state of the summer garden

[tielan]

Quick bed-check.

Avo-Shed: chook tractor (since at least November)

Apricot-Avo: corn is tall and full of ears, could probably do with some extra watering/mulching.

Apricot fore: potatoes (need digging out), Queensland arrowroot (also may need harvesting), random curcubit that doesn't look like anything we know.

Crepe-Apricot: Popping corn (not very good), tomatoes, kale (left over from winter), some comfrey and parsley as edging. I seeded a summer mulch there yesterday, and planted some 'homegrown pumpkin' seedlings, but one Hainan chicken got out and probably dustbathed there and killed them.

Apple-Crepe: tomatoes, beans, a couple of pumpkins/curcubits,

Stone-Apple: tomatoes, 'good bug mix', sunflower.

Stone fore: Wintermelon seedlings, zucchini seedlings. I trimmed down the stone fruit tree pretty severely - it went up and up and up and the only harvest I really got were the plums, so I'm cutting it back.

Plum-Stone: ginger up the back, parsley, a single beetroot, some tomatillos that are just about to fruit, only I want to put the chook dome over it for the next two months...

Upper Cherry-Peach: bathtub water garden - need to check for a hole in the plug area. It's leaking.

Lower Cherry-Peach: bathtub garden - nothing in here yet, but I'm thinking I might plant the garlic in here if I can get enough good soil. (Good soil is tough to find in decent quantities; at least until the compost bioreactors finish getting their acts together...

Chook house: Due to be moved sometime this weekend (I hope; maybe.)

Asparagus bed: (upper step bed)

Annual herb bed: (lower step bed)

Vegepod:

Front row:eggplants, capsicum (peppers)

Middle row:tomatoes

Back row:melons, cucumbers, possibly a pumpkin or two? They're growing up the vines with the plan to provide shade (this aspect of the house faces north, which is the sunny side here in the southern hemisphere, so the shade would have been good a month earlier, but the bed was only created in December).

Front garden/orchard: various plants which aren't doing so well - probably the soil isn't rich enough or deep enough for them. I'd need to run the chooks through here rather longer than I did, I think.



There's quite a lot in there.

Comments

[unicornduke]

It all looks super lovely!

You said the stone fruit tree only produced plums. Did you do several types of fruit grafted on?

[tielan]

Yes, that tree is a fruit salad tree - a stonefruit graft, with an apricot, a nectarine, a peach, and a plum grafted to it. You're supposed to keep the grafts in balance, but I've let some of them run away somewhat, which has resulted in a very oddly shaped tree, and serious unbalancing.

The apricots fell off long before they were ripe, the nectarines got fruit fly (I didn't bag them), the peaches were small and we didn't get many of them, but the plums were pretty good (although not as sweet as I'd like).

[unicornduke]

That's really neat! I'd heard of it, but no one really seemed to be doing it. Hopefully you can work on it if you've got time!

[cesy]

Lots of plants, and delightful to see summer when I'm in the middle of winter. Also chickens, yay!

[tielan]

I love having the chickens in the garden, they make preparing beds so much easier than they used to be!

[robby]

Wow, you have so many different things! My almond tree is starting to bud, and that's the first sign of spring. I may only grow 4 vegetables this year, but I do grow huge quantities.

[tielan]

I was taught to value variety over volume, although I tend to find that I don't really get the volume that I'd like. I'm still working towards soil fertility for better crops.

The corn bed had a compost pile on it for at least 3-4 months, and then it lay fallow for a while before I planted the corn seedlings out. I haven't put much fertiliser on it (a bucket of watered down chook manure), and yet look at it go!

[mdehners]

I ordered a multi Asian Pear this yr. I've heard you have to keep a close eye on making each variety equal. Probably easier with the same species though;>!
Cheers,
Pat

[tielan]

I had one of those, but the climate wasn't good for it, so I gifted it to some friends down south. It gets the necessary chill hours to produce fruit, and they get a bumper crop!

This 4-stone fruit tree, though, I let the apricot section get out of hand...and then got no apricots. So...

[eggsbenedict]

Wow you have so much stuff growing! It's so lovely and green despite the weather :D

I find Gardening Australia's soil "recipes" are generally pretty fertile and affordable; I did our back bed with the lasagna bed method which they've also covered. Still wish I'd remembered the magic of potassium earlier!

[tielan]

You've reminded me that I have to ask the neighbours if they'll dump their grass clippings over the picket fence for me to turn into hot mulch in the compost bays. In this weather, everyone's mowing like crazy (except us, and the front yard is beginning to look suspiciously jungle-like).

[bridgetmkennitt]

Yay, such a lovely garden!