Vegetable garden

[explod]

thanks for the advice happy, inore...
greatly appreciated...

sounds like a bit of hard work, but the rewards certainly are worth it

still have to think about what to do with the gum tree...
the way it is now, half the veggie patch will get shade, half will get sun...

might start off with a 3m x 1m area, tho have enough room to expand to 6 x 3. Not sure if i have the time for that yet.

looks like pH balance and clay/sand balance need to be right...

gonna continue with the compost with layering, tho will add paper / lime as suggested... Does this heap need to be in the sun or shade?

Keep your vegie patch as far from the gum tree as possible. They suck out the water big time and when you do water over time they will seek out your patch. Their roots are very aggressive. After the garden has been going for a year or two dig a trench down about 2 feet down to cut off roots. Hard the first dig but every 12 months redig the trench and that will keep the gum roots out. Leaves from the gum seem to make the ground a bit sour also.

 

[JeSSica WaBBit]

Team, i'm a qualified horticulturalist so might be able to help with some questions from time to time.

Just 2 cents worth for beginners, go to Big W and buy yourself some Rocket seeds and sow them. Its virtually a weed and extremely easy to grow!

When you harvest it, cut off the individual leaves with a pair of scissors and be sure to leave at least one or two leaves on each plant. If you do this it will continuously produce new leaves for you. Some lettuces and other leafy vegetables can be cropped in a similar manner, no need to completely remove the entire plant when harvesting.

Nothing quite like fresh rocket from your garden

Another tip for beginners, no need to put loads of effort into preparing beds and so on. Have a quick look into 'no dig' gardening.

Plenty of mulch, humus and water and you'll grow almost anything. Main thing is to get out there and give it a bash.

Another tip, no need to pay loads for seeds, collect your own from your veges you eat. Its simple, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, pumpkins and the list goes on. Let them dry on a plate for a few days then store in paper envelopes, label and store.

Anyways, i wish you all the best with your crops.

JW

 

[Happy]

Does this heap need to be in the sun or shade?

I would say shade too, also some kind of bin stops nutrients to leach into underlying soil with every heavy downpour or even consistent light rain.

Some go to extent to keep it on waterproof base with all the fluid collected, similar setup to Worm Farm, which is slightly different way to compost kitchen, scraps.

Moisture content has to be kept fairly high 70% or more, to the point that when you squeeze handful of composted material it should produce few drops.

Heap has to have access to air too; there is fine line between aerobic process, which we desire and stinking anaerobic which can be achieved by accident if composting conditions don’t allow adequate access of oxygen.

Having said shadow, must add that this is for warmer areas, since we want composting process to be about 60 deg Celsius in the core of heap (to kill weeds seeds) and critical mass of the heap is too small then, extra heat provided by the Sun might be desired.

Ideal compost heap is slightly more than 1 m cubed. It has to be turned regularly, and for that reason I could not bear it.

Doing things by the letter might be daunting, I broke most rules, did not produce prize winning stuff, but didn't work too hard either, which suits me fine.

i think u said u add lime...does that also help break down the compost?

Indirectly I think it does, as process relies on bacteria and bacteria has to have appropriate acidity level to perform at its best.
Lime provides that by neutralising acidity content.

(Similar to yeast, which needs nutrient, appropriate temperature, and not too high alcohol level. Do not satisfy any of the components and process will slow down or stop altogether).

 

[wayneL]

On compost heaps:

Put in a few layers of animal manure, and if you can get it ecomically, lucerne hay (spoilt bales or something).

Follow the tip above as well and you'll have the best most sweet smelling compost, best compost you've ever seen.

The manure and lucerne will add plenty of nitrogen and structure to the heap and it will get unbelievably hot... the secret to good weed free compost.

 

[explod]

Let me just say what a great thread. It makes me smile every time I see a new poster and then check it out. More of this nature stuff needed to bring the animal back out of us.

I know a few blokes got together a few years ago near to me approached the owner of a vacant lot and made a great veggie patch. They even carted thier own water and became very adept at mulching and placing the beds to capture rain etc.

Maybe when financial armageddon strikes we will be self sufficient

No......... just cant' stop smiling

 

[wayneL]

I the UK you can get an allotment http://www.selfsufficientish.com/allotments.htm from the local council where you can grow veggies. (supposing you don't have a big garden or you live in a flat)

The cool thing about that is there are several gardeners all next to each other so you can share tips and see who can grow the biggest marrow and such nonsense ... (and perhaps sabotage that whopping pumpkin the guy nextdoor is growing :batman:

 

[Flying Fish]

I can't believe how many chillis I have growing here in Queensland!! I just threw them in and away they went!! PAw Paws, mangosteens!! custard apples, abiu limes and citrus!! Not to mention pumpkin and bananas!! Dead easy just throw the seeds in a bit of water and off they go!! Oh also passionfruit. amazing!!

 

[Flying Fish]

And pineapples. Just buy a pineapple with head on, chop head off and put in small pot of mix. They grow well. Also capsicum tomatoes you name it. If you have a back yard do it, throw seeds in and grow. Buy a chook or two for eggs. Great!! By a small water tank for water, already you save lots of dollars on food bills, you have eggs and vegetables!! And sometimes chicken!!

 

[drmb]

.... Not to mention pumpkin and bananas!! Dead easy just throw the seeds in a bit of water and off they go!! Oh also passionfruit. amazing!!

Bananas don't grow from seeds, mate, they don't have any, don't they grow from cuttings? I grow fruit trees where I am, the possums get everything else.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

hey gumnut, whats your secret with coriander. ive tried a few times but they are all stalk no leaf and always die a slow horrible death. other herbs go fine.
julia, have you tried putting flowers amongst them to attract birds? i also physically pick the grubs off the underside of the leaves of a morning.
we must be lucky here in Newcastle but i havent used a drop of chemical yet.

dont give up!

this must sound corny, but despite all thats happening in the world and how tough things get, its exhilarating to have everything growing..the kids (2yrs and 12 weeks), the share portfolio (bloody yanks), and the vegies and herbs. every day is better than the last.

The coriander story for us is more luck than science. Last year we planted it, watered, it struggled and then the bed it was in became overgrown with mint and weeds. Recently we decided to clean the bed up and kept the mint only, laying on mulch over the rest. Suddenly we saw coriander growing gangbusters up through the mulch. Its called forest fines, we get it from a garden centre. The growth coincided with some welcome rain. It must have seeded at some stage last year.

Garpal

 

[Whiskers]

Bananas don't grow from seeds, mate, they don't have any, don't they grow from cuttings? I grow fruit trees where I am, the possums get everything else.

Hi drmb

Yeah, actually you and Flying Fish are both sort of right. Commercially they are grown from what we call a 'sucker'. They are new shoots that come out from the base or the plant known as the 'corm' and as you say they are cut off the base preferably with a bit of a root on it and transplanted. I always have a few in my back yard. and yeah possoms and birds are a problem, but that can be overcome with plastic bags over the bunches as they mature and bird netting over other trees when they are ripening.

I have dealt with some DPI plant breeders over the years and actually you can get seeds for bananas. One sample below. There is a picture on the link.

Seed Packet #2163
Royal Sweet Banana Musa paradisiaca royalii
According to our grower in Brazil, this is one of the best seeded bananas for eating fresh. A fast grower and yeilds large "bunches". We can't wait to get feedback on this one.
10 seeds per pack. Price per pack: $3.95 http://www.seedman.com/banana.htm​

I'm not in the banana industry myself, but generally all our commercial crop varities are bred from seed and bananas are one of the most difficult as the following paragraphs and link indicate.

Banana breeding is also painfully slow. A full cycle, from seed to seed, takes three years. Compare this to rice, says Rosales, where you can obtain three crops a year.

Even pollinating the flowers is difficult. At first light, workers on ladders quickly hand pollinate the one or two flowers that have opened that day before the sun and heat dry out the sticky pollen. Each flower represents a hand: the process will be repeated every morning for a week or more before the entire bunch is pollinated. Three months later, the bananas are harvested. But there's no way of knowing where the few -- if any -- peppercorn-sized seeds are hidden without crushing and sieving the entire bunch. In FHIA's facilities, specially trained workers strip the fruit off the bunches and peel the bananas by hand. Although a press developed by Dr Rowe has made the mashing a little easier, it's still a laborious, messy process. At FHIA, more than 20,000 bunches of bananas are crushed each year in the search for seeds.

The seed harvest is meagre -- one or two seeds per bunch. And not all of these will grow into plants. The banana-seed germination rate is poor, below five percent in the wild. Using tissue culture techniques that involve rescuing" the embryo in the seeds that have them and growing them in a nutrient medium, Drs Rowe and Rosales have boosted the germination rate to 50 percent. The young plants are then transplanted into nursery beds until large enough to be set out into the fields.
http://archive.idrc.ca/books/reports/V221/banana.html​

Actually I know a few Asian people who grow green eating varities, blue looking ones etc. Fantastic flavours with the way they cook them.

 

[Flying Fish]

Bananas don't grow from seeds, mate, they don't have any, don't they grow from cuttings? I grow fruit trees where I am, the possums get everything else.

They grow from pups. Sorry not seeds did'nt mean that

 

[nioka]

Hi drmb

Yeah, actually you and Flying Fish are both sort of right. Commercially they are grown from what we call a 'sucker'. They are new shoots that come out from the base or the plant known as the 'corm' and as you say they are cut off the base preferably with a bit of a root on it and transplanted. I always have a few in my back yard. and yeah possoms and birds are a problem, but that can be overcome with plastic bags over the bunches as they mature and bird netting over other trees when they are ripening.
Actually I know a few Asian people who grow green eating varities, blue looking ones etc. Fantastic flavours with the way they cook them.

In most states you need permission in the form of registration to grow bananas because of diseases such as bunchy top and panamar disease. In NSW at the moment it is illagal to move planting material without a permit and even then it can only move south to north.
I grow a few and my plants are tissue cultured at a specialist nursery (south of me of course). One of the varities I have just planted is a Thai banana which, in addition to having a good banana, also has an edible flower which is used in Thai cooking and is similar to a cabbage.
Most bananas cook up nicely, preferably when they are almost still green. Great on the barbie with the prawns.

 

[arminius]

help!! very important....

something is eating my tomato leaves!

tiny little bugs that are making the leaves go brown, like bronze wilt. i dont want to spray because there are little spiders there as well and im sure they feed on something nasty.

our corn is nearly 2 foot high. woohoo.
picked the first catapillar off the cueys today. fed him to the antlions.

 

[Ageo]

help!! very important....

something is eating my tomato leaves!

tiny little bugs that are making the leaves go brown, like bronze wilt. i dont want to spray because there are little spiders there as well and im sure they feed on something nasty.

our corn is nearly 2 foot high. woohoo.
picked the first catapillar off the cueys today. fed him to the antlions.

my dad uses tomatoe dust, its to keep bugs off

 

[explod]

help!! very important....

something is eating my tomato leaves!

tiny little bugs that are making the leaves go brown, like bronze wilt. i dont want to spray because there are little spiders there as well and im sure they feed on something nasty.

our corn is nearly 2 foot high. woohoo.
picked the first catapillar off the cueys today. fed him to the antlions.

Sounds like shrift or ahists (cant spell em) my wife's the expert but asleep. You could prabaly beat them by spraying watered down detergent which wont hurt the spiders (after shaking out they will come back) If you can keep them at bay the problems should pass. Frost will also turn the leaves brown and some mornings are still very cold in Southern Vic.

Try google ling the problem also

 

[nioka]

help!! very important....

something is eating my tomato leaves!

tiny little bugs that are making the leaves go brown, like bronze wilt. i dont want to spray because there are little spiders there as well and im sure they feed on something nasty.

our corn is nearly 2 foot high. woohoo.
picked the first catapillar off the cueys today. fed him to the antlions.

There is a heritage tomato called the Potato tomato which I grow. It seems to resist pests. It is a smallish one, about the size of a golf ball. It is very tasty, is easily grown from it's own seed and fruits heavily. It grows all year round if not frosted.
Your wilt may not be from the bugs but from a nematode attacking the roots. The potato tomato also is a little resistant to them. To keep the nematodes under control you plant dwarf marigolds around tomatoes.
Hope this helps.

 

[Julia]

Re the brown wilt on tomato leaves, this happens in coastal Qld with most varieties of tomatoes except the smaller ones as Nioka says. It doesn't seem to affect either the quantity or quality of the fruit.

Does anyone have a cure for those little green grasshoppers? They are turning my beautiful basil into just stalks by literally shredding the leaves.

 

[nioka]

Does anyone have a cure for those little green grasshoppers? They are turning my beautiful basil into just stalks by literally shredding the leaves.

Yes. You catch them and tear their ruddy heads off. ( or you use a lot of sprays)

 

[arminius]

thanks everyone.
i'll give the detergent spray a crack, as im trying hard to avoid chemicals.
i also find the ambush method works with g'hoppers etc...creep up behind them while they're munching away.
that reminds me.
how do you catch a unique bird?

you 'neek up behind it.

how do you catch a tame bird?

the tame way.