Month: August 2009
Useful flowers and herbs
In a recent post, I shared a photo of my new garden bed, snug up behind the front fence. The strawberries that we received for free have gone in one half. I’ve also planted some flat leaf parsley and coriander, to serve kitchen needs.
The remaining space is being devoted a mix of flowers and herbs that serve a variety of purposes:
- Borage – companion plant to strawberries, good bee forage
- Chamomile – deters flies and mosquitoes, can be used as a fungicide spray
- Hyssop – trap plant for cabbage moth, plant away from brassicas, good for bees
- Pyrethrum – can be made into a natural insectiside
Two new corrugated raised garden beds
In preparation for Spring, I ordered two new corrugated garden beds from Tankworks. These are 1.5m x 0.5m in size, small enough to squeeze in beside the side of the house and the driveway.
As you can see from the picture below, these need a fair bit of digging into the slope. There are just a few corrugations visible at the top end of the first bed, and almost all above ground at the bottom. Still, I think it’s still the easiest way to create raised and level garden beds on a slope. We’ve also had a huge number of positive comments from passer-byers on the garden beds, they’re quite a hit!
These two beds will be all beans, as per my last post. These are going to be our staple crop for spring, and I’m leaving space for a second planting in 4-6 weeks time, so we have a longer supply.
Planting record: beans and pumpkins
I did some gardening this morning before work, and for my planting record, this is what went into my new garden beds:
- Bean, Violet Queen Bush Bean – harvest in 60d
- Bean, Sex Without Strings (dwarf butter bean) – harvest in 87d
- Bean, Gourmet’s Delight (dwarf bush bean) – harvest in 60-70d
- Bean, Stringless Pioneer (dwarf bush bean) – harvest in 60-70d
- Pumpkin, Golden Nugget
- Pumpkin, Buttercup – harvest in 120d
(I’ll do a more complete post, including garden diagram, in the next week or two.)
Broccolini going to seed
While we were away on holiday, the biggest of our broccolini plants bolted to seed. As you can see above, it’s quite a sight! This seemed like an ideal opportunity to practice our seed saving for the first time.
Important tip:
Reading up the Seed Savers Handbook, I discovered that broccoli is self-sterile. That is, you need bees to spread pollen between more than one plant for seeds to form. You then let the seeds form on the plant, cut the whole lot out, and let it dry inside.
In this case, my timing was a bit out. One plant was flowering profusely, while the others were still catching up. I’ve stopped harvesting the rest of the broccolini, and hopefully this will get enough plants flowering at the same time to generate some seeds. I’ll report back.
A new garden bed behind the front fence
Yesterday I constructed a new garden bed, tucked in behind the front fence.
I’m getting reasonably good at constructing these types of raised beds. Start with some lengths of 50x150mm treated pine. Saw off a few pieces to create the ends of the bed. Drill some holes into some wooden stakes, and hammer them in to support the sides of the beds.
Then use coach bolts to attach the stakes to the treated pine. Then bolt on the ends of the bed. The result, a shallow but robust garden bed.
What are we going to plant in this bed?
We received some free strawberries when we ordered our last two lemon trees. Not wanting these to go to waste, they’ll go in one end. The other end will be a mix of edible flowers, a well as pest repellent flowers such as pyrethrum. I’ll post a full list when I sort through all my seed packets…
Last orders from our winter vege garden
We recently went away for a two week break to Western Australia. Just as we left, the weather was warming up and the garden was delivering its last harvest.
Luckily we lined up our next door neighbours to harvest the garden as well as look after the cat. When we got back, they told us that they had so many sugar snap peas, snow peas and broccoli that their family of four couldn’t get through it all!
Even after that, we still had a huge haul of brocolli, as shown above, plus pak choi, and peas.
But it’s now time to wind up the winter growing season, with spring on our doorstep. We need the space, so I pulled out the sugar snap peas this morning, and the old chinese cabbage. The pak choi will be next to go, along with the snow peas and carrots.
Onto the next round of growing (and eating!).
Sowing for Spring
Last weekend we planted seeds for both our future herb garden, and our summer veggies.
As you can probably gather from this pic, we have been collecting toilet rolls for several months to sow our seeds in. This way, we will be able to plant our seedlings and their protective toilet roll casing directly into the garden, thereby avoiding transplant shock.
We also bought some biodegradable pots from Bunnings to ensure we had enough for all our seeds
Now we’re just waiting for the seedlings to appear!
Botanical fabric for home furnishings
I recently made some cushions out of this botanical fabric bought from Cloth in Surry Hills.
Cloth screen prints their original designs on hemp or linen in rural NSW. They sell a few different botanical prints similar to this one in a variety of different colours. They have more designs in-store than on their website so it’s worth paying them a visit.
They also sell ready-made cusions if you don’t have the sewing skillz, along with lamp shades, table mats, etc.
Lemons into the nature strip
A few weeks ago I ordered two dwarf myer lemons from Perry’s Fruit and Nut Nursery in SA. These are your typical Australian backyward lemon, but on “Flying Dragon” roostock, which according to the nursery is the only “true” dwarfing stock.
This morning both lemons went into the nature strip, in front of our house. Give them a year, and they should be producing prolific fruit all year round (fingers crossed!). Of course, many (most?) of the lemons will be picked by passer-byers, but that’s OK. Particularly if it distracts them from raiding our front garden veges…
Lewisham House and Farm 