Our Garden Guru’s Garden

Originally the 4th of December was going to be a day (or morning at least) of visiting FiMBY gardens.  People were going to come to our garden, then we were all going to another FiMBY client’s garden, then we were going to our garden guru Christina’s garden to eat things together.  ‘Cuz that’s what people with fruit and veggie gardens like doing.

However December being December the garden tour wound up being cancelled.  But Christina kindly invited us over to check out her garden anyway.  It’s GREAT!!  Unfortunately my photos of it really are not.  Her whole block is hilly and slopes down to the street.  The front garden is dominated by a large round bed divided into area for different crops like spokes on a wheel radiating out from a (decidedly kempt compared to mine) rosemary bush.

Our Garden Guru's Garden!

Around the sides of this area a composting area and other beds with flowers and other stuff.

The back garden has an excellent deck with big pizza oven, then fruit trees, then RABBITS.  This is where the canine member of our party truly disgraced herself.  She shot through the back door before we could close her behind, became magically and totally deaf, and ran around the outsides of the rabbit cages excitedly.  I was mortified.  It was a hot day and one of the females had a new litter that didn’t need to be stressed out by a manic schnauzer – not that any of the rabbits needed stressing out by Miss Lottie!  The rabbit definitely looked like they were all screaming ‘wolf!!  wolf!!! bearded wolf!!!’.
The Girls
The Boys

Christina was nice and calm and even pretended she wasn’t thoroughly appalled by Lottie’s behaviour or our inability to simply keep her behind a door.  She even gave us a few bottles of elderflower cordial to take home.

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Changing of the Guard

The amount of time elapsed on normal calendars between when Christina 1st came to look at our garden and discuss what FiMBY could help us with (12 June) and the day a lot of Lottie’s Lot was planted out (11 September) was exactly 1 day less than 3 months.  Which would seem great to normal people, especially when you consider that at least a month of this time was FiMBY’s annual 1 month winter break and Christina was overseas for a few weeks of it.

But I’m not a normal human.  For me those months were endlessly endless.  Painfully slow.  My mind started to melt with the time not passing.

I find it hard to believe that less time has passed since our garden was established than passed between those long between-Christina-visits phase.  (I.e. only 2 1/2 months.)  Not because nothing has been happened but because so much has.

This photo sort of sums up what’s happening in our garden at the moment:

Harvest

The Noble but Mutantly Huge Bok Choy Dwarfs the New Crops

We’re moving from the time when the main vegetable other than lettuces was bok choy to a time when there will be much more variety.  See the noble but mutantly huge bok choy?  We only have a few (enormous and flowering) ones left.  Scott’s getting a bit sick of bok choy so I have to be a bit more creative with it now, but this is happening just in time for the new veggies coming to the harvest party, carrots (white belgian, lubyana, and red cored in this photo) and snow peas – yes!!

And there’s promise of lots more: the tomatoes plants have doubled in size and have started flowering (this is just in 1 1/2 weeks!), there are all sorts of beans and peas sprouting out of the ground, and although the blueberries, raspberries, red currants, and jostaberries are no where near being ripe yet they all have fruit on them that is recognisably fruit.

And we still have lots of salad greens.  LOTS.  Which is fantastic!  I think salads are great – there’s so many things you can do to them.  And I enjoy scaring people I work with by presenting enormous bags of mixed greens to them; it amuses me when where is so much abundance of greens all they can think of to do with them at first is to bathe in them.  (If you live in the Hobart area and have a bathtub you need filled with salad greens, please contact me.)

Summer starts tomorrow!

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Hot Stuff

Ever since our hot composting session in early October we’ve been keen to give it a try ourselves.  We’ve needed to get a few elements together:

  • Pallets:  to make bays for the compost to compost in.  We got 1 double lenght one and 2 normal sized ones that were outside K & D Bricks and Pavers in Lenah Valley a few weeks ago.  They’ve been in the van ever since.  We’ll pick up the last pallet we need to have 2 bays from our friend Naomi next time we’re at her place.
  • A bale of straw or hay:  Christina dropped one off at our place Sunday morning.  (Embarassingly it was from a place close to our house!)
  • Green weedy stuff:  we had tonnes after all the weeding on Saturday!

So with the planets – if composting elements can be called planets (which I doubt) – all aligned, we were ready to get going.  I got some corner angle thingso at the hardware store.  Scott did the holding of pallets while I screwed them together.  Then we got going on making the compost heap, layering hay, horse manure, green weeds, and some dynamic lifter.  And lots of watering in between layers.  I was wearing a lot of manure by the end of it.  Probably one of the reasons Lottie loves me so much.

It’s quite hard to see – and hard to photograph the beautiful layered end because it faces the apricot tree.  But hopefully in a few weeks we’ll find out it’s a great one!  (Hopefully!)

Hot composting!
Hot Compost Layers

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Second Garden Craft Session

Our second garden craft session was pushed back a week to 20 November since we took a spontaneous trip to Victoria the weekend before (when the session was originally scheduled).  I was slightly annoyed with myself because I really wanted to get our tomatoes into the ground, but now everything in the garden is thriving so much I’m not so bothered!  I actually got into the garden fairly early and started doing LOTS of weeding.  It’s not just the fruits and veggies we love that are thriving; the weeds are going crazy.  However we wanted to do some hot composting, so I almost welcomed the weeds (though not the work of getting them into a pile).  Scott mowed the thriving lawn.

Christina arrived and we had a look at the garden.  She seemed impressed that the Chinese gooseberries Kiri and Apty had already reached the top of the trellis; they’ll grow along the back beam now and any side shoots will be trained out.  She gave us some white and scarlet runner beans for the arch over our front walkway.  For me the most exciting thing was getting the tomatoes into Big Green!  I’m really looking forward to them!!!  The varieties we planted are:

  • Tomato Siberian
  • Tomato Principe Borghese
  • Tomato Cherokee Purple
  • Tomato Rouge de Marmonde
  • Tomato Tigerella
  • Tomato whippersnapper

We also put some basil seedlings in.  BASIL!!!  SUMMER!!!  Other things planted during the session were:

  • Planted a Zucchini Cocozelle seedling (we pulled out 2 broad bean plants – very brave of me! – and planted it into Big Yellow).
  • Planted seedlings of capsicums, cayenne chilis, and jalapenos in the old herb garden.
  • Sowed mixed greens into a blank spot where I’d harvested bok choi from the old swings berry patch  (note: these started emerging from the soil 24 November!).
  • Sowed Idelight Green Beans into the former home of bok choi in Big Blue.
  • Sowed climbing beans Blue Late, Kentucky Wonder, and Purple King against the fence (which apples will eventually go).

All every exciting!

It was a HOT day.  After Christina left I transplanted some of the rocket in a wine barrel in the Mediterranean Zone to between the mulberry and the fence.  I got a bucket with a lid and started some nettle tea.  And did lots of random things until it was time to shower and see Christina again at taketina!  All in all an exciting day.  Here’s a few photos of our darlings.

Scarlet Runner Beans and White Runner Beans

Scarlet Runner Beans and White Runner Beans

Big Green with Young Tomato and Basil Plants

Big Green with Young Tomato and Basil Plants (I need to get the stakes in)

2 Broadbean Plants Pulled Out to Plant Zucchini Cocozelle

2 Broadbean Plants Pulled Out to Plant Zucchini Cocozelle

Bok Choi Harvested; Idelight Green Beans Sown

Bok Choi Harvested; Idelight Green Beans Sown

'Berry' Patch

'Berry' Patch - the yellow flowers is our mizuna going crazy!

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Thriving!

Sorry I haven’t updated the blog for a while.  It’s certainly not because there’s nothing to report; Lottie’s Lot is THRIVING!  However we went away for a long weekend in Victoria the weekend before last – so not only were we away but I have to update Snuva’s Haunt (and still am not finished the last day or so!).  And then this past weekend we were doing a LOT of work IN the garden – so I haven’t had time to write about it.  But I will, soon. 

Until then there are some more photos on Flickr and I’ve been updating the Garden Bed Diaries (although it’s not 100% up-to-date).

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Day of Destiny

Saturday was the day that Big Green’s green manure met it’s fate: it became green manure. All for a good cause: this is in preparation for our tomatoes being planted out 20 November at our next garden craft session!

Green Manure Before

Green Manure Before

Green Manure Being Chopped Up

Green Manure Being Chopped Up; yes, I'm letting those stinging nettles live (to make nettle tea to fertilise the tomatoes)

Some of the Roots from the Green Manure

Some of the Roots from the Green Manure

Green Manure After

Green Manure After

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Elbow Room

This is a post to remind myself how much room my veggies need – and that thinning them really IS for the best! 

Here are two bok choy.  The one of the left is an averaged sized one that was transplanted to the berry patch; the one on the right is the largest one from Big Blue:

Bok Choy Size Comparison

Bok Choy Size Comparison

Before things got going with FiMBY I put some garlic in one plant pot and some rocket in another. I’d intended to transplant the rocket, however I didn’t get to it before it had actually started going to seed. The top photo is of rocket in the crowded conditions of the plant pot; the bottom photo is some that I transplanted to a wine barrel after it had started flowering. Even though the rocket in the wine barrel had started flowering, it’s still doing much better!
Flowering Rocket in Plant Pot
Flowering Rocket in Plant Pot
Flowering Rocket in Wine Barrel

Flowering Rocket in Wine Barrel

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Harvest: Mizuna & Pecorino Quiche with Mixed ‘Greens’

I’ve wanted to make a quiche using mizuna for ages and finally got around to it last night.  It could easily be made with rocket instead of or in addition to the mizuna – any green with a nice sharp flavour.  It could also easily be made with parmesan or even a blue cheese as well.  I just happened to have pecorino in the fridge.  And when we have our own tomatoes I’d like to top it with thinly sliced tomatoes before putting it into the oven; the flavour and concentrated sweetness should be a fantastic contrast to the sharp flavours of mizuna/rocket and bold, salty cheese.

When I was coming into the house after harvesting the salad for last night’s meal, my eye strayed to the rocket that’s going to seed.  I had planted them during my impatient wait for things to happen with FiMBY (I’m not someone who is good at things that aren’t instant!) but had really crowded them and they were going to seed.  I grabbed some flowers and popped them into my mouth – DELICIOUS!  A bit of sharp rocket-y flavour but also a sweetness.  So I cut a lot and stripped the flowers and small leaves off the long stems and put them all over the salad and quiche.  Rocket flowers are yummy!

Mizuna and Pecorino Quiche

Mizuna and Pecorino Quiche with mixed salad and rocket flowers

Lettuces

Lettuces and Rocket Flowers From Our Garden

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The Circle of Life

Our new, improved, FiMBYesque garden has been going long enough that we’ve seen lots of progress and our plants going through various stages.  I’m overjoyed to see some of our berries blooming, like the jostaberry and blueberry that bloomed weeks ago and the raspberries and boysenberry that have just blossomed:
Raspberry Blossom
Boysenberry Blossom
But I was also sad to notice the other day that some of our mizuna and tat soi will be going to seed soon. As long as they don’t all go to seed at once I’m fine, but I’m already too used to salading freely from my garden to welcome the idea that they might all go at once! But look at my mizuna; even going to seed (and in the middle of a downpour) doesn’t it look great?!
Mizuna Going To Seed

And isn’t if funny that what makes me happy from some plants (blossoms, then fruit, coming) makes me sad from others (blossoms, then seed, coming).  Just the nature of the difference between my fruiting plants and leafy greens!  At least the next generation of greens won’t be far behind.

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Arch Righting and Trellis CONstruction!

I seem to write lots of posts about destruction, but here’s a great one about construction!

Yesterday Danny and his helper were at my place building a trellis for the chinese gooseberries.  (Scott prefers not to call them kiwis – however we have named the male vine Apty (after my friend Apty from NZ) and the female vines Kiri (after Dame Kiri Te Kanawa) and Hullen (after Helen Clark).  We actually got home before they were finished, so I was able to get a photo of Danny with the trellis:

Look What Danny Made!!  :-)

Fantastic, isn’t it? 🙂

They also righted the arch over the driveway. Here’s a before and an after photo:

Arch from South Before

Arch Remaining Upright!

The next steps will be to plant the chinese gooseberries near their trellis and white and scarlet runner beans near the arch.

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