Elastikos | Vegie Blog

I'm a web designer based in the north western suburbs of Melbourne but one of my other passions is being a very average vegetable grower. Having just become a father I hope to be able to get my little son involved in the garden and actually be able to teach him something of use. So with that goal in mind I'm going to be documenting my progress (or regress!) as I try to improve my skills in all areas of the garden.

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Last of the 2013 carrots & potatoes :( #untilnextyear

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Spring Update

Weather was too crappy to take photos today, but here is what's currently growing as of mid-October:

tomatoes (1 ft high so far)

silverbeat (been growing since Feb)

chilies (all hot cayenne variety)

red capsicums (just planted)

butternut pumpkins (just planted)

potatoes (planted mid September)

onions (planted in march)

carrots (planted in march)

garlic (deceased - aphids destroyed them before I worked out how to kill the bastards - next year!)

strawberries (transplanted to planter boxes this year so I can keep up with their water demands - looking good so far)

We've also added 3 ISA Brown chickens in May and at least two of them are laying each day. We're going to add 2 buff pekin bantams in November.

Photos to come.

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Spring is alive and in full swing

Will begin to post again now that the gardening season is gearing up again. Will also report on my winter failings & successes. 

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Some strange little bumps have appeared on a couple of the passion fruit. I can't seem to find anything via Google as to what they might be... I'm sure they're fine on the inside.

This will be the 3rd and last harvest of this particular passion fruit vine. The original wild cutting is starting to take over and the wood lattice (never ever buy again!) is falling to pieces, so that will need to be replaced.

I'll definitely plant a new vine in it's place as the foliage stays green all year round and looks fantastic when up and running properly.

Last years crop was all scooped out into ice-cube trays - always ready to go with either vanilla ice cream or yogurt. Will do the same again this year.

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Chicken coop! After 4 days of work the coup-delux is complete. We're going to have a go a running 5 chickens in our front-yard, 2 regular sized and 3 bantams. I've still got the fencing and gate to do plus plant a whole bunch of native grass for them to run around in.

Very happy with the finished house, really hoping the chickens do too!

P.S: Thanks Dad for all the help last weekend.

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Ahhh pickling. This was my first attempt. We had a lot of smaller onions due to my poor watering skills and hardness of the soil. So instead of chucking a hissy fit it was time to do something with all these little buggers.

First I had to find a recipe, I decided upon this one from taste.com.au.

Second I needed some jars. I was able to get some locally form the head office of Fowlers Vacola.

Took about 3 hours to peel all of the onions and another 30 mins to prep the pickling juice. 

We'll see how good they are after 3 weeks rest.

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Surprisingly this is actually my best haul of carrots yet! But still a dismal bunch. There's always next year I suppose. I do have another row of seedlings on the go - we'll see if the cats dig those up as well.

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I've grown onions each year so far at the house, they've never had an easy run though. The first year they were doing fantastic but had to be moved due to the backyard decking going down where they were planted - they did okay though. 

Second year a little bit for transplanting was required but had a better crop than the first.

This year however, very poor return. One colander of onions! Usually I get them through to Feb/March and harvest them then, but this hot weather has put an end to them early... it also might have something to do with how poorly I prepared their soil. Big strike against lazy soil prep!

Any way, stiff upper lip and all that - what is there is great to eat. Nothing better than freshly picked onions - so mild but full of flavor. I'm also going to have a go at pickling the smaller ones, should have a kilo or two of those.

So until next year... onions out! 

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Garden update for January 10, 2012.

Full list of what is actually being grown at the moment:

Grannysmith Apple

Tomatoes (Beefsteak, Ox Heart, Cherry & Apollo)

Pumpkins (Butternut & Jap)

Carrots

Onions

Strawberries

Chillies (Habaneros & Red Cayenne)

Capsicum (Californian Wonder)

Herbs (Basil, Mint & Rosemary)

Potatoes

Sweet Corn

Squash

Cucumber (Lebanese)

Climber beans

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I'll be posting the first of some status updates on everything that's currently growing and how I think it's performing. We've had a couple of brutal summer days with few of them exceeding 40°c. With those temperatures we lost a lot of tomatoes, a capsicum, a fair few strawberries 'boiled' and a bit of damage to the crawlers of the pumpkins.

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The Beginning... well sort of.

As this is the first entry into the Vegie Blog I thought I would kick it off with both an overview of the setup we've got going and also the status of the plants.

First up, the layout. We've been at our current house for the past 3 years now, to the date. I started working on the backyard straight away after moving in and didn't touch the front yard until October 2012.

For the construction of the beds I wanted 4 things:

Safe to eat from, so no harmful chemical treatments of the wood. So timber that doesn't contain arsenic, ammonia or chloride.

Strong and built to last. 

Easy access to the patches

Maximum amount of beds for the space and still leaving enough room to move around them.

So to actually achieve these goals here's how I went about them.

Researched online as to what was the best type of wood to use. Found a supplier that doesn't treat the wood using those chemicals. Source: www.ecowoodplus.com.au

I ended up using grade H4 50mm garden sleepers. I find that at this thickness they're just thick enough to sit on the edge for a couple of minutes without getting too sore of an arse. Any thicker and they'd have weighed too much to move around easily and reduce the size of my beds.

I originally had beds on the ground which were a hassle to maintain. Grass and other weeds found their way into them way too easily. So for the sake of my back I chose a height of 400mm (2x200mm sleepers).

This took a long time to work out using measurements of the space using squares representing the existing pavers that were there and moving them around in a million combinations of sun positions, access and total area.

After finally deciding on a design - the layout of the backyard beds:

The front yard came a lot later due to us finally getting a front fence constucted and completed - we now had a new space that we could use for more vegie beds!

I ended up sourcing the same wood as was used for the backyard, but this time not constructed to the same height as out the back.

Well there is the space we're working with. 12 square meters out the front and about 7 out the back.