro climate the plants in the wicking beds thrive on.

My niece retrieving eggs from the chicken coop situated on the first wicking bed we built 

Our next hedge is on the house side and will help enclose the vegetable gardens, and give us a prettier view from our newly built pergola. The pergola was a long yearned for structure,marked out countless times with stakes and bits of timber, grinding through the think tank. It now gives us the perfect spot to entertain friends and family, and grow a much wanted grape vine, which will give us shade in the heat of summer and let the warming light in during winter.

The pergola under final construction, surrounded by four mini wicking beds which now hold grape vines. You can see my potting area over the back, not the most attractive thing to look at, so new plan now in place

My potting area eventuated from my desire to have a place where everything I need is in one spot, now sheltered behind our next great plan, a screen with our first flower garden situated in front. And so the planning goes on...

My parents and niece making the most of our new pergola area. Well worth the wait!

What are your long term gardening plans you're working towards or what plans have you already seen come to fruition?

My July to do list

Welcome to the first day of July! (Well it was the first day, but then I got busy doing other things!!!)

I've been sitting down thinking about everything that needs looking at in the garden and thought I'd share my to do list, maybe it will inspire you too.

* Asparagus need attention. At this time of year a lot of the fronds on the asparagus have died down. Now is the time to chop them all back and re pot or feed them for the coming season. I discovered last year that they respond well to a good layer of new composted and composted manure. I also build up the soil level over them as it tends to drop through the year and they grow thicker growing up through more soil.
*The bananas are looking a little untidy, the wind is up and the dead leaves are blowing the trees around. It's time to prune off the dead leaves and have a look if there are any excess suckers coming up that need removing. Ideally I try to keep just one leader in the group and two followers, any additional take to much energy from them. I've also got a bunch of bananas on one cluster. Removing the flower once the bunch is established also helps conserve energy and prevents visiting bats attracted by the flower nectar. I normally hesitate to do this as I love watching the birds that come daily after the nectar as well, but there's a new flower about to open so the old one can go.

Banana flower needing removing to allow bananas to put their energy into the bunch.

Spring bulbs I'm hoping to get planted early this month.

*I'm a bit late for spring bulbs, but I haven't yet missed my opportunity. We'll be putting them into the small wicking beds around our new pergola for a bit of colour.
*The jerusalem artichokes have had their flowers die down a while ago now and have been awaiting me digging them up for eating. This is my first time trying these and I'm excited to see how they've gone. I'll eat some of the tubers and keep some for replanting which can happen now.
*The ginger plants have died down last month, and that's the sign that they are ready to harvest. They can be left in the ground for a while, but they get 'hotter' in flavour the longer they are in, and come spring they will shoot again. As I'm not a fan of really spicy, I tend to dig them up sometime in July. Again, some for me and some for replanting.
*The turmeric is beginning to die down now as well. Related to the ginger family, I'm going to treat them in the same way. Harvest this month and keep some for replanting.
 There's probably a whole heap more that will get attention this month, but I figure that's a good starting list.
What's on your to do list this month?

Harvesting now

It's been a busy time for me since my last post and a busy time in the garden too, so time for a quick update.

We've been continuing to harvest eggplants, the four eggplant seedlings I put in last year have been incredibly prolific and are still producing an abundant amount. Our tomatoes ( I think they were called something like Marmande?) bigger than our usual cherry tomatoes have started to produce but we've lost heaps to big green caterpillars that seem to find them irresistable. In an effort to help minimise the loss I ordered a harvest protection kit from Green Harvest. What a great kit! (but more about that later). Our chillies have been really productive and in general things are doing well.

The cucumbers came to a swift caterpillar eaten end and we're removed in defeat!

Eggplants (Aubergines) still going strong, abundant chillies and tomatoes

A few bits grabbed for a quick dinner. Still harvesting leeks, kale, asian greens, basil and heads forming on my first successful broccoli.

Winter vegetables like broccoli are just coming into their own and the garden is planted up with lots of kale and some asian greens as well. The peas are now plentiful as well, but unfortunately they even didn't make it into a photo, let alone the kitchen.

What's doing well in your garden right now?

Trial mini wicking bed

Our large wicking beds have been such a success for us, but are costly and time consuming to make. With the recent complete failure of my pumpkin seeds planted into a normal garden bed, to turn into anything more than weedy, bug infested miniaturised versions of what they should have been due to what I believe is just a lack of water I decided to try to produce a quick, just for pumpkins that will sprawl all over the ground, mini wicking bed. For those not yet familiar with wicking beds they are just a garden bed that has a reservoir or catchment area under them that enables them to hold water. This water naturally wicks its way upwards through the soil providing a ready supply of water to plant roots.
I have been inspired recently by the blue shell shaped plastic sand pits/swimming pools that you can buy from Bunnings. A neighbour had been using one as a makeshift pond for some ducks and ducklings that had made their way into her backyard. With an approximate diameter of about 3 foot or 90cm and at only $12.50 they seemed a good size and value for a purpose made wicking bed.
With my large wicking beds we needed to find a way to waterproof the bases to hold water and then needed a bed of sand to protect the plastic sheeting used. The shell being hard plastic meant these steps weren't needed. As our yard is on quite a pronounced two way slant and I wanted the pumpkins to base their roots here and know the vines will spread out across the yard I dug a hole to partially submerge the shell and to make sure it sat perfectly flat using a spirit level.

Shell showing spirit level, coiled socked Ag pipe and stones to fill gaps.

From there I wanted to trial using an alternative to the rock water holding sections we'd used in the large beds. The rocks were back breaking work to shovel into the large beds and because of their rough edges it meant the necessity to once again protect the plastic linings in the originals with more sand, again more shovelling  and the use of heaps of geotex fabric (fabric used in ground work which allows water to pass through but not soil or sand) to keep the water holding area between the rocks free of sand and dirt to allow it to hold as much water as possible. Our alternative was socked Ag pipe left over from a drainage system my parents had put in. Ag pipe is used in drainage systems, it's just black piping with slots cut in it to allow water to drain out. The "socking" on the pipe we used means that dirt doesn't get into it. Thus allowing us a water holding pocket without needing to use geotex to keep the sand and dirt out. We wound this into a tight coil using some wire to keep it held together, then threw a couple of rocks in to the holes around the edges to ensure as much water holding capacity as possible. An outlet pipe is added at this time to allow any excess water to be drain away and to prevent the whole shell from just filling up with rain or over watering and the plants drowning. I recommend using a small piece of weed mat wrapped around the end of the pipe on the inside, once again just to stop the loss of any dirt as the water flows out. We used some left over grey water pipe as the fill tube to take water down to the larger pipe. This isn't strictly necessary as you could just water the soil and it will drain down itself but using the pipe puts the clean water right where it needs to be. This was then topped with some left over weed mat to minimise the above layers getting down into the water collection area (not as good as using geotex but we had none on hand, and it's fairly expensive and best bought in large rolls which we aren't needing just yet). This is then topped with some sand for it's great wicking properties and then soil added.

Feeder pipe to the top left and outflow pipe to the bottom right. Shell filled and ready to go.

As pumpkins are heavy feeders we used part of the sandy loamy soil we'd dug out to bury the shell, but mostly the larger part a rich dark compost and part composted cow manure hence the very dark soil in the image above.
For the first couple of weeks until the seedlings came up each time the chooks were out we used a matching shell lid to keep them from digging, but relented and put a temporary wire fence around it as the chooks were way too interested in that dark soil.
In went a few Marina Di Choggia pumkin seeds from Green Harvest (lovely warty looking pumpkins) and in a few weeks we can safely say all seems to be going well. In fact it seemed to hold water so well I couldn't resist throwing in a couple of lettuce seedlings to take up a bit of space while the pumkins got underway.

Little garden growing well. You can see from the grass around it just how dry it's been here.

The final verdict, I'm really pleased. It holds a tremendous amount of water due to the large space provided by the Ag pipe (in fact when I fill it after 5 very hot days in will take approximately 30 litres of water before the overflow kicks in). It was very easy to do and the cost was minimal courtesy of some leftover grey water pipe and Ag pipe from previous jobs. The Ag pipe works so well and holds so much more water for the volume that I think we will use it in the next large wicking bed instead of the large quantities of rocks we normally use.If you're having trouble with dry garden beds I'd really suggest giving this easy wicking bed a go.

In my garden today

Today in the garden I was pleased to see that my chilli bush, not the small birdseye chillies, but slightly larger less hot, chilli bush was flowering again and so too were my capsicum plants I'd started from seed from Green Harvest. The chilli bush in wicking bed number 4, the same bed as the capsicums has already got some chillies forming on it.

A rather blurry picture of the chilli flowers

 Also in flower is my smaller mandarin, which hasn't yet fruited. The other older one has fruit on it at the moment and had fruit last year as well, not much but enough that we turned it into jam.

The mandarin flowering.

Also in flower today was one of the turmeric plants. This plant and a few others has been grown from tubers bought last year from a farmers market. I couldn't believe my luck at the time. I'd paid nearly $20 for a turmeric plant from the nursery a couple of months before, and for $3 from the market I got a small bag full of sad looking tubers. Amazingly enough most of them came up, even some that I'd accidentally dropped in the grass managed to survive and grow. This one was just tossed in a half empty pot with an almost dead ginger plant, and now with a little water and love, I have a flowering plant.

Turmeric flower.

And lastly still flowering well and still producing well, our eggplants in bed number two. After we'd picked what I thought would be the last of the eggplants (aubergines for the non Australian), I cut back any scrappy dead looking leaves, gave the plants a tidy up and then top dressed their soil with more compost. And then they started flowering again, and producing more eggplants for us to gobble,

Eggplant flowering after being cut back and it's soil redressed with a good amount of compost.

Eggplant almost ready for harvest.

And last but not least we also picked some fruit from our lemonade tree. The yellow looked fabulous in the bowl with the purple eggplants. Now we just have to make plans for eating it.

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New additions

We've welcomed a new addition to the garden, or more precisely the footpath.

We planted out gardens on the footpath going back a while now in an effort to hide the bottom of an unsightly fence. Our fence due to the slope of the land had gaps underneath the panels on the bottom right side, gaps big enough a chook could fit under, or a smallish dog, so we put scraps of building material under them to stop these gaps being used as a unwanted shortcut by either. This does the job, but doesn't look the best from the outside footpath, so a garden was built along the fence line to eventually, once the plants grow, hide it. This garden incorporates mostly things which I could get for free or for very little at the time, including some pineapples (I love the way these have quite an architectural look about them when they get bigger) and different types of grasses.

At the same time, a garden bed was established around some largish eucalypts and a she-oak growing on the footpath which I wanted to keep but were killing off the grass around their bases and looking very untidy. At the time our neighbours were selling their home and we wanted it to look as nice as possible for their auction day. It seemed fate when we were able to get a pile of free woodchip bark from a friend of a friends felled tree and met with our desire at the time to get a little bit of a native garden going to help attract small native birds to our garden. So with all the right ingredients in place at once our first little native garden got started.

Our little native garden. The plants don't look much yet but in time they'll grow.

However I digress...With our regularly now going out to check on how these plants are going and do some watering, parts of the lawn out there are starting to look really inviting. However our brutal summer sun has really dried out the high side which has no shade throughout the day. We'd been thinking about planting out some other natives to created a bit of a shade area here (and I also have been secretly plotting for hubby to build a bench seat out here for passersby to sit, rest, enjoy the view through the trees to the water and/or have a chat). However the decision came about just through chatting as we do about what other plants we'd like to have and where we might fit them in our ever decreasing backyard space.

Olives.

We've always both wanted olive trees, but as we didn't know much about them and hadn't yet in our heads been able to envision the perfect spot, we'd held off. Now I've never been shy about putting plants on the footpath, (there was a couple of summers ago when my entire footpath to the roadway was covered in sprawling pumpkin vines), but I didn't want to put plants out here where all my love and devotion resulted in fruits that would end up being picked prematurely by passersby. (Yes, we did loose some pumpkins). We figured olives would only be inviting to those that really know what to do to make them edible, and we wouldn't mind so much in sharing under those circumstances.

Now I had been looking around at olive trees at the nursery and at Bunnings, and had done some limited research on the type of trees I wanted. The plan was to go with Manzilla's originally, but googling to find less expensive options brought the Helena Olive to our attention (not to be confused with the St Helena Olive which is now extinct).

This is the blurb from inside the swing card attached to these olive trees: " St Helena Island is a heritage National Park off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. It was a high security prison from 1867 to the 1920's and then a prison farm until its closure in 1932.
The original olive tree was planted in the late 1800's after being brought to the island from Europe by a visiting magistrate. Your are purchasing a 3rd generation heritage tree which has a history of producing exceptional fruit and award winning olive oil."

Apparently the prison was to be self sufficient and produced not only all their own food, but had an olive grove which sold award winning olive oil back to Italy.

Once again it just seemed meant to be. Here was a type of olive tree that had been proven on an island off of Brisbane. Perfect, a sun loving, drought tolerant, and island suitable tree. And just like that, two new trees have found a home with us.

From other researching I've done, it would seem we've got a long wait ahead of us before seeing our first olives, about seven years, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

One of our new Helena Olives.