Springtime at Colliwat

Spring has been gaining momentum over the last few weeks.  The vegies are all producing nicely and flowers are coming into bloom left, right and centre.  Some unusual spring rain about a week ago really got everything growing.  Here are some photos of what's currently in the potager and some of the flowers that are out.  More flowers are in bud so we will have some more for you very soon.  

Enjoy!

Borlotti beans - no beanfly so far

Broccolini flowers

First broccoli

Nasturtium

Purple vanda

Begonia

Peas - took a while to get started

Root crops - schallots, garlic, beetroot, swedes and carrots

Rosemary

Tall marigold (?Mexican)

Strawberries from runners transplanted from Black Ram Lodge

Potager Progress Part 2

We've been busy about the garden trying to complete and plant up the potager  beds before winter sets in.  Autumn is one of the main growing seasons here but there has been disappointingly little rain this year; although that did buy us some more time to get going on the beds.

After digging the top main bed, we've noticed the feeder roots from the gumtrees have responded by coming up through the new topsoil and sucking away all the moisture.  Luckily we hadn't done the rest of the beds before finding this out, which means that we've gone with no dig beds layered with cardboard, sugarcane or soybean mulch and mushroom compost with composted cow poo for nutrients.  We had enough cardboard left from furniture packaging to complete three main beds and one of the side beds that will shortly be planted out with strawberry runners.

Here's the run down of the beds:

Bed 1: Legumes
- Peas "Greenfeast," Dwarf beans, Snowpeas, Broad beans, with succession Peas "Greenfeast," Climbing beans, Snowpeas
Bed 2: Brassicas
- Kale "Red Russian," Red Cabbage, Broccoli, Wombok
Bed 5: Cucurbits and Corn
- Yellow zucchini
Bed 6: Solanaceae
- Yellow Roma tomatoes, French Marigold, Eggplant, 2 transplanted volunteer tomatoes from around the rest of the garden

See here for more details on crop rotation.  Autumn seems the most appropriate time for rotation so far.

Over half way complete!

The seeds are starting to come up in all the beds and today marked the first succession sowing of peas and beans as the first lot of peas poke their heads above the soil.  Unfortunately some of the seeds haven't come up which is most likely due to a couple of reasons: 1st: they're old and 2nd: they've been stored in the shed which does get hot during the day (they've since been moved to the laundry).  Here's hoping they just need a bit more time.

We finally had some very decent rain last week with a couple of stormy days with heavy falls bringing back the Colliwat Cascades, filling the tanks and creating a few ruts in the driveway.  The cold snap has arrived this week with all the mornings since Sunday being 7 degrees.  Hopefully we're not too late getting things planted.

View from across the dam

The Laurels

About a  month ago we decided to go for a country drive out to Warwick which is a few hours west of home.  We stopped in at Boonah on the way and discovered a Flying Fox colony right behind the tourist information centre where we had lunch.  As usual the noise was incredible but it was lovely to see a healthy colony in a position that for once doesn't seem to cause trouble with residents.

It was a perfect sunny day and not too hot for a gentle stroll around a garden.  This was one of the first Open Gardens I'd been to that was made by a professional gardener; who incidentally had featured in a book on Australian gardens that I'd read only a few weeks prior.  As to be expected, the garden was gorgeous and had a little of something for everyone and some thoughtful elements in terms of design, sustainability and practicality.

Old shed converted to a chook house

Herb forage for the chooks

A sheep that won't eat all your prized ornamentals

Fluffy bottomed trio of lawn manicurists

The woodland walk

Homemade garden ornaments

Stunning fountain at the formal front entrance

Ahhhh symmetry and stachys - what more could you want?

This hedge formation elongates a narrows space and directs the eye while also dividing the space into rooms in their own right

Giving sedum the boot

Walkway to the garage and backyard

Wall garden made from a pallet

Outdoor area - there are wisteria planted to grow over the pergola which is made from recycled timber as are most of the structures in the garden

Guarding the entrance to the backyard

Even the fountain is homemade

Treehouse and mini deck chairs in the front garden

Grandad's Garden

In memory of my grandad who passed away last week in Morrinsville, New Zealand.

I took these photos of his home garden the day before he passed.  Grandad's garden still has a great influence on my passion for the natural beauty of plants and love of neat rows and measured spacings in the vegie patch.

Grandad at 82 helping us lay a path at our old place

First harvest from the potager

Over the weekend we had our first harvest from the new vegie patch.  The tiny seedlings planted out a few weeks ago are thriving despite the dry and hot weather.  We've been watering nearly every day to keep everything going in anticipation of some rain.

We had a single day of light rain and a flash storm last week but barely enough rain to put any water in the tanks.  Showers are forecast for the rest of the week but the hope of rain and any sign of a puff off cloud seems to dissipate on a daily basis.

We hadn't had much success with asian greens at our old place - ending up with bitter leaves that were inedible.  I'm not sure what was causing it - lack of water, harvesting to late or some nutrient deficiency or imbalance.  A lovely friend raised some seedlings in a tray for us and these are from her plants.  The leaves were lovely and crunchy with a beautiful green flavour.  We added them in right at the end to our stirfry on Sunday night along with some mustard leaves which also came from the garden.  It's so good to have homegrown vegies again.

A special thank you to Erin for raising the pak choy seedlings for us (and the pumpkin too)

We have rainbow chard, tomatoes, yacon, corn, rocket and pumpkin all on the way too so we're looking forward to some yummy dinners in the next month or so.

Potager progress

It's about time I updated everyone on how the potager is progressing.  It's been plodding along quite slowly but it's getting there and the general idea is starting to take shape.  Planting seedlings in containers has given the project the nudge it needs as the beds have to be ready in time for the plants to have somewhere to continue growing.

The first corner bed.  It will eventually be for herbs and flowers but to start with it will most likely have some vegie seedlings in it until the main beds are done.

The asparagus needed planting first as these two crowns were transplanted from the old place and were threatening to shrivel away while trying to shoot in a bucket in the garage.  I planted herbs and seeds around them but so far only the cosmos has come up.  The edging rock is basalt which was already on the property and the landscape supply man tells me it's from Beaudesert.

Completed beds in grey.

Now to find some materials for the first archway.  One of the winged beans is up so it will be the first climber to go in.  I can't wait until we have fresh vegies again, straight from the garden.

New vegetable garden/potager design

It's been a bit gloomy and drizzly lately so I decided to spend some quality time indoors to plot my new veggie beds.  I borrowed a great book from the local library which has plenty of practical and easy to understand design tips so hopefully that has helped.  

I'm keeping the crop rotation system I devised last year to minimise the chance of disease.  It seemed to be working quite well at the old place although it wasn't in place for long.  The soil here is quite impoverished and water repellent so the green manures will be essential to keep the nutrition up.  I've also started up a couple of compost heaps to kick things along before I start planting.

I've discovered our property is a giant termite terminal so I need to be very careful about which mulches and edging materials I use.  The termite man informed us that sugar cane mulch is a big no-no.  Fortunately I hadn't yet ordered the two round bales I'd been planning on getting for the gardens. Instead, I'll have to do some research to find out what mulches termites aren't super-attracted to.  I was also planning to try no-dig garden beds but cardboard and newspaper is out of bounds now too so it's back to cultivating the soil with chicken feet and my hoe.  Fortunately there is plenty of rock around the place to use as garden edging.  The local landscaping supply lad informs me this is basalt from Beaudesert.  Hopefully that means a good source of minerals and iron.

Now to find some motivation to get of the couch and mark it out then lug edging rocks around.  Although the drizzle has just started up again so light it's like the sky has dandruff.  Just wet enough to dampen the washing on the line and the spirits...Perhaps I'll continue with planning the orchard instead.

Not quite according to plan

There have been a fair few hiccups in the crop rotation system.  Perhaps I should really be calling it the crop wonky or the crop wobble.  Either way we've had some ups and downs.  The Borlotti beans have shot up and are now flowering.  The dreaded bean fly has been spotted infesting the leaves with its destructive brood but with a much a healthier crop than previously (cow poo is amazing!) the plants have withstood the attack of this minute pest and are on their way to producing their delightful spotty and stripy seeds.  However, to counter this success, none of the chickpeas emerged and I'm trying to decide whether to bother trying to grow them again.  

The other major issue with the vegie patch and flower bed has been in the form of the wretched roving raker (aka Wheelie).  Chooks really aren't given enough credit for the cunning workings of their tiny brains.  They say they have the intelligence of a 3 year old.  Well, in my experience I've decided not only do they possess this intelligence but  also possessed of the mischievousness of a 3 year old and worse still is that they never grow out of it.  If I leave the cage door open for one night she's out of the pen in the morning raking up all my lovely seeds and seedlings.  When I wake in the morning and realise my error, hurriedly look out the window there she is with her head cocked to the side looking up at me with her comb wobbling.  There's been more than one occasion where we've very nearly been going to have roast chook for Christmas.

As a result there are only two broccolini seedlings, no flowers have been able to come up from seed and all but one corn plant have been scratched from the crop rotation board in bed 5.  Luckily I'm a determined creature and can match the pigheadedness of any 3 year old, ahem, I mean chicken.  So the planting has been redone with a vengeance for the third or possibly fourth time: the corn has been replanted along with its cucumber companion plus a choko to climb the fence and a zucchini; the flower seeds have been resown and the chooks are given extra food and shut in their cage at night.  Now so long as chooks can't figure out how to turn a handle the garden will be safe, at least until the cluck monster emerges anyhow (I'll tell you about that another time).

The other hiccup with the crop wobble has been the carrots.  The nice neat row has produced a few tiny carrot seedlings albeit not as many as I'd hoped.  Instead, Mother Nature has laughed at me again with this bed.  In previous years a watering or some rain would send up millions of cherry tomato seedlings despite me never having planted one.  This year it seems amaranth is the immaculate crop which has taken over the garden, although I do admit to having let one or two go to seed there in the past.  As experience gardeners are all too aware, once you've grown amaranth you've always got amaranth.  It's always safer to work with nature so I've thinned the amaranth around the carrots that came up and let the rest grow to shade them from the baking heat that we've been having.  They've cross pollinated with some wild varieties so now they have a beautiful candy-cane stripe to their stem when mature.  They also made a nice spinach substitute in dinner last night along with some of the last pumpkin that was also a gift from Mother Nature and a few cherry tomatoes that can be found loitering around the edges of the beds.  Maybe I should give up gardening all together - it seems that the vegie patch grows itself far better than I can.