this should keep me busy!!
thanks mate, appreciated
My fiance does pretty much all the gardening, I just do the lifting and eat the results.
She used to get all her herbs in pots but now is crazy on propigation (I think that’s the spelling) and wants to become completely self sustainable.
Plus she’s super excited cos’ she gets her compost bin tomorrow!
Has anyone ever grown a coffee tree? My in-laws used to have one but at a house they no longer live at.
haha - you would!
You’ve seen my upcycled beds right? Check 'em when you return the tyres.
The plum tree is blossoming. No delicious plums, but beautiful blossoms.
Man Spirito, loving this thread.
At my house the garden is coming slowly this spring. Tho’ still reaping the rewards of our autumn plantings - cavelo nero, peas, sorrel, lettuce, rocket, coriander, garlic, and more herbs than you can poke a stick at - but we moved six weeks ago from a 3 x 6m yard to a quarter acre section - massively overgrown and requiring muchos TLC. But after having doing some recovery work on the lemon tree and roses, cleaning out the chicken coop, I’ve built us a 2.5 x 4m raised bed using bricks found in the yard and have now got the earth settling under hessian sacks. Soon to cover over with newspaper, manure and lucerne mulch. Planting either this weekend or next. Chickens coming next weekend too hopefully. Tossing up whether to get chickens or bantams. Chickens being good layers but not great with the vege patch… decisions, decisions. Pictures coming soon.
BTW - loving having compost bins!
Jody Rigby?
Hey Rolly I know this question was directed to Spirito but I’ll throw in my 2c as I’ve just come out of 4 years of having an inner city micro garden (as a renter too).
What I would recommend is getting a few BIG pots, some organic potting mix and plant lots of different things all in together. Fragrant herbs, flowers and chillis in with your leafy greens, brassicas and tomatoes - that way you’ll attract the good insects and deter the bad ones - in theory at least. Big pots are good cos plants can get deeper roots and they won’t heat up as much as smaller ones, also look at plastic rather than terracotta, because a) they’re much cheaper, and b) they won’t loose as much water. Also its really important to use mulch (lucerne, sugar cane, pea straw…) mulch will retain something like 60% more water than an unmulched garden bed and you won’t get weeds.
You can grow pretty much anything in a pot, with the exception of pumpkins and melons. In the last couple of years we’ve successfully grown spinach, silverbeet, lettuce, tomatoes, chilli, capsicum, snow peas, purple beans, potatoes, zucchini, ornamental gourds, dwarf eggplant, nasturtiums, chamomile, any other herb you can think of. We’ve even grown a globe artichoke in a pot.
Try to grow things from seed, as its much cheaper too. Head over to the nursery at Ceres in East Brunswick. They have all the things you’ll need.
nice silver laced wyne dots…are they yours. we had six, swaped a laying trio for a hind of goat and have just raised 6 ostralorps and 6 speckled sussex.
have got seedlings in the hot house , snake beans, snow peas, heirloom tomatos, all the herbs, potatos, capsicums green/red, cucumbers, zuchinis (spelling i know), and some other stuff that i now cant remember, the joy of having 1150 square meter block, add 3 kids 2 cats. also planted christmas bush and gardinias( my faveroute ) will get pics.
bantoms are good but 3 egg single person omlette kinda suck, but they make good mumma hens. get ostrolorps big hardy aussie hens that are very dosile and good layers, my wofe is am members of a backyard poltury forum. its good if you need help.
Thanks Luke - sounds like what we want.
All njs garden.
Ripped up a lot of the veggies to get more Bonsai in.
Going to get some tomatoes going and i have a great lime tree thats hangs over from the neighbours.
My housemate came home the other night so drunk he took a shit in the garden. That’s as far as our garden has gotten this spring.
Winter means fresh orange juice for me:) Still waiting for the year I don’t need to add a teaspoon of sugar. That’s about the only edible thing in the backyard, except for the odd fig from the old italian ladies tree that hangs over the fence
I must say I’m impressed by the variety of what people here are growing and also the enthusiasm. My beds and pots are only small in space but I think they yield well + I’ve been composting for a couple of years now which helps quite a lot.
I was wondering how many of you grow from seeds? I’ve had mixed results and sometimes rush things along by planting nursery grown seedling punnets. Of course with that there is sometimes little in the way of range, and even less in the way of organic or heirloom varieties. The latter is something I’d like to grow more of. I’ve come across the following site which has a mind boggling range and variety of plants, vegetables and fruits and am thinking about some of their options.
Discount Seed Collections - The Diggers Club
Also, if someone is buying a certain variety of seeds I think it’d be cool to share or start a kind of “seed club” where we could post or split up orders here on fixed.org. For instance, many of the seed varieties on the diggers club site come in 200+ packets. It’s not a cost thing … Most of us would be happy with just a few tomato plants and from them it’s easy to keep seeds for the next year, so having to keep all the extra seeds isn’t really necessary and could easily be split up and shared with others.
I haven’t ordered or joined the Diggers Club yet. Wondering if there’s other similar sellers of seeds and seedlings and if anyone has experience with or better ideas for organic and heirloom veg varieties.
plenty of Italian gardeners amongst my workmates so always plenty of variety seed wise. They always bring a variety of stuff which gets sown en masse at the Council nursery and then potted on and shared around amongst co-workers.
someone bought a pack of these back from Italy Pepper Friggitello and I noticed they had just germinated this week. Must put my name on a couple. Apparently great for frying. Always plenty of basil too.
Love a home grown eggplant meself.
long time member, mainly for the smugness. Their gardens on the mornington peninsula are incredible.
There is other heirloom place which is cheaper. Will find out the name of it
Just spent an hour in my little herb garden / veggie patch getting it ready for planting. I didn’t realise I had so many pet worms! This is a bit of a clearer pic of what I have at the moment. Not much space in this courtyard (I have a bigger one on the other side of my townhouse), but I have a few plans to make it a bit better. Suggestions welcome!
Heres my small input:
Chill plant, doesn’t look the best but produces amazingly hot chillies year round.
Next is my Orange tree, not much on it at the moment but again the oranges are perfectly sweet to eat or for juice, no sugar needed!
Next i’m going to try with Jalapeños and see how they go.
When i lived at the parents i had a pretty banging vege garden.
- Basil, Parsley, Coriander, Thyme and Oregano
- Tomatoes, Capsicums and Chillies
- One large olive tree that i saved when it was little which pays dividends still when it fruits
Been really slack the last 2 years but the lady friend is really getting into it at the moment and i promised to build her a garden bed so i’ll probs knock that out next weekend.