Rosebee's garden journal

[rosebee]

At the place we have now we have a lot more space for a garden than our flat in London, but first we got some trees cut down to make some space - and we have been moving some branches today to get the sloping garden ready to make terraces! The trees had to go as they were blocking light and warmth from the north side of the house.
I have been growing a lot of stuff on our balcony - tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, rocket, corn salad, chicory, broccoli, onions, chives, lettuces, lavender and soapwort. We have harvested spinach already, lettuce, chives and rocket. Two weeks ago we ate the first zucchini! I was so excited as I hadn't even noticed it growing on the plant until it was about 10cm long.
Today I sowed some more seeds - broccoli, onion, butternut squash, beans, spring onion - and in the small patch of dirt alongside the north of the house I sowed peas and buckwheat - I have no idea if these are good companions, so we shall see!
Zucchini plant with tomatoes above and cucumber to the left.

Rosebee

[braided-rug]

Soapwort is just lovely isn't it?

How great growing rocket/aragula, I haven't tried that.

[rosebee]

Oh dear - I haven't done very well on the updates of my garden have I?!
We harvested some of the vegetables mentioned before but are still waiting for brocolli and onions! I had cherry tomatoes growing even into June (the coldest month here). The chives got eaten by millions of little mite/aphid things so we had to throw it away, but we did use a bit of it before they got at it.
OH! Peas and buckwheat are not good companions - buckwheat takes a lot of nutrients from the soil that other plants need. Buckwheat is good for planting in soil which needs to be broken up - it is a good soil loosener! And of course the bees love the flowers.
This spring I am sowing several different types of vegetables as well as growing berries and herbs. I have recently had a slug problem which was treated with salt and eggshells and by removing them and throwing them far away! It is also useful to put pieces of bark around plants as the slugs don't like travelling over them.
Yesterday I made a raised bed - just a small one. I am going to transplant a few carrot and onion seedlings and am working out what else I could put in there - need to consult a companion planting guide. I'm going to need a few more raised beds - figuring out where to put them on a steep slope is tricky!
I have saved a few seeds from last summer - tomato, lettuce and rocket, these are some of the easiest seeds to save.

[braided-rug]

Hi rosebee. That is interesting about the bark as well. We use bark a lot but it is slightly rotted I think usually.

We have since relocated our soapwort, or some of it to the new house.

Your buckwheat etc. sounds very interesting.

[rosebee]

I planted carrots, onions, corn salad and tomatoes in the raised bed. Have covered it with a little raised-up polyfleece sheet as we are still getting cold nights! Have also planted potatoes and sweetcorn. I received a few packets of seeds from Koanga Gardens, which are "preservation packs" so I have to try and grow them and save some of the seeds and send the seeds back! Have planted 4 corn seeds called "Bloody Butcher" - sounds wonderful! Two of the seeds are starting to shoot up. I am not having much success with any bean seeds I plant....

[braided-rug]

That is a shame about your beans, I love to see beans come up.

It is hard with cold nights, it is something we will have to learn to deal with when we start growing vegetables.

[rosebee]

Here are some pics of the raised bed
- first is the view from our lounge window:



Here it is when it was just planted with onion/tomato/carrots/corn salad:




And this is it now!

In this one you can see how the carrots and corn salad have grown - the tomatoes are interplanted with the corn salad at the top of the picture.

[braided-rug]

The corn salad does look a little like corn doesn't it?

[rosebee]

That might be the onions you're looking at? Corn salad looks like little lettuce leaves - sort of! Hard to describe, and difficult to see them in the photo.
I have now planted out 14 red corn plants, 6 cucumbers, several crook-neck squashes, a few tomato varieties, and a few bean plants. I have several other plants (peas, more tomatoes, more corn, watermelon, butternut squash, and eggplants) to plant out in the coming weeks!
Recently harvested early potatoes (delicious!), a few servings of peas, and a few bowls of strawberries - yum! My herbs are doing well now, they were in pots and started to look very sad (brown leaves), so I planted them out in the garden and they have bounced back happily!

[braided-rug]

Yes, I was going to have a closer look, but ran out of time to work it out.

It is great that you had potatoes around Christmas time. I know it was a goal in my family when I was little.

[rosebee]

The tomatoes are just ripening on one of the plants now - it's called "Reisentraube" and has roundish tomatoes slightly bigger than a cherry tomato. I now have 10 tomatoe plants outside and still some smaller ones in the mini-greenhouse. Some of the ones in the greenhouse are from seeds I saved from last season. I am not sure what the tomatoes will be like as the seeds were all from the same one tomato!

We will be going away for 2 weeks, leaving the garden in the care of my mum, who will visit every few days to water and check on everything. I expect she may be harvesting some strawberries and tomatoes while we're away! (otherwise they will be too over-ripe when we get back!)

[rosebee]

oh! and we now have a few bean plants growing nicely! Thanks to the warm weather that started in December.

[rosebee]

While I was away on holiday I asked my mum to go and water my garden if it didn't rain for a few days. She watered it twice during the 2 weeks and it only rained once at the start! So, several plants have suffered, particularly sweetcorn and some tomatoes. The zucchinis don't look too happy, and a little miniature rose is completely dead....! The plants couldn't cope with the very little watering they got, and it was quite hot while we were away. To top it off, my mum dug in some carrots that I had just planted (called "purple dragon") as she didn't see the marker I had placed next to them!!!
Well, I won't be asking her to look after my garden next time! I learnt from a colleague that you can place wine bottles filled with water upside down in the soil near your plants and they will slowly seep into the soil, but that is probably only suitable if you will be away for 3-4 days.
Has anyone else got some ideas for watering the garden while you're away?

[braided-rug]

I am sorry to hear that rosebee.

Although I thought I'd never see the day, I absolutely love our automatic watering system. It is just a hand sized controller, one we have in the switchboard because there is a powerpoint now in there, one in the laundry, we have two runs, though I think they are two station units. The price varies at Bunnings here, they are around $100. We have sprays that are the new type, nothing seems to be overwatered. You can get bulk hose as well.