Well my front gardens look rather lovely at the moment things are stepping. I have probably about 20 tomoato plants 20 beans and all manner of greens and flowers growing is rather nice. At our house in Melbourne we have an apple,plum,apricot,olive,peach and lemon tree. We have masses of lemons and recoently the plum and apricot trees and been producing fruit.

Meanwhile at the estate the 6 yabbie traps that I bought have come in useful and we dinned on yabbie for the first time the other week, I also have been very busy trying to make the area more green. (I’m not sure if its working) but I have dug a pretty long swale so its now “permaculture” ;-). I also have probably about 30-40 potato plants growing at the moment. See pics below

I have been busy recently. We have recently moved and the last couple of week I went mad put in a spring / summer garden. I have also made some significant progress at the estate. The contrast is amazing at the home the soil is dark a loamy and full of worms at the estate if I want to grow anything I have to dig a hole first with a pick axe (and it takes a long time).

I have setup automated irrigation in both places – set to go off every 3 days. Like anything its not to hard once you work out how to do it. The timer cost $30 from bunnings. At the estate I also needed to put in a filter ($80). I also needed piping (although theres quite a bit at the estate allready)

Below is a sideshow of my new garden / house in Melbourne

Please do not watch the video below if you are offended by foul language!
When I am not swearing about the irrigation I am showing whats going on at the Estate lots of “big potatoes!”

The garden has been going great recently with all the rain. I put together a video on how its going below

Clare and I are now the proud owners of a 20 acre property with 2 dams, 1 house (with solar) a shed and a tipee near Castlemaine.

• Visit Australia Castlemaine
• Wikipedia Castlemaine

Although the pumpkin plants in my garden are huge they keep producing little baby pumpkins that just fall when about the size of a tennis ball.

A friend of mine has suggested it is casued by the fact that they have not germinated. The cure?

Get a flower (that has no bulge under it)
Wipe the stamen over the flowers on top of the little pumpkins

I have now tried this – wait and see I guess!

My Pumpkin plants have taken over!

My mint is being eaten to bits

I have 2 tomatoes yes they look a bit sad don’t they. However these will be the first tomatoes I’ve actually got to grow. The plants though have all got this rot – I think it is fungal. The pumpkin has something similar. It looks like it has had some dirty light brown stains.

I came accross this article that rates vegetables by the most pesticides to the least. Its pretty useful – seemingly apples are the worst along with celery, peppers and nectarines. The best include onions peas and mango. Interesting see full article.

I have been wanting to use the water from our washing machine.

From Garden 1/02/10 7:08 AM

I bought a 200 litre water tub

From Garden 1/02/10 7:08 AM

From Garden 1/02/10 7:08 AM

as you can see our washing machine uses about 180 litres of water with one load. Our house uses the washing machine about 3 times a week- that’s alot of water! I am going to use this water on the beds in the side of the house.

I have mulched these beds in preparation for planting.

I have just read a very good article on using grey water
http://www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/plant_culture/gray_water_for_gardens.html

I have one tomato plant that I bought as a small plant. It is a Mortgage Lifter which is is an indeterminant. It is very bushy my mum told me that I will need to prune it to get a good harvest.

I found the following page that explains what I need to do.

http://www.wikihow.com/Prune-Tomatoes

or this video is very good

I am trying to learn from a few of the things I have seen in 2009. Much of the problems I had with 2009 was too many pests. I also had problems training my vertical plants up sticks. To get over this I am trying to use the plants together better. I have just planted corn and beans together in a bunch of beds.

I have also planted marigolds and chamomile and strawflowers to encourage more predator insects. I have also planted basil with the tomatos.