Girt by Dirt

Last weekend was a pretty productive one in the Front Yard Farm, although apart from the previously mentioned spuds, you'd be hard pressed to tell just by looking at it. I finally got the leftover bricks and rubble cleared away and the mounds of soil redistributed roughly to where it should be. The temporary brick recycling facility was decommissioned, and it's surrounding soil moved. It occurred to me that all the mortar that was pummeled to dust by the jackhammer as it was chipped off the old bricks would make the soil a bit too alkaline, since it contains lime. And of course I'd been doing this right where the citrus trees are going and they do not like alkaline soils. Fortunately, after several amusing hours separating out all the rocks, mortar and broken glass from the soil, it wasn't too much of a problem to redistribute it around the vegie beds. 

Starting to look like a proper garden again. A sort of dirt garden anyway..

As an aside, you always find unexpected stuff when digging in the garden, and the past few years have yielded some interesting finds, including:

- an assortment of gardening tools
- old coins I haven't yet cleaned up or identified
- a glass bottle stopper
- layers of plastic sheeting
- several ancient soft drink can ring pulls encased in cement
- a plastic army man
- a lump of coal

Anyway, my activities didn't go unnoticed by the neighbourhood, with quite a few people stopping for chat or commenting as they passed. I was digging out some nasty onion weed next to the chard when our Greek neighbour stopped by.

"This is very bad!" he said several times, pointing at where I was digging. I though he was criticising my chard.
"The chard?"
"No this!" (pointing at the weeds) "This weed! Very bad! You have one, you get ONE MILLION!!"

Ergh. Don't I know it...

Our Japanese next-door neighbour said the garden was beautiful as she was arriving home. A few minutes later her Indian husband said it looked very professional as he was rushing out. We live in a refreshingly multicultural area.

A passing jogger said "Keep up the good work". It is nice to receive a little random encouragement.

Another lady mentioned that there's a new community garden starting up just a few blocks away. I must remember to grow some extra seedlings to send their way in an attempt to get the whole neighbourhood growing weird purple vegetables..

 

An elderly Greek lady asked if she could have some chillies, so I gave her the last few half decent ones left. I warned her several times that they are REALLY hot ones. I do hope she understood.

Can't wait to plant stuff!

The Professional

We had some friends around for lunch yesterday, one of whom is a professional gardener. I'd been keen to show him our little garden for some time, but started feeling a bit nervous a few days ago. You see I cast a critical eye over the place and realised it was not looking its best. The fig tree is covered in scale and has some nasty outbreaks of furry caterpillars, the kale has become the cradle of a new aphid civilisation and even my prized tomatoes were looking a bit brown and sad in places. So after talking vegie growing with him whenever we'd met, I was a little uncomfortable at the thought of showing him around a distinctly unimpressive looking garden.

I forgot: he is a professional gardener. He's seen it all before and was quick to dismiss my ego-destroying disasters as being just what happens in a humid summer when you grow temperate-climate vegetables. The weather lately has also been particularly well suited to helping all our pesty little friends with their breeding and eating.

Our conversation served to remind me that growing things is always a bit hit and miss. Farmers with generations of growing experience still experience crop failures so why would it be any different for a home gardener? In my case half of the fun is trying new things, and with failures hopefully comes knowledge gained. And anyway, the kale can still be used (after some scrubbing) and the fig tree still has figs on it, (at least until the bats notice them)... So while it would be grand to have a picture-perfect weedless, pestless, embarrassing-dead-thing-free garden, that's just not going to happen. Our front yard farm is on display to the world (or at least to the street) as an honest example of home vegie growing. And while I do have a few plans to neaten things up a bit, all of our successes, failures and ill-conceived experiments will remain visible for all to see, at least until they harvested... or the bats get them... or the aphids...

Down on the Farm

Just to give you an idea of how not big our garden is, here's a photo.

This is from December 2008 showing what was going on back then. Clockwise from bottom left: random flowers, sweet corn, tomatoes against the house, wire potato silos, dead lychee tree, leeks along the fence, zucchini, dill and parsley (top right), carrots and snapdragons, and dwarf and climbing beans (centre).

We got heaps of beans, tomatoes, parsley and corn. I haven't staked corn in the past, but it can get a bit windy in this garden. I looked out one day and they looked like they were about to be uprooted. So I staked them all with bamboo. It seemed to help.

I planted the potatoes way too late (November) and probably got fewer than I planted.

The carrots were excellent, although we got a few mutant ones. They still tasted nice.

Zucchini numbers were a little disappointing.We needn't have worried though, I'll explain later when I write about zucchinis..

Leeks didn't do that well, probably not enough sun and poor drainage in that bed.

Dill grew quickly giving us more than we knew what to do with, but went to seed soon afterwards.

Finally, the obligatory produce shot:

Tasty.

A Brief History

We bought our little house in mid 2007, the front yard being one of the reasons why. At around 36 square metres it's pretty small for a vegetable garden, but it's what we have. It had obviously been used to grow vegies before, as evidenced by the brick garden bed borders and bok choy that spontaneously appears each spring. There was also a fig tree and lychee tree. The fig tree seemed to be on its last legs, with signs of termite attack and a distinct lean. I thought it was for the chop, but come spring it burst into life and produced lots of figs. The lychee tree produced one rather disappointing crop, then dropped dead from suspected fungal root rot..

The garden beds themselves were of course full of weeds. Onion weed, asthma weed, wandering dew and lots of other kinds I don't know the names of. There was much weeding.

Since then we've planted all kinds of wonderful things: tomatoes, lettuce, beans, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, rocket, cabbage, kale, chard, corn, peas, beetroot, leeks, broad beans, radishes and a few other things that just didn't work. Don't worry, you'll hear all about the failures as well as the successes.

The soil wasn't too bad to start with, except for a few areas of solid clay, and is slowly improving thanks to the careful attention and the addition of organic matter. The other annoyance is the amount of rocks, broken glass and building debris. It's probably been there since the house was built, 50 years ago. I actually found a lump of concrete with a ring pull stuck in it..

So where we are today is mid way through our third summer. The tomatoes are starting to pick up, the beans are producing and the figs are ripening. We have rainbow chard, red cabbage and kale which can be harvested when needed and I'm really looking forward to seeing how our first batch of eggplant turns out.

Even while this is going on I'm starting to plan for winter. The weather here is mild enough to grow quite a few things through the winter as we're close enough to the coast to not get any frost. Apart from trying new varieties, the focus this year is also on better planning to ensure more continuous production and making better use of the available space. Oh yes, and this blog too...

What's it about?

Hi. Thanks for dropping by.

This little blog is a chance for me to record and share the fun, frivolity and frustration of growing vegetables in a small urban front yard garden. The front yard part is important, as it changes what is normally a very private activity to a very public one. There are good and bad aspects to this of course (I'll tell you later about the leek thieves) but it's so far been an overwhelmingly positive and rewarding experience. People passing by frequently stop to chat, ask about what's growing or to show their kids where vegies come from. Hopefully it's also helping to provide a little encouragement to anyone else who may be thinking of growing their own food.