Garden Chat

Good progress getting the yard set up with lots of garden patches for next year.

Repotted the basil today in the indoor garden

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Even more repotting! Temporarily relocated a few plants and ordered another set of lights for a third shelf.

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Itā€™s a few :smiley:

Weā€™re trying to work out which ones we like the flavour of and when they fruit so we can get an extended season for our area. Blueberry Burst is out earliest ripening bush this year. Our favourites for flavour so far are Magnolia and Blue Rose.

Hereā€™s our current list and where theyā€™re at in the season, taking into account we are just into our third month of Spring.

3 X Blueberry Burst (ripening last few weeks)
3 X Blue Crop (flowers & fruit)
3 X Blueberry Kisses (ripening this last week)
3 X Blue Rose (flowers & fruit)
3 X Brigitta (flowers & fruit)
3 X Caroline (flowers & fruit)
1 X Darrow (flowers & fruit) - only one at the stall
3 X Denise (fruiting)
1 X Elliott (flowers & fruit) - only one in the shop
3 X Jelly Bean (fruiting)
3 X Jenny (fruiting)
3 X Joy (fruiting)
1 X Magnolia (fruiting) - lost two to heat last summer
3 X Margaret (flowers & fruit)
3 X Northland (fruiting)
3 X Oā€™Neill (fruiting)
4 X Peach Sorbet (fruiting)
3 X Pink Icing (fruiting)
3 X Powder Blue (fruiting)
3 X Sharpeblue (ripening now)
3 X Sunshine Blue (fruiting)
3 X Vitality (ripening now)

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And itā€™s done!

Managed to get it potted up this morning while the sun was still shining and before I did a blueberry census.

Time for a new list of things to do. Will dwell on it for a day or so, but I know of a few things that need to be added already.

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SubPod Kickstarter in effect.

Meet Subpod: Turn Food Waste Into Greenspace, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/saadiallan/subpod?ref=android_project_share

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I am in awe. Complete awe. I need to expand my blueberry farm!

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Blueberries donā€™t grow well at my altitude. I have envy.

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One of @GJTā€™s blueberries is my name and now I want to try it here. Even though so far blueberries like my yard just enough to stay exactly the same year to year. Which is not much.

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I always knew you were a Joy :heart:

(picked for the pun; your name may or may not be Joy but Iā€™m not willing to stalk you to find out)

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Turns out you cant post more than three times consecutively in a yhread.

Wrote this the other day but couldnā€™t post it.

Did a bit of depotting of bulbs the today. Just the ones that had died down and had no leaves left. Trying to save the bulbs before the ravaging slugs make a meal of them.

And my Black Dragon Bearded Iris opened up this morning.

This is one of at least three of the subdivided plants that have flower spikes on them this year. Last year they didnā€™t grow spikes, just flowered at the base of the leaf fans. Mum had some info from the Yarra Valley Plant Fair the other week that suggests the lack of flower spike could be due to not cold enough.

IMG_2206

Makes sense, Iā€™d bought the plants from #thebiggreenshed in Spring and planted them out. This time around theyā€™d spent Winter in our garden, so had been subjected to the cold.

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Our garden is getting a huge soaking tomorrow before the heat hits, then a new fence on Sunday when itā€™s 15Ā°C cooler.

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:grin:

ā€¦itā€™s actually Sharpeblueā€¦


That Iris is gorgeous.

So is the bulb organisation!

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I would have guessed Peach Sorbet.

But also Iā€™ve been assuming all along that your actual name is Kat, possibly short for Catherine.

Itā€™s just a seedling tray for 24 seeds.

Did some stuff.

Bought a replacement pomegranate for the one that has been cooked.

Potted up the Pleione orchid I bought on Friday, a Tongariro Theolia.

Picked some white mulberries for the kids.

Sifted some bulbs out of the dirt theyā€™d been potted in.

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The early cold snap has stayed around long enough that the ground is legit frozen on top, so unless we get a sustained warm spell Iā€™m definitely done with fall projects except for maybe cleaning up dead plants killed by frost.

Iā€™m thinking of doing hoops over all my beds and then putting little snap buttons on them, and then fitting various types of materials (solar plastic, netting, etc) with snaps to fit them on the hoops depending on what I need for each section and time. The one issue Iā€™m seeing is that unless I make the hoops super tall, I wonā€™t be able to put anything on them at some point when the height of the plants exceeds the height of the arcs. Any suggestions here? I was thinking I could set up some kind of rail at the corners that would allow me to adjust the height, and then also fit the same materials to the rail, but that might be overkill.

What material do people use for the hoops?

You can use PVC. If you pour boiling (or very hot anyway) water in them you can bend them quite a lot. (Search on youtube, I know there are videos.)

You can use rebar and pound it in at intervals (and secure with the brackets they use on pipe), and then slide the PVC over it. (Actually, maybe a 2-PVC system, with a very small gauge one over the rebar, and the larger gauge as the hoop.)

I (personally) probably would not change them out within a season because it would be a pain but you could remove them in the summer and when you rotate crops put whatever ones are appropriate for the size. For keeping late fall stuff longer itā€™s probably pretty short stuff anyway? (lettuce, greens, kale, collards (though my kale and collards top 2ā€™ easily every year), root veggies. Tall stuff needs to be away from the edge anyway. Eggplants and peppers are probably not worth it (in the fall) as they really need the heat to produce, but could help in the spring. Although it really depends. You probably arenā€™t going to be covering things like tomatoes in the fall this way unless you grow dwarf varieties. What are you wanting to cover? In the spring, when the weather fluctuates and it dips a tad too cold and you want to protect, plants are not going to be very big yet anyway.

Many professional growers use thick gauge galvanized wire to hold up row covers.

Another option besides PVC is galvanized (EMT) conduit but that requires a tool to bend.

Good points. I also want to have it for netting to protect from rabbits & birds, because there were some plants they just destroyed ā€“ largely beans & peas. But that may have been only something to be concerned about because the plants were so small and tender. I would like to protect from deer too but Iā€™m not sure if bird netting helps with that.

I wasnā€™t thinking of moving the whole tunnel away mid-season ā€“ more trying out making a mini-polytunnel where the greenhouse plastic could attach and detach with snaps and be replaced when it warmed up with bird or insect netting. Like always have the poly structure there but be able to add or remove or temporarily lift material quickly and easily.