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!!

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!

A couple of hours in the garden....

Well, yesterday I got out into the garden. I only meant to spend about 10 minutes out there, but managed to be out there for 2 hours - not the greatest idea when you are sick!

 

Camomile seedling -
herbal tea coming our way!

After work I decided to finally go to Bunnings to get a Camomile seedling... but I should know by now that I can't just go into Bunnings and come out with the one thing I planned on buying... so I also bought a small Rosemary plant, a couple of pots to put them in, some more Bokashi spray and I almost bought a pH testing kit, but put it back at the last minute... I want to get one (they are only $15), but don't think it will help with my gardening ventures at this stage.

 

Rosemary seedling

When I got home I wanted to re-pot the seedlings, so as I was going into the garden I also grabbed the fermenting Bokashi bucket from the kitchen cupboard as I wanted to test out a theory of adding some to the worm farm. Now I promised you guys pictures of the Bokashi, so here it is!! You can see the white mould on top - that's good! that's what we want.  You might also see some small spots of green mould, that's not good.  That's where I needed more of the EM mix, but overall this was a good bucket!

 

Fermented Bokashi, ready to be planted

 

Bokashi layered in the pots

When re-potting the plants, I placed a layer of soil from the garden bed in the bottom, then put a layer of Bokashi in followed by a final layer of soil.  In this top layer of soil I planted the seedlings.  The Bokashi mix should break down and then feed the soil and plants as the plants grow and the roots go deeper.  It worked really well for the fairy garden Nessa and I made at the beginning of winter (I believe this is why the garden isn't dead from the frost). The reason for the layers of soil and Bokashi is that the Bokashi is quite acidic until it is broken down in the soil, and can burn the roots of the plant if it is planted directly.

 

Adding Bokashi to the worm farm

I also added a small amount of the Bokashi to the worm farm to see if the worms will eat it.  I tried to avoid any of the mandarins/citrus as worms don't like it.  As I mentioned above the Bokashi is quite acidic, so some people say that worms won't like it, but then others are saying that worms love it, so I thought I would try it for myself.  After I added some, I covered it in soil, so that even if they don't eat it right away it will start to break down and they will eat it eventually (hopefully) and if not, hopefully it will just compost lol! I did also add some of  the Worm Farm & Compost Conditioner to help even out the pH balance.  But I want to go out this afternoon to see if the worms are near it or avoiding it completely, 24 hours later.



The new set up!

The worms seem to be doing really well in the worm farm, and yesterday I moved their home to a different location.  When we moved everything was placed in the one spot, so yesterday I rearranged the garden slightly so that things are hopefully in better positions.  I moved the worm farm, composter and mandarin tree into a more sunny spot.  This does also mean that it is more likely to get more frost, but hopefully more sunshine will help with this.

 

More Bokashi being added to
the garden bed

The final thing that I came across was that my buried Bokashi I spoke of in my last post, wasn't actually all decomposed.  Turns out I was digging in the wrong spot.  Everything that is left though is basically all of the processed foods like bread and stuff, so would probably take longer to break down anyway.  Either way, I am pretty happy with how it has gone.  I even buried the remaining Bokashi into the garden bed, so that can all start to break down too. 

 

The only thing is that I am wondering if maybe I should invest in another composter, but this one would be a stationary one (the one in the picture above is a rotating one).  My reasoning for this is that when I added the Bokashi to the rotating one it didn't go so well, but this is mostly due to the fact that I didn't add any "brown" material to it either... rookie (which I am!) mistake - one I am still trying to fix. I think that once I can fix this issue, I might try and do it again in the rotating composter, but there is an appeal to just being able to layer Bokashi and brown material in a stationary composter.

 

I added lots of sugar cane
mulch and gave it a tumble

I mentioned that I am still trying to fix my compost, after a bit of research I decided to add some of the Worm Farm and Compost Conditioner to the mix along with a good serve of sugar cane mulch I had left over from previous gardening endeavours.  This is apparently good brown material as it generally takes awhile to break down and I don't think it would 'soak up' the wetness of my mix at the moment like paper would (which I was adding in the past to try and fix it.) I am unsure at what point I give up and start again... not sure when compost is considered ruined and to start again.

 

Sprouting garlic!

Finally, I came across some garlic that I had planted in a seedling tray before we moved, and thought I would plant them out to see how they go.  I realise I have probably done this a little too late, but we'll see if they take... the last time I planted garlic they didn't do so well as my soil was pretty depleted of nutrients and wasn't really taking in any water. Hopefully this time around they will do ok!

 

Planted garlic! 13 in total!

I am unsure of what to do with my herbs... I have been using my thyme a lot more, I would use the chives if they would bloody grow, and the basil is nice, but don't use it much.  The reason I am unsure of what to do with them is that at the moment they are in a big, ugly pot and I don't know if I want to put them in a different pot, or have a designated area of the garden for them... I am just unsure of how to organise them.  One thing is for sure, I really need to plant some oregano, B and I both love it and it is something that is used a lot in our kitchen...

Camomile and Rosemary now in the Garden!