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.

Measuring time in pumpkins

A photo of one of my very early baby pumpkins

Well it’s been way too long since my last blog, almost two months. I was wondering what on earth have I done with the time, where have I frittered it away too?

But I have been doing things, and my garden has kept growing. My pumpkins are now almost all picked. The ones from the footpath were the first to be harvested, but not at my doing!!!! People had begun helping themselves! The first couple to go were just roughly pulled off the vine, so I guess they were walking past and just couldn’t help themselves (they did look fabulous). I wouldn’t have noticed them disappearing except I put little pieces of broken tiles under each one to keep them off the damp ground (last year I lost quite a few to rot, not having known this little trick) and those naked little tiles bereft of their pumpkins stood out! The next ones to go however were very neatly “cut” off, so I imagine someone bought their secateurs with them on their walk, an act of premeditation…so it meant if I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labour, it was time for picking!



Using broken bits of tile keeps the pumpkins from rotting on damp ground

I don’t like to pick the pumpkins that early. Normally I like to leave them on the vine until it dies back to the stalk leading to the pumpkin and then pick them. I believe that way the pumpkin gets the very last goodness from the vine. So my others within the garden stayed on for quite a bit longer and I now only just have a few left still growing or waiting for them to drain the last energy from their vines. In total I’ve had more than twenty pumpkins ( I forgot to count them all before I started giving them away). They add a feel of autumness inside the little blue shack, with their lovely creamy orange tones. Strangely even though some of them looked like they would turn out as large green pumpkins, and made me wonder how it was possible to produce such a variety of shapes and colours, they all changed to similar colours in the end.

The first made deliciously creamy pumpkin soup, a favourite as we start to get colder. One of course went to my parents, as they are still waiting on theirs. One made a lovely gift for my Nana, with a cheeky red ribbon tied around it’s stem, along with a jar of homemade passionfruit curd. Some have been roasted, and the rest await their individual futures.


Just some of the pumpkins waiting for use

 Well I needed to add an update here, I'm thrilled to say that when we gave neighbours one of our pumpkins,
they've given us some mandarins and a very large gourd in return. Hubby has turned the mandarins into the
most divine jam, (he experimented with our very sour and almost inedible tangerines a week ago, and now perfected it to a whole new level with the mandarins instead) and he's made enough that tomorrow we'll drop the neighbours a jar as a thankyou for letting us access their tree. As for the gourd, I have no idea what to do with it???? So I'm open to suggestions, but for sure I'll keep some of the seeds out of it as it is spectacular to look at if nothing else.





Simply divine Mandarin Jam



This is on my mind...

Success... looks like this today!

It may not excite some of you, but if you've read some of my previous posts you would know this has been a much anticipated event! After hand pollinating at every opportunity I will have home grown pumpkins for my winter soups and roasts. It doesn't get better than that!
It was a puzzle for me at first that I wasn't having any luck with my pumpkins this year. I'd grown them from seeds given to me from a pumpkin bought last Halloween. At first I had begun to think that maybe they'd been bred to be infertile (or something suspicious like that), but it was just a lack of bee activity as my hand pollination has now proved.
And now I wait as they grow and mature, along with all the neighbours who have been watching the progression of my vines on the footpath. I guess it might need to be a communal soup day when it comes!

Taken over by Pumpkins

Last year I grew my first pumpkins. I'd tried before, but I think I always left it too late for them to be successful. Last year I learned that pumkins spread, a lot! They will also grow up things, not just along the ground as I'd envisaged before seeing how easily they'll scale a fence or wrap themselves tight around a lemon tree! My pumkins last year new no boundaries, so this year I've put them in a different garden away from too much other stuff, but they've still taken over.



Pumpkin spread, here it's escaped the garden and heading onto the outside footpath.



This years seed came from a pumkin my mum bought that I'd never seen before. She purchased it around Halloween, so it was probably a special type, not sure. I can say it was large, and not the typical Queensland Blue or Jap I'm used too, not even a butternut. So official pumpkin type unknown, but very round. I struck the seeds in punnets before planting them out, and even gave Mum some too as a thankyou for keeping the seeds for me. The resulting vine looks like it's on steroids!! The vines have giant leaves, and the baby pumpkins that form under the flowers are huge too. But to date, not one has taken. They have all just died and dropped off the vine. And it's not just something unique to me or my garden, Mum's haven't a single pumkin under way yet, and in past years I've been more than a little jealous of their pumkin successes.





Baby pumpkin dies and drops off.



Section of pumkin vine showing female flower  (characterised by the swell of the baby pumpkin below it) forming.



Female flower dies back and the baby pumpkin starts to grow in size below it.



I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Last year, I did learn that they have both male and female flowers, and it's from the base of the female flowers that the pumpkins develop.

 My vines have produced lots of male flowers,

Male flower, I noticed the stamen is quite different on the female flower but didn't have my camera with me at the time.





The male flower is usually on a longer narrower stem and doesn't have the bulge of the baby pumpkin directly under the flower.



especially at the beginning, and have only produced female flowers in the last few weeks. There's not been many bees around the flowers that I've seen so I'm wondering if mother nature needs a hand this year with the pollinating.

I wondered whether the giant leaves are hiding the flowers a little too much, preventing the bees from seeing them?

When I checked Mum's vines today it seemed as though the she had the same, but at least she had female flowers that were still open, so I used a feather and manually pollinated the female flowers with pollen from the male flowers. Hopefully that will give her some success. Now if only I can manage to catch my vines with the female flowers still open. If you have any other ideas what could be going wrong, please help, any advice is gratefully received.

In the meantime, I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope, as these are the only pumpkin seedlings I put in this year. If I don't have any success it will just mean I'm back to buying my pumpkins again.