Merry Xmas

Merry Christmas to everybody.

Its Christmas Eve and in keeping with tradition our Southern hemisphere summer has come to the party with constant rain. It saves me getting out in the garden with a watering can but also stops me doing anything else. The tomatoes are appreciating it though and so are the cucumbers, both of which are swelling nicely. I have heaps of green stawberries on the plants but none ready for dessert tomorrow. I got enough lettuce for twelve people to have for tea last night. That wasn't all we had but I'm sure everybody thought it was the best bit! I have had some peas ready this week but they can't seem to make it to the pot, I just have to munch them straight off the bush, out of the pod and into my mouth. YUM! I planted some Borlotti beans two weeks ago and now have the beginnings of a bean hedge but just 10cm high. I dug a small new bed for them about 1.30m long and about 30cm wide (that's four foot by one foot in old money). It's a bit shaded so I don't expect the growth will be that rapid but they look very healthy so far.



With the wet and warm conditions lately I have been in constant battle with the slugs and snails. The coffee and pine needles seem to have stopped being efficient so I am back to beer traps and nightly patrols with the torch. Some of the little buggers still get through though. I'm still holding off on the derris dust but I must admit that the bottle left over from last year (before I gardened organically) is starting to look tempting. Surprisingly, since the slugs destroyed my seedling courgette the ones I have grown from seed have escaped the carnage so far.



My kettle full of baby carrots is just about ready so I think I will harvest in the morning to use raw with dips at the family xmas lunch. Just trim wash and crunch. The beetroot that I allowed to seed is huge and has heaps of green seen on it but I need to wait until it has dried out a bit. Fat chance with this rain. Ditto the lettuce. My capsicum and chilli are still minute but a friend has told me that they will take off all at once. Hope so.
Once again Happy holidays to you and yours. Paul

Its been a while...

...since I wrote in the blog. Things are going well. This morning I have harvested the first pot of baby carrots. They are sweet and crunchy.YUM! The broccoli is starting to head up, at least the ones I haven't sprayed with Nature's Curator have, the sprayed ones look OK but no sign of any budding yet. The tomatoes have little marble sized fruit on them and the strawberries are fruiting in plenty again but nothing red at the moment. Still going strong with the same lettuce plants but I have allowed two to go to seed rather than cutting their leaves. Hopefully I will get good crops from these as well.I have also let one beetroot go to seed. Potatoes are high but the tubers are small at the moment so I'll let them go further. Spinach is up and getting ready to be harvested but the silver beet is still looking pretty sorry for itself. I don't understand how "the easiest plant to grow" as so many people tell me, just won't take off. Cucumbers have tiny fruit on them - I wish I could remember which ones were the long ones and which for pickling. I'll have to wait I suppose. The courgette in the barbecue is thriving and beginning to flower as is the coriander there. The wicker basket has plenty of spring onions but everything else looks pretty small. It's a constant battle with the Chinese cabbage to stop it going off in a long stem, I pinch it out almost every day.

In the garden again

Every thing looks pretty good this week. I harvested one lot of radish which had grown too fast and split and one lot which were marble size and delicious. I think the trick with the next lot will be to try and harvest somewhere in the middle. I had a pea plant which gave up the ghost immediatley after I picked the pods - within hours it looked dead so into the compost heap it went. Tomatoes are all flowering and the ones in deeper soil are much healthier looking. Planted out some capsicum seedlings which were looking very small but have doubled with a bit more room. Courgettes are coming on and the cucumber plants are in flower and racing up the strings. I gave up on the square foot carrots, recomposted and planted chinese cabbage in that square. The chilli plants are still a bit small but look healthy, and the potatoes are in rampant bloom. Not so much sun this week so I only have green strawberries at the moment.
I seem to have finally got the hang of the compost heap and the last lot that I took out was looking almost perfect. I'm still amazed at how hot it gets inside a heap, especially when I throw the grass cuttings in. While turning over the compost heap I came across a rubber plant that my wife hated and threw out last year when in went straggly. It has developed a very large root ball and had two green leaves, it was at the back of the heap so was not completely covered but still it was pretty much in constant shade. Incredible that it was still alive. I'm going to put it back into a pot and see if I can sneak it into the house. Such determination needs recognising.

Update on Nature's Curator

Ten days into my trial of Nature's Curator and mixed results so far. The tomato plants are actually a couple of cm smaller than the unsprayed ones so far. However the black krim is looking much healthier and is flowering now. For the broccoli its the same, both plants are smaller than the unsprayed one but the one that had been slug eaten has developed some new leaves and is looking well. So the spray is living up to its claim to improve the health but not doing it in terms of bigger size.
Baby beetroot for tea last night was delicious with burgers. The mesclun is growing so fast I am having trouble eating it all. The cut and come again is working great. I just take some scissors out and hack away. Within a few days its like I haven't even been there. I really should have planted more than 6 strawberry plants as I am getting two or three ripe strawberries a day but not enough to feed the family. Especially when the kids keep nipping out to the deck to help themselves. I have to say though, that they are the sweetest strawberries I have had for a long time. I had a look in a couple of garden centres this week but I think I must have missed the boat as none of them have any more strawberry plants. Oh well, there's always next year.
My pot of one pea plant has given me some lovely pods, and I have munched away on the raw peas. However I'll have to wait for the other plants, in the square foot garden, to come in before there's enough for a proper feed.
Potatoes are flowering- so I might get a crop for Christmas. Capsicum in small pots looks healthy and should be ready to go into the beetroot box as that finishes. Chilli is still small and I think I may have had some pumpkin seed in my wormcast as that seems to be whats coming up in the barby. Surprise!

What's happening in the boxes?

The last three days of warm weather and showers has made a real difference in the gardens. My rubbish bin full of potatoes has gone mad with the plants at least 40 cm above the top of the bin now. I hope they flower soon or I may have to tie them up to passing planes. The cucumber plants have doubled in size but no sign of budding yet. I have enough lettuce and mesclun to feed an army this week. Still not much hope of getting the kids eating it though. The barbecue and wicker basket are full of first leaves - always a difficult thing for me to realise that I have to hold off weeding as I will probably pull out the things I want. The earth gems look very lush and the tomatoes are getting lovely thick stems and a few buds. The only difference I have noticed with the Nature's Curator plants so far is that one of the tomato plants budded a few days before the others but other than that there is no change. In fact the unsprayed broccoli looks a bit bigger than the sprayed one although the slug battered one is picking up. But early days yet.
I have just thinned my pot of oregano, and I think there will be baby beetroot for tea this week. The garlic and onions keep plugging away.
In the square foot garden I have sprouting spinach, quite large calendula, peas that need staking today, chilli that is looking well (if much smaller than everybody else's I know), lush sage and a rapidly thickening tomato. On the down side there is still no sign of the silverbeet, about half of the carrot seeds did not germinate and I have a feeling that some of that 'grass' I pulled out of the spring onions may not have been grass at all. And no green bits in the courgette square.
A friend saw my motley collection of pots, buckets, kettle, recycling bin (shush don't tell the council they gave me two) nail boxes and home made planters and came up with a really good idea. She went to the Warehouse and bought some nice looking square buckets for less than $2 each. She has filled these with compost and put in seedlings of various herbs and veg from her thinnings. These will become her Christmas presents to her family. Very green and encouraging I thought.

Nature's Curator

I was approached last week by a company called Nature's Curator. Having read some of this blog they wanted me to test out their product. Yesterday, I received a small bottle of this liquid which is diluted and sprayed onto your plants. It only takes 10ml to mix with a litre and they state that it is completely organic. This stuff is not a fertilizer nor a pesticide but is supposed to stimulate both growth and resistance. They have asked me to perform a six week trial complete with photos. As well as giving them the information that they need I will also be logging results here. Yesterday I sprayed two tomato plants (one the Black Krim with which I have so many problems and the other a moneymaker which is the same size now as the others in my deck planter; and two broccoli plants, one the same size as the other in my square foot garden and the second a little larger but much abused by slugs). No change this morning - but I really didn't expect results quite so quickly, hehe!
I am interested to see if this product will work as claimed and you can be sure that you will get an honest review here. If anybody has other products that they would like to have reviewed I am happy to do so but with the warning that I will be completely honest and I refuse to endorse anything that does not live up to expectations. Bear in mind too that this blog is about organic gardening so I don't want to try any chemical solutions.

Tie up tip

When I got home from work yesterday not only was my garden freshly watered from all the rain but it was looking a bit windswept. Luckily nothing had been broken but it was a reminder about tying up the taller plants. I have large flax plants in the front yard so I cut off a couple of leaves, split them lengthwise and used them to tie my tomato plants to their stakes. I also used the vertical method from the square foot gardening book. For my cucumbers I have an inverted u-shaped frame and from this I have tied strips of flax to the bottom of the plants and then twisted the flax around the stems. I'll let you know how things are going.
My heirloom Black Krim tomato was looking very sorry for itself last week and I was on the verge of pulling it out and composting it. The leaves were yellowing and curling up and the veins had become very prominent. I decided to give it a last shot and mounded the base with seaweed. This didn't seem to have much effect so as the last resort I mulched it with coffee grounds. The lower leaves died and I removed these and threw them in the rubbish but the upper leaves are looking very healthy now.