Crop Rotations and Fruit Plantings

With spring rapidly approaching it's time to start getting things ready for planting the new summer crop for 2013/14. With all the raised beds now built and ready to go, this will be the first summer season of full produce production potential. We also finished planting some of the last fruit trees around the back fence that we have room for, that being one dwarf avocado tree and a second dwarf peach to add to the one we already have planted that we received as a wedding present last season. I also stumbled across a very interesting program that lets you map out your garden plot, to keep yourself organized when it comes to crop rotations, plant spacings, etc. I've been having far too much fun playing around with it the last couple days and this is what I've come up with for what I'll be planting for this upcoming spring/summer season. I haven't had enough time to figure out all the cool tricks but so far find it useful just to keep me on track of what I need to plant where and how many for the size of the beds.

So that's what the gardens look like on paper... I thought I'd take a few pictures to show what it looks like in reality.

Bed 1 -Two varieties of lettuce and two rows of carrots
Bed 2 - Snow peas, broad beans and sugar snap peas
Bed 3 - The remaining kohl rabi, broccoli, cabbage and kale. Most of it will be pulled out and used shortly to make way for the new spring crops.
Bed 4 - Just planted zucchini, pickling cucumbers and pumpkin yesterday.
Bed 5 - This bed is still going quite strong from last year, most likely will keep the rainbow chard and fennel in until it stops producing, and plant the remainder of the bed with the new crops.
Bed 6 - Parsley and chives growing well, so again will plant around them with new season crops
Bed 7 - Onions and garlic bed growing well. Will look forward to tasting our first crop of both!
Bed 8 & 9 - Potatoes are growing insanely well. Dave is super excited to try his first home grown crop as he's been involved with these every step of the way. He's so cute when he gardens. :)

Bed 1

Bed 2

Bed 3

Bed 4

Bed 5

Bed 6

Bed 7

Beds 8 & 9

The Handy Girls Can Do It!

After planting some climbing peas and broad beans came the question of what they were going to grow up. I had made some climbing apparatuses in the past for climbing peas, but they didn't really stack up all that well once the peas took off as they usually slumped under the weight of the plants. So it finally came time to make a more sturdy, long lasting device that my plants could grow up and that I could use season after season.
I came across plans online to make an A-frame trellis which seemed simple, sturdy and looked nice, so on Sunday, Dave and I went to Bunnings, picked up all the bits and pieces we needed to build the first test trellis to see if I liked it before building the next two.
Seeing as I'm uni holidays at the moment, I decided why wait for the weekend when Dave could help and build it myself! Dad has always taught me to use power tools with confidence (or at least with a healthy respect for the fact fingers saw off just as easily as timber) so I plucked up the courage and got to it! It took me two afternoons of working on it, and I think it turned out pretty darn well!

Three things I learned from this project:

1. Measure twice and cut once. At the beginning as I was figuring out where to cut the wood that would become the top and bottom pieces. I plugged into the calculator 2.8 meters when it actually was 1.8 meters, it was only as I was about to cut it I thought, 'Hey, wait a minute that doesn't look right!'. I am very thankful I went back again, remeasured and fixed it before cutting or I would have been super annoyed.

 2. When making a square, 'almost square' doesn't quite cut it. I got it pretty close, but then when attaching the hinges noticed they didn't line up quite right. Thankfully you can't notice it when it's standing in the garden but it's something to keep in mind for next time.

3. Listen to your mother when she says to wear work gloves when working with chicken wire. That stuff is evil! Whoever named it 'chicken wire' was way off. They should have called it 'razor sharp metal sheet of death wire'. That would have been more accurate. On day two I wore gloves.

All in all I am very proud of my garden trellis even if it's not perfect, as this is the first wood working project I've completed entirely on my own with no help from either Dave or my dad. Here are some pictures of the building process along the way.

Cutting all the boards so they were all the exact same length

First side of trellis screwed together

First side with aforementioned evil chicken wire.

Second side with the wire adding process in mid staple

The two sides lined up with hinges on

Tah dah!

Placed in the garden!

Tiny little pea seedlings ready to climb!

Growing steadily

Updates of front garden plants and finally started mulching the beds at last! All the plants seem to be doing really well, and I've started harvesting decent amounts of rainbow chard and radishes so far, with Emma taking home some radishes and a beetroot on her last visit round. Not much else to report on the gardening front, just watching the plants grow (literally). Enjoy :)

First eggplant flower

eggplant leaf, substantially bigger than my hand!

First mulched bed

cucumber!

cheesy self portrait with my beautiful veggies.

Front yard finishing touches

This Easter long weekend gave us the chance to get a big chunk done on finishing the front yard off once and for all. This included leveling and staking in the final two raised beds and getting two loads of soil from Good Life Soil Co. in Midvale. Then it was onto filling the two beds and taking a load of green waste to the tip in the hopes to get some free mulch to spread in between the beds, but on inspection we didn't like the look of it, so it was back to Good Life to look at what they had, and they recommended some jarrah sawdust, which was actually perfect as it matches the raised beds, looks nice and natural and feels great underfoot, and keeps me from getting too messy while gardening. Plus it just makes the whole front yard look so much better! We sadly ran out of time and material on the weekend so we are going to finish it off this weekend coming, but here are some pics of what we got done so far. :)

Before starting out, beds placed, but not leveled or staked

After staking the bed filling it with newspaper and then weedmat

Filled with soil, Dave showing off his handywork

Weedmat down between the beds, right before starting to add the jarrah sawdust

After some of the sawdust had been put down

How far we got on the weekend, sawdust between the three beds and along the flower bed