A Summery Summary

Time flies. The Summer's long finished and so, nearly, is the Autumn. Before having a look at what's going on at the moment I'm going to do a bit of a review of the Spring/Summer season and talk about the spectacular successes and the... er... other things.

The Good
Well you've probably already seen all the good stuff here. The corn was spectacular, the potatoes were tasty buried treasure and the sweet golden beetroot like jewels in our Summertime salads.

The world's cutest corn cob

 The carrots continued to provide orange, yellow and purple crunchiness and the early Summer lettuce crop was also wonderful, with the Australian Yellow Leaf variety in particular outyielding everything else in sight. The sunflowers were enormous, with only one mysteriously beheaded and the others slightly munched on by cockatoos, but not before the neighbourhood had a good chance to stop and admire them. The yellow-stemmed chard powered through its second summer, providing more than we could eat. I also planted a small trellised bed with frost beans (more on that when I finally get around to writing "Beans Pt 2") which was very productive.

Pretty frost beans dried for storage.

The mysterious goings-on in the as yet unseen back yard have also been very fruitful but I'll keep you in suspense on that one too for now..

The Bad
The tomatoes were a disappointment this year. Had I pulled out the volunteer "Tommy Toe" plant that sprung up in the wrong bed we would have had very few on our plates. The ones I actually planted were very slow to get going then started to wilt and look miserable just as the fruit was coming on. I have a few ideas about why, one of which is that the weather basically sucked. I shouldn't feel too bad though, because I'm not alone. From what I've heard and read just about everyone in Eastern Australia had tomato problems this year. Fortunately that one volunteer plant did very well, and kept us in tasty tomatoes for a few months. This year I tried growing some "Crystal Apple" cucumbers and they were pretty nice, but unfortunately we got maybe 6 or 7 before the plants dropped dead. The basil just didn't seem to get going at all, and the tiny plants sat there sulking until early Autumn before finally deciding to grow. Likewise the first round of rocket produced some unhappy, spindly plants as they bolted to seed in the hot weather.

The Ugly
The much anticipated fig bonanza failed to eventuate. The fruit was a little slow to appear, probably due to the big prune I gave the tree last year. The scale that was left after the prune was sprayed with white oil twice, so all was looking good for a bumper season. I even bought some netting to stop, or at least reduce, the losses from the nightly visits by a couple of hungry bats. But it was all to no avail as the tree was practically skeletonised one leaf at a time by wave upon wave of leaf beetles and their larvae. It went something like this:

1. Leaf beetle appears, it's this innocuous looking brown beetle.
2. Many leaf beetles appear, then go on feeding frenzy, feasting upon the new leaves as they shoot.
3. Leaf beetles lay leaf beetle eggs.
4. Leaf beetle eggs hatch into vast numbers of icky leaf beetle larvae. Sort of like green and black caterpillars.
5. Leaf beetle larvae reduce leaves to leaf skeletons in short order.
6 Did I mention that there vast numbers of them?
7. Leaf beetle larvae turn into leaf beetles. Goto 1.

Damge from leaf beetle larvae. That black blob in the centre is a fig covered in them.

Spraying white oil, "mechanical" removal and general harassment of the blighters had little impact. As a consequence, there wasn't a whole lot of fruit. I think we actually ate maybe half a dozen and left the rest to the bats. So it looks like a rethink is required for next season. There will be further pruning to try and get the tree to a more manageable size. Possible severe pruning. Also further research is needed into the best way to rain merciless death upon deal with the leaf beetles. I also tried to get in a late crop of "Parisian Pickling" cucumbers as well, but they dropped dead before producing anything but flowers and aphids.

The Verdict
The source of most of my problems this year was the weather. December was nice, but January and February were very hot and dry. We had 7 consecutive days with tops over 33 degrees. One night I went outside at midnight and it was still over 30 degrees. Nuts! The heat no doubt caused a few things to bolt to seed early and generally knock everything around a bit. Then March and April were wet. Stupidly so. March had about 50% more rain than the long term average, April more than double. With all this moisture it was party time for bugs, mildew and other damp-loving nasties. The mildew killed off the cucumbers, the beetles got the figs and I suspect it was some sort of fungal wilt or nematodes that bothered the tomatoes. So for next Summer I'm preparing a new bed for the tomatoes, in which I'm currently growing mustard as a biofumigant to kill off the nematodes and other soil-bourne baddies. This will be dug in and left to decompose for a while before the tomatoes go in next spring. The cucumbers will go in much earlier so they're fruiting well before the serious humidity arrives. Apart from that it's just a matter of accepting that when trying out new varieties, or trying to sqeeze in a filler crop a bit later or earlier than normal, some things are going to fail. It's all part of the fun and a good lesson in why diversification is a good thing.

Taterfest 2010

Today was potato harvest day, surely one of the most exciting of the year. No seriously, it's like Christmas as a 9 year-old: you get a big present to unwrap and you're not sure exactly what's in it. It could be that awesome piece of Battlestar Galactica merchandise you've been asking for, or it could be a very, very bad jumper (or cake jumper). It was exactly like that today, except I was hoping for a big load of potatoes. 

I planted the seed potatoes back in August, and showed a few progress photos as they grew. This what they looked like today:

A couple of scraggly plants were still going, most had died back.

The two varieties planted were "Royal Blue" and "King Edward". The Royal Blue potatoes were planted along the back of the bed and died back earlier, about a month ago now. The King Edwards struggled on, and except for a few small plants were pretty much gone two weeks ago. Both weren't helped by being partially overshadowed by the fig tree when it exploded back into life in late September. Anyway, to the diggings!

Royal Blue Potatoes are actually kind of purple

The Royal Blues seemed to have done well and were mostly of a decent size. What's more, I have never seen so many fat, happy wormies in my life. The combination of cow manure and suger cane mulch has made them very happy indeed. I ended up with half a bucketload of Royal Blues. Next were the King Edwards:

King Edwards have attractive pink splodges on them

These guys were a bit less consistent in their size, and obviously a bit newer, having more pale, thinner skins. I could have left them a few more weeks to harden up I guess. But they kept coming and coming..

A lot of potatoes

..until I ended up with a whole bucket of them.

In the blue bucket, weighing 2.3kg: "Royal Blue". And in the Yellow bucket, weighing 5.0kg, "King Edward".

So, in terms of yield, King Edward is the winner. Still, the Royal Blues did very well, despite the disadvantage of growing up against a wall with less space to spread its roots. It was also more exposed to wind and a little more overshadowed from the fig tree. The total potato yield was 7.3 kg, which I don't think is bad for a partially shaded 1.5 square metre bed.

But yields aside, the important part, as always, is the eating. A handful of each type were cut into pieces, parboiled until nearly done, tossed with grapeseed oil, salt, pepper and thyme from the garden, then roasted in a hot oven for about 15 minutes. They then went into our potato salad with chick peas, tuna and finely chopped boiled egg, topped with a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, eschallots, thyme and chives. The result was that these were the tastiest potatoes I have ever eaten. EVER. Both had a creamy textured flesh and a nutty flavoured skin. The flesh of the Royal Blues was a bit yellower with the skin slightly thicker, which turned brown when cooked. The King Edwards kept their pink splodges.

One of the reasons I grew potatoes was to have something that would store for a while, so that if there was a glut it wouldn't go to waste. This year however, we are not going to get the chance to store them very long. They're going to be gone. Very soon.

One Week at a Time

It's been a busy week, unfortunately not in the garden. It was so busy that I never found the time to post some photos I took last weekend. But never mind, because I thought it's be neat to compare them with this weekend's photos to get an idea of how quickly things are moving along. So here they are..

Here's my army of pea seedlings from last weekend..

..and this weekend. Soon they shall be ready for battle! I mean, making peas.

The apple trees continue to awake from their Winter slumber with new leaves and blossoms.

The Granny Smith from last weekend.

And the same branch today. Pretty!

The potato plants also seem to have doubled in size, thanks to a little rain and a lot of sunshine.

Happy potatoes. Note the amount of visible dirt.

Very happy potatoes. Not much dirt to be seen.

You might have also noticed a couple of volunteer coriander plants in with the potatoes. They're doing fine and welcome to stay as far as I'm concerned. The main coriander patch is now flowering and going to seed but looks great. See random coriander shot below:

Coriander is pretty enough to put in a vase. Which we did.

 Anyway, that's about all for now. But just because I like them, here are few more pics of apple blossoms. This time on the Pink Lady tree:

Pink Lady blossom

More Pink Lady blossoms. Just because they're nice.

Signs of Spring

Spring, it would seem, is upon us. The fig tree is about to explode into greenery and the very first fig for the season has appeared.

The first tiny figlet

The just-planted fruit trees are getting ready for some growth. I hope they'll be happy in their new homes with plenty of space to expand.

New leaf on the Dwarf Pink Lady

New flower (?) on the Dwarf Pink Lady

The potatoes, planted two weeks ago, have also emerged in their usual hairy green manner.

Yay for Spring

Spuds!

Having spent most of Saturday and an hour or so today moving rubble, redistributing soil and weeding, I finally got the chance today to PLANT SOMETHING! Spuds!

 This year's varieties are Royal Blue and King Edward. After a busy weekend I managed to get them in the ground just as it was getting dark.

 

Here are the seed potatoes snuggled up in their bed. They should do well in this spot if the amount of weeds that previously grew here is anything to go by. They're planted about 10cm deep and 30cm apart in trenches. A bag of cow manure was mixed in, followed by a sprinkling of blood & bone for good measure. As the plants come up I'll back fill the trenches to produce more tubers and make sure they're all covered up and don't go green.

Factoid of the day: Every part of the potato plant, except for non-green tubers, is toxic.

Hopefully, come November, there'll be more potatoes than I started with.

A Path! A Path!

The path is finished, in so much as the brick border is done. The actual surface material has yet to be determined, right now it's hard (when dry) or sticky (when wet) clay. I'm thinking straw, sawdust, bark or gravel. Gravel is maybe a bit permanent and hard to get rid of for my liking, at least the others will rot down eventually on their own.

Also, being clay underneath means it doesn't drain very quickly. If it turns out to be a problem I can always dig a channel along its length and put some ag-pipe and gravel in it. We've had a few heavy showers lately and so far so good. At the moment it ends quite abruptly, which was done just to see what it looked like. I'll probably change that to make it blend slowly into the garden bed, maybe with a few stepping stones.

Now I have to find somewhere to stick the excess bricks and building rubble. Under the house maybe...

In other news our seed potatoes arrived yesterday! So exciting! This year we're planting King Edward and Royal Blue varieties. Yes, I know a parcel full of potatoes may not excite everyone but think of it this way:

1 potato + good growing conditions = 10 potatoes

That's a lot of yummy roast, boiled or mashed potatoes.

And chippies! Think of all the chippies...