Donna's Garden - 07/12/2008

[Donna McCallum]

Well, after a few summer/ humidity teething problems things are starting to grow again and hopefully it won't be long until we get some good meals from the garden. In saying that silverbeet has been a huge winner for us, we can have at least two good meals a week from our plants and have been for ages. Ashley's rogue cherry tomato is still alive well after my purebreds have failed and we have a good amount of baby lettuce again.

My herb garden is truly a permaculture design with everything competing and just a big mess of plants, we have heaps of everything and I don't need to weed or plant - it just seems to be perpetual!

For months I have been meaning to help my paw paw as it has had some health problem, but it looks like whatever was bothering it has finally left it alone - the new leaves look fine! Not sure what it was, I did put some lime down ages ago so maybe that finally fixed it....

At the moment we have corn, okra, beetroot, silverbeet, cucumber, capsicum, rosella, melon and a whole raft of other seedlings coming along - hopefully they will survive fruiting in this humidity.

I am having trouble getting fruit big enough to eat, if the fruit fly don't sting it then a fungus gets in and rots it when it is still too small. After I finish here I am going to hunt out my old exclusion bags and see if that helps the couple of fruits I found this morning. I must also remember to bring home from work some 2L milk containers for Anthony's fruit fly remedy.

Compost certainly does NOT kill pumpkin (or tomato for that matter) seeds, we have rogue pumpkins - at least I am 99% sure they are pumpkins - going absolutely crazy along our back fence. I will add some photos to my page soon.

Well happy gardening, until next time...

[Sue]

Hiya Donna... I love the fact my compost heaps comes to lift each spring.. never know whats going to grow out of it and when i can recognise some attributes i plant where appropriate LOL
I too have tomatoes and Pumkin growing out of the compost .. well thats 2 pkts of seeds I dont have to by.. I think the garlic is growing too or it might be the onion.. either way it grew and is going to seed.. woohoo more free seeds....
Its like the perpetual garden the more i throw out the more it gives me back..
I recall throwing out some broccolli that had gone to seed but its now growing again.. another gift from the compost heaps..
I also have either a peach or nectarine tree growing out of it not sure which might have to wait a few years.. but thats fine not like i plan on moving LOL
Merry Christmas :)