Planting Potatoes

I didn't want to plant my potatoes in my veggie patch again.  Aside from not having anymore space, I want to avoid finding potatoes in the bed forever, so I went to Masters and picked up some potato growing bags.

Seed potatoes, ready to be planted

These bags are pretty cool.  I picked up 4 packs of 2 (8 in total) for $20!  Bargain!  I got 2 different styles.  One style is round with a little 'door' to harvest potatoes and the other is a larger, rectangle bag with a bottom attached by velcro.  Both of these mean I can grow the potatoes where I want to and can easily harvest them.  It also means that I can move them around the yard if I need to.

Pea straw and worm castings

The bottom of the bag has drainage holes.  To give it a bit of a boost I layered the bottom with pea straw and some worm castings (some worms were added too) followed by some soil.

Potato being planted in the bag

I then added the potatoes with the small growth pointing up.  One seed potato in each round bag, and 2 in the rectangular bag. I covered all of these with more soil and then watered.

As the potatoes grow, I will add more soil so that the potatoes will continue to grow upwards. The taller it grows the more potatoes I will get (hopefully!)

I have put the 2 round bags together near the composter and the worm farm, and the rectangular bag near the little greenhouse where the lavender pot used to be.

I still have more potatoes chitting away (basically growing the 'eyes' so they sprout).  These are the smaller potatoes I saved from my last growing attempt. They are taking longer than I thought they would, but soon I will hopefully be able to plant these too.

Happy little worms!

On a side note, when I used some of the worm castings, I was surprised by how many new/more worms there were!! They seem to be very happy in there at the moment!! I snapped a few pics to show. This is just the bottom tray, there are more in the top tray too!!

Getting the Irrigation Set Up

Last week I went out to check on the freshly sown veggie patch and found that the cats had gotten into it again... and unfortunately they had gotten rid of most of my leeks. Not happy!

Weeping hose and connectors

So, the time came earlier than I expected to have to mulch and while I was doing that I figured I would also set up the irrigation in the beds.

When I was at Bunnings last I spoke to a really nice gentleman who worked there and he helped me out a lot.  We decided for what I had (2 raised beds) that a weeping hose (right) would be best.  For me, this is the first time I have ever used any form of irrigation that wasn't me standing there with the garden hose, so this is just a really nice, simple set up.

This weeping hose connects to the standard garden hose, which just makes it so easy to use!  Because I have to 2 garden beds, and this was a 10m hose, I cut it in half and clamped on an end to one and added a garden hose nozzle to the other. You can pick these up for only a couple of dollars and then you can make yourself as many hoses as you like.

Laying the weeping hose in the garden bed

After adding the ends, I laid the hose around the garden bed in a spiral (mostly because it was already curving). The hose needs to be about 30cm apart, which worked quite well in the bed. I was worried that 5m was going to be too long, but I think that it's probably about right. I did have to try and lay it around so that it wouldn't hurt/damage the growing plants.  The only ones I'm not sure of are the seeds, so I'll have to just see how they grow.

Keeping the connector on the outside for
easy access

When laying the hose down, I made sure to put the connector piece to the outside to make sure that it's easy to connect the garden hose without disrupting the plants or the mulch.

Water droplets from the weeping hose

The guy at Bunnings said to run water through the weeping hoses for about half an hour before adding mulch on top.  I think that's mostly to make sure it works, and probably to help clear it out in case there is any gunk in there.  It was actually really cool to see the water come out in little droplets.

Freshly mulched garden bed

After running water through both hoses, I added mulch over the top.  I bought a bag of pea straw as it should break down faster than the sugar can mulch that I have used before. I made sure to cover the dirt and the weeping hose without  totally covering the plants and seedlings.  This was actually a little difficult as  some of them were so small and tiny they just bent or were covered easily.  Also, I wanted to make sure that they weren't going to rot with having wet mulch around the 'stalks'.  I also tried to have a very thin layer where seeds were planted so that they would be able to sprout.

Lavender moved to be near other plants...
The bees are happy!

Since I mulched last week, some of it has moved or settled, so I need to add a little more, mostly to cover the hose. But so far it has been working really well.  We have had a bit of rain recently so I haven't watered, and I will only be watering once or twice a week now as I noticed that the water was pooling around the bottom of the beds when it got too wet.  The mulch helps the beds to retain the water so it doesn't evaporate.

Puddles from the garden beds

I have been thinking about planting some flowering plants in front of the raised garden beds to help soak up the run off, that way water won't be wasted.  I would love to plant more lavender, not only because I love the look and smell as well as encourage bees, but it doesn't need much water. The only downside is that B hates lavender, so will need to think of something else.

Trying to fix a hole in the fence... it's working!

As for the cats, I went broke up an old shoe rack and used a take to help cover the hole in the fence.  It has held up really well  and there have been no cats in my garden beds, but unfortunately they have moved onto the pots... rosemary and lavender which I moved to be near some other flowering plants in the garden.

Overall the plants seem to be doing ok.  However there are other things I want to plant, and my only solution at the moment is that I need more garden beds!! Not sure where to put them without pulling out the plants near the lavender bush... 

And then, there was a veggie patch!

Yesterday started with a trip to Bunnings with Nessa to pick out our veggies and get ready to get our veggie patch set up. For a 5 year old, she did amazingly well to spend 2 hours in a garden/hardware store, although the trip to the playground in the middle there helped! I was lucky to get vouchers for my birthday, so was happily spending those!

 

After multiple laps around the store, we bought:

• carrots
• chives
• oregano
• spring onion
• brown onion
• tomatoes
• capsicum
• chilli
• garlic (HUGE garlic!!!)
• snow peas
• marigolds
• a flowering plant for Nessa (so we can get rid of the rose bush)
• 3 bags of soil
• a bag of pea straw
• a weeper hose and additional clamps

So much fun!!! If only I wasn't limited by space, I would have bought a lot more!!!

 

The only downside was that I didn't get to have Nessa with me for longer, as by the time we finished I really needed to get her to daycare, however it was the only day I was able to take her shopping for it all, so I headed home to start on my own.

 

First things first, I had to put the second raised garden bed in, which meant transplanting all of the garlic (again!) and digging up the dirt to make the second bed fit.  I set up the second bed the same as the first one, with only one difference; after putting down some cardboard and then a layer of soil, I pulled out my fermented Bokashi bucket and laid it's contents down before putting the rest of the soil on top.  The bed wasn't quite full, and as it had a lot of mulch mixed through it, which is where the 3 bags of soil came in... I needed something that didn't have a lot of rocks/woodchips through it to be able to grow the carrots successfully.

 

Usually I have the garden beds planned out, with what plants go well together (companion planting), how far apart they need to be planted and a general layout of the beds... however this time I had to wing it, and just try to remember as I went along what went well together.

 

In garden bed 1, I planted:

• Lettuce
• Garlic
• Oregano
• Spring Onions
• Leeks
• Marigold

In Garden Bed 2, I planted:

• Carrot (seedlings and seeds)
• Brown Onions
• Chives
• Snow Peas...
• Garlic
• Marigold
• Beetroot (seeds)
• Lettuce (seeds)

 

I still had a lot of left over seedlings, so I added a little more soil and put them into the greenhouse, so that hopefully I can use them later.  I also added the chilli, capsicum and tomato plants to the greenhouse as it isn't quite warm enough for them yet, and I am hoping that this will mean that I will be able to plant them straight away when it's time.

 

I also added a marigold plant to the pot with the mandarin tree in the hopes that it will help with pests.

 

I still need to add the weeping hose to the garden, but I want to see how the plants establish first as I don't want to damage the seedlings.  Once I have put in this hose, I will then mulch to help keep the plants at the right temperature, help keep water in, and to provide nutrients to the plants as they grow.

 

 

Overall, I am so happy that the garden is set up again, it's nice to have it going again, I am looking forward to seeing it all grow, and then eating it all!