When I'm BAD

A bad gardener that is :p.

So you already know that I can't seem to produce a decent eggplant, and my non fruiting banana plants are the bane of my existence. But what else can I not grow?

So usually I like to share my gardening successes with you, but hey, everyone loves a disaster, and here are some of mine.

In the photos above and below are some of the beans I got so excited about the other day. Yep, really not doing so well, all of them look somewhat like this.

A year ago this beautiful dwarf fig was my pride and joy, only knee high and three fat juicy figs produced. Yep... not doing so great now... this photo was taken a few weeks ago... it now has one leaf left.
Ah yes, and here is the pinnacle of my gardening genius. Looks great hey. Lovely developing melon, fine upstanding corn, and see down the bottom some cute little capsicum? Well after nurturing these for weeks, I have learnt that melon and corn, great friends... corn and capsicum, not mates at all. Hate each other.

It's going to be like refereeing fighting children.

Bad Zucchini

The flower has fallen off!

So many questions. Is this okay, is it going to die, is it too wet, too dry, too hot, too cold, or is this a normal stage in the scintillating development of the zucchini?

My first instinct was to pick and eat it... but then I'll never know if this is what happens or not. So in the interests of really properly understanding zucchini, I'm going to leave it on the plant and see what happens. Don't fret, I'll document every fascinating development as it happens.

And I thought I understood zucchini. Ha.

Found Them!

Oh finally... I had been looking for these since last Monday, it was driving me nutso! I looked everywhere, in the yard, in the garage, in the cars, in the house, in the toy boxes, and I could just not find them.

I honestly started thinking that someone had jumped the fence and stolen them, I had even started discussing this theory with my neighbour, when thankfully, they turned up. And I love these gloves, I really do. They are so comfortable to work with, they are of superb quality, and, they are red. But their loss must have blinded me to logic and reason, because if I honestly thought that someone might jump my fence, not touch anything else, because what they actually wanted was to steal my mucky, manky, grubby old gardening gloves, well I kind of think I'm heading for the looney bin.

Adapting to Your Situation - Lettuce

So in our backyard is an enormous poinciana tree. And I mean huge, New Farm Park poinciana huge, you can see it here. And that photo was taken after we'd lopped a whole heap of branches, in summer those outer branches touch the ground. Anyway, I love the tree, it means we can use the yard all summer because of the shade it provides, but it is also a bit of a pain because I can't really plant out the whole backyard like I'd love to.

So what I have to do is adapt. And something I can grow at the outer edges of the dappled canopy, is lettuce.

You know all those gardening books that tell you to plant your lettuce in full sun? Well when in Brisbane, don't. Lettuce is not a subtropical vegetable, and it is better suited to cooler climates. It just wilts under the blazing midday sun here, and while it might pick up again if you water it, the taste of the leaves is just awful, very bitter.
But that doesn't mean you can't grow lettuce here... you just need to find the right place for it, and the dappled sunlight under our poinciana tree is proving to be just perfect.

So these cos lettuces get a few hours of the morning sun, but only dappled light for the rest of the day. I've been taking leaves from the as I need them, which provides me with fresh lettuce on tap. Of course we are nearing the end of winter now, but I want to try growing lettuce all throughout summer, so under the tree they will stay. Not in deep shade though, I'll keep an eye on the tree when its leaves start coming back and lop off some branches if it's too shady.

If you don't have an enormous tree in your yard, then you could plant your lettuce near another bush or tree that might provide some protection from the hotter parts of the day, or you could grow it in your veggie garden amongst other, taller plants that might offer a little shade. If you are in an appartment and only have a small space, you could try growing it in pots and putting them in an area that gets morning sun but is shady in the afternoon...

I think it's all about accepting and working with what you have. Which doesn't only apply to vegetables methinks.
Just don't let your chooks get to them.

I Am the Chosen One!

Ooo I feel special! Aussie Gardening just accepted my blog in their directory... so I thought I should give them a bit of a talk up, considering their impeccable taste...

So Aussie Gardening is a fabulous site with a wealth of links to all sorts of information; blogs, fact sheets, gardening tips, and a great forum that my neighbour swears by.

My favourite is their plant search where they have a sort of program that helps you to choose a plant for a specific area in your garden. For example, I went in and chose "tree", then "in light, medium and hard soil", then "in a woodland garden", and then it generates a list of all the trees suitable to that kind of area. My list included one called the Black Sassafras, which is not only a very cool name, but also evidently quite popular as a timber to make furniture with. It's really lovely, take a look here.

And not only does this site have all this, it also has me.

Green Beans: From Seed to Supper

Okay, I know we don't say supper here, but I really needed an "s" word. It was going to be from seed to sucker, as in, "we are going to eat the sucker now" but that sounded a bit mean.

And I am not a bean bully. Ooo that one was good...

So I am posting earlier than usual today because tonight is knitting night. And yep, that's exactly what it sounds like. Some lovely friends come around and we knit. Well they knit and I try. I certainly have rectangles down pat though.
Back to the beans. These ones were part of a throw and grow group, in the photo above you can see the things I planted. The beans are the big fat browny red ones, and also the black ones. There's also beetroot and peas and a few other things in there, but they haven't come up yet.

Up there in the top photo is one of those lovely fat brown ones that emerged a few days ago. Isn't it just amazing? They are popping up everywhere, so growing beans is not rocket science, I did just throw these in and cover them up. I think they will need something to climb on when they get a bit bigger, but that's another post.

And here are some I made earlier... lol, planted, I just got cooking show line enthusiastic there. These are dwarf beans, the dwarf part must refer to the plant, the beans are a normal size. These ones don't actually climb, they just grow to around 20 - 30cm high and then sit back and get down to the serious business of making beans. And they are serious, there are tons of them!
Yum... this last photo came out terribly, but these are a few I picked for dinner tonight... I'm making a beef curry, sort of a massaman style, and I thought I'd cut these up and pop them in to cook just for the last minute... All I can smell right now is that curry, and I'm starving. It just smells delicious. I must resist the temptation to serve dinner at 4.30 in the afternoon though, I'm not on the pension quite yet :)

Not Yet...

Almost there!

Understanding Zucchini

After weeks of studying these zucchinis and scratching my head, the light has dawned upon me, and I get it. I understand the zucchini.

I knew they were part of the pumpkin family, but I thought they would grow on a vine... nope, they just spread out a bit and have a kind of slim trunk I guess you would call it. Growing out from the trunk are branches that end in leaves, and the flowers grow out from the trunk too.

So... in the photo above, is the girl flower. And the photo below is the boy. See how the boy has all that pollen? The female flower has all those little teeny hairs to catch that pollen.
At the base of the female flower is where the little zucchini grows.
The male flowers have no zucchini at their base.
And the flowers open and close, open and close...
And I am pretty sure it's the same for squash... this is boy squash...
... and girl squash.
Now I didn't do anything to help along with the pollination of the zucchinis, so I am guessing that nature is doing its thing and bees or ants or other insects are crawling all over the flowers and doing all the hard work.

Which is good, because I don't know how to do it anyway.

Corn, Corn and More Corn

Okay, is everyone ready? So I started out the day with a bit of an obstacle, I needed to clear a space to put my corn. As I had already planted some corn earlier to the right of the palm tree you can see in the photo, I decided that the croton to the left of the palm would have to go, to make way for some more. And it took me all day. First off, I couldn't find my gardening gloves. Where are my gloves??? There are not a million different places they could be, I use them for gardening and that's it. I do have a terrible habit of putting them down in different places, but I usually find them pretty quickly. But no, no luck. And gardening without gloves is not fun. I don't like touching the dirt, I am grossed out by bugs, I hate getting my fingernails all dirty, and I have a super low pain threshold.

But I am stubborn and off I went with no gloves, sawing and chopping away at the croton trunk like a champion. I'd stop every five minutes to go look for them, but no... I just couldn't find them. The sawing was no fun and I started using the shovel like an axe, chipping away at the trunk, and finally... it gave way. I felt a bit bad for the croton, it certainly wasn't a clean death, but a quick dig up of all the weeds, and hey presto, a corn patch!
Now I know the area only looks tiny, but there is space behind the palm too, and there is room for a good 20 plants there. And I am trying to keep the words of Jackie French in mind, and plant nice and thickly.

So yesterday I promised that we would do this by the book, but... I didn't. I had planned to plant in neat little rows, interspersing the corn with the beans, but after hacking away at the croton (for all you of who think I am a wimp I should have taken a photo, the trunk was super thick, I couldn't fit my two hands around it) I was tired and I just wanted the corn in there.

So... no neat rows. I just sprinkled the corn and bean seeds on the soil, covered them up, watered them in and am crossing my fingers. I put some cucumber in there too because I had read that it's also a companion to corn.

I am curious to see how this turns out.

And I do promise that one day we'll plant things out properly in rows!

Planting Our Corn

Do you remember our corn from last Sunday? It should be pretty much dried out by now, although I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to leave it for a bit longer either. I did get impatient a little earlier in the week and plant some which wasn't completely dry, so I don't know if it will work or not.

Well it's not looking beautiful exactly, and I'm sure lots of these kernels won't grow, but there are certainly a few that are looking as though they'll have a chance at success. Can't hurt to try, can it?
So while most things I kind of throw into the garden and see what happens, I thought we might plant these according to the book, so I did some googling for us. And I learnt something super interesting.

If you plant beans at the base of the corn, the corn acts as a support for the bean, which climbs up the corn, and the bean attracts predators that will eat the bugs that eat the corn. Cool hey. So that's what I thought we might try.

So sleep well and let's do some planting tomorrow :)

Throw and Grow: Lettuce, Baby Spinach and Capsicum

This is what I threw on the garden on the 5th of August...
... and this is what has popped up!

Now I am okay with the seeds I think, I know the long stripey ones are lettuce, the round brown ones are the spinach and the round yellow ones are capsicum. But... when it comes to what has sprouted I am scratching my head a little.Do you remember that I said yesterday there were some surprised in the garden? Well... what are these? The one below I am leaning towards confidently calling it spinach... the capsicum I've no idea where it has gone, so that leaves the lettuce. So is that what that is in the picture above, lettuce?

The mystery of the vegetable garden hey.

Anyway my planting method was the same as last throw and grow session, I just threw them on top of the soil, gave them a little rake and have been keeping water up to them. They were put in on the 5th and today is the 21st, so that's just over two weeks from seed to seedling.

Not taking much care in the actual planting of the seeds seems to be working just as well as when I poke little holes in and plant things a lot more carefully. The soil is good I think, lots and lots of aged horse manure, and I think there's a bit of potting mix in this soil because I was a bit over digging in the chook pen that day.

I guess nature doesn't need much fussing from me to do its thing.

That's Not a Watermelon!

You might remember this plant from here. If not, to cut a long story short, I have been nurturing this plant for weeks, in the belief that I was realising a long treasured ambition, a watermelon.
Hmm.. clearly not a watermelon.
Quite zucchiniesque I would venture to suggest.

Anyway, I will try to love it and treat it the same as I would a watermelon, but it's going to be quite the adjustment.

On another note, it rained all day today here in Brisvegas, so not too much gardening done by me, but presumably quite a lot of work done by the plants themselves with all that lovely gentle water. I did don the rain boots and go out for a quick peek, and there are a few quite exciting things on their way that I will keep as a surprise. Actually some of them will be a surprise to me as I have no idea what they are, and as is becoming glaringly obvious, I sometimes know what things are but am completely wrong.

I am on a bit of a mission to plant a little more thickly too, I have been reading this beautiful excerpt from a Jackie French book, and in it she talks about not only her fabulous sounding garden, but also that she believes most gardens are way underplanted. She talks about basically planting everywhere, creating storeys and understoreys, along your driveway, planting vines so they curl up trees... everywhere you can see space. Needless to say I have been inspired.

No patch of dirt is safe.

Dinner...

Compliments of the garden...

Potato Cam

Well the potatoes that I planted 10 days ago are certainly doing well. Curiously though, they don't seem to be growing anywhere near where I planted them. Even more curious perhaps, is that they are actually growing in a completely different bed from the one I planted them in.Which leads me to two possible conclusions. Conclusion number one would suggest that the potatoes are magic. Conclusion number two seems to point towards the mulch containing potatoes, that have now started to grow.
I've got magic potatoes!

What's Your pH Level?

No, not you, your soil!

So I have never really been into soil testing, I figure if things grow, they grow, if they don't, pull them out and put something else in. But I guess my eggplant plant was playing on my mind, why won't those suckers grow? By suckers I mean eggplants. Not suckers. Anyhow, I was at Bunnings and I saw this testing kit. And I thought, well, I'm curious. If I don't buy it today, I'll be left wondering, so why not.
I got home and got my stuff together. To test your soil you need: a testing kit, soil to test, and a spoon (to collect the soil with). The actual testing is not rocket science, following the instructions you just squirt and sprinkle stuff on your dirt, and then match up the colours.

Looking at my eggplant plant though, I did get kind of confused, because when I looked at the soil I was thinking really, the soil on one side might be completely different from the soil on the other side. So I took a sample from both sides.
One side tested slightly alkaline.

The other neutral.

So, what do eggplants like? According to Gardening Advisor eggplants like a neutral to slightly acidic soil... sooo... I need to lower my pH. Checking again with the Gardening Advisor, to lower the pH level of your soil, you add nitrogen. And what is super high in nitrogen? Chicken manure!

So while all this has hurt my poor brain, up I get tomorrow to add chicken manure to the eggplant soil and lower my pH. And hopefully grow some decent sized eggplants.

Life is exciting.

Peas Are Prettier Than Beans

I am really loving taking photos of the peas and beans, I get up every morning and rush outside to see what sort of progress they have made overnight. They are without a doubt the single (that is the single two) most successful food crop I have grown in the garden. Ever. In My Whole Life.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that growing food crops is hard hard work. It's just so constant, I mean we need to eat every day, which means that I need a plant in my garden producing some sort of crop ready to pick, every single day. And I honestly don't know if I can achieve this. But I am having so much fun just trying.

I'm really happy with the way these photos turned out, another conclusion that I am rapidly coming to is that fresh green garden colours are really beautiful. I know I am only a very humble beginner armed with a camera that I really don't know how to use properly, but it really isn't stopping me from enjoying myself.
These ones just look a bit rude. I told you beans were prettier :p