Love the smell of fresh hessian in the morning!!!

 The final digging of the last of my Ruby Lou Potatoes.

And to celebrate I shouted myself two potato bags from The Lost Seed Co. to store them in.

Love the smell of fresh hessian in the morning!!!

 This is about the long and short of it. About three rows of spuds from 15 or so seed potatoes.

While Ruby Lou is a great little roasting/chipping potato I'm thinking 'little' is the operative word here. Also not what I'd call a big cropper by any accounts. I'll be looking for a different variety to plant come next spring.

They're in the bag. About half full and ready for the shed/garage.

As for what gets planted next in this bed, well they're already in. Peas it is. Mainly for their nitrogen fixing ability and then a follow up with Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.
They all don't mind a bit of lime so I'll chuck some of that around and dig in some compost and blood and bone at the same time and she'll be as sweet as........ honey.

Cheers everyone

Stewart

Taxi

 Remember how I said watch this space a few weeks ago. Well here's why.

Just three days old. This is the 'Taxi' Tomato I've been waiting ever so patiently for. See 'Lost but not least' for the saga that is the Taxi Tomato seed.

I'll throw this little bloke a small handfull of blood and bone and a teaspoon of potash (to help keep blossom end rot at bay) in the next few days and pop a few more seeds in as a follow up crop.

Seeing as they are a yellow tomato and I'm a mad keen tomato jam lover I'm going to try making tommy jam from the Taxi fruit and see how it comes up. Yellow tomato jam appeals to me and I only hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Cheers and how's ya mother'

Stewart

The Colour Purple

Well now what can I say. Firstly, yes they are a potato. Secondly, yes they are purple and thirdly maybe, yes, I did grow them.

Purple Congo potatoes. I was visiting a friend's garden one day and she pulled some of these up and warned me not to plant them or you'll have them coming up everywhere forever. And I thought to myself how good would that be so I ignored her warning, planted some and

I'm so glad I did.

They are easy to grow and they taste  delicious.

So far I've had them in potato salad and mashed and they hold their purpleness when cooked.

 How to grow them? The same as any other potato. Bung 'em in the ground and stand back. Of course you  can add some compost, hill them up and mulch them, they'll appreciate all that.

I did a quick search around for the origins of this variety but came up empty. If anyone has info on their origins I'd like to hear from you.

Cheers and here's to the colour Purple,

Stewart.

I don't know

I don't know. Some of the stuff you find on you-tube.

A little veggie garden update.

 A little veggie garden update.
After weeks of rain which included a torrential down pour causing the worst flash flooding ever seen in Toowoomba and the surrounding regions the weather has settled down enough to get some veggie gardening done.

Thursday was still too wet so it was Friday before I managed to get anything done.

 Being keen to get some lettuce and my Taxi tomato seed planted I started with a patch that I'd previously managed to get some work done on.

Because the soil was still so sodden I didn't want to be working it too much so I could avoid messing up the soil structure I've spent so much time on building up.

 Watch this space
The first photo is where I planted my lettuce seeds and the second is where the tomato seeds went in.

Tumeric
The silver lining from all these rain clouds is my Tumeric. I planted it as a suck it and see what happens plant thinking Toowoomba might be a bit too dry and cold and up until the rains came I was pretty right with nothing happening at all. Since the rain though it has really taken off so all going well I might get a smallish crop after all.

Sadly my tomato ha succumbed to the constant rain. This is definitely not how you want your tomato to look.

 Before

Today, this morning, I wanted to get stuck in to this bed because this is where I'll be growing my cabbage and cauliflower over Autumn and Winter so the sooner I get the weeds out the sooner I can start improving the soil and get some seeds happening.

After 

And this is how it looks about an hour later. The soil is still sodden and in one place I dug up some potatoes and about six inches deep the water was starting to puddle in the hole I'd dug. So the weeds are out but it'll be another weed or two before I can get a fork into it.
I did stick some climbing bean seeds in on the high side of the bed hoping I can get a couple of beans before it gets too cold for them.



  Well that's about it for now. The next big attack will (fingers crossed) be on Tuesday. I've still got four smallish rows of potatoes to dig up and if we don't get rain between now and then I should be able to get them up and then I can show off the potato sacks I bought from the lost seed co.

Cheers and happy veggie gardening,

Stewart

Cheers and soggily yours

So you wake up on a overcast rainy Monday after a rainy weekend and you probably don't really want to go to work. You console yourself by parking your car along the edge of a picturesque creek never thinking in a hundred years this would happen.



I'm assuming most of you have seen the reports on the heavy rain and flash flooding here in Toowoomba so I'm not going to go over old news here.

I have measured just over 300mls of rain here in the last three days so everything is beyond saturation at this point in time..

During yesterdays massive downpour (roughly 40mls of rain /hr for two hrs) we ended up with about 30cms or so of water running through the veggie garden and the back yard itself. I've lost half of my good composted, humus rich topsoil but a blessing in disguise is the weeding I've been unable to get to has helped hold some of the top soil together and stop it being washed away.

Although it's only early January I'm going to have to move on from a summer garden and start planning my autumn/winter garden. Though if the weather becomes I will still plant as much summer salad veggies as I can.

Cheers and soggily yours

Stewart

Number 39 with a bullet

How cool is this? My Veggie Garden made a top 50. You can check it out here

Number 39 of Top 50 Urban Farming Blogs, and I'm in pretty good company too. I'm familiar with some of the other blogs but it looks like I've some reading to do over the next few days catching up.

Here's their spiel as follows.
Top 50 Urban Farming Blogs

With the food revolution in full bloom, some have taken to bringing the fight to their own home in a literal sense. These urban farmers, or those who use their own yard, balcony, or other space to grow food, are more common than ever. With everything from seeds to livestock on the line in the urban farm arena, it is easy to get lost in the quest for sustainability.

To help out, we have collected the top 50 urban farming blogs from apartment balconies to backyard gardens to actual urban farms and are full of tips. You can also learn about what to grow, where to grow it, where to sell it, buy it, or even a simple recipe on how to prepare your own home grown food.

Top Urban Farming Blogs by a Group

Learn more about the practice of urban farming by those undertaking it themselves.

Cheers guys and many thanks for the listing.

Stewart

Rainy nights and days and weeks and months.

This is it. All we've had for the last week and probably all we're going to get for the next week. By the time it stops I'll have to weed the veggie garden with the wipper snipper and wait for it to dry out a bit and start again.

Lost but not least

My New Years res of and hour in the veggie garden when I'm not working in the cab is going to take some doing tomorrow after 28mls of rain overnight on Wednesday and then a further 56mls today but I'm sure I will find plenty to do. As a matter of fact I can think of several things already.

On a brighter note though. The lost seeds I ordered from the Lost Seed, seed company, finally arrived yesterday. I'm beside myself with the excitement of getting some of these seeds planted though the current rainfall is putting a dampener on things. 

 

Seeds included in the order were the 'Yellow Taxi', a yellow bush tomato that I've been waiting for with excruciating patience and Blue Lake climbing beans. 

Also ordered and lost but now found was a packet of Lettuce Reine Des'glaces which I assume is a French variety (confirmed here with a well written and complete description)Iceburg type lettuce.

How did Iceburg Lettuce get to be called Iceburg Lettuce, well according to Wikipedia it go something like this:- Bruce Church founder of Fresh Express, was responsible for popularizing the idea of shipping lettuce across the US continent from Salinas, California to the spots on the East coast. Using ice they carefully covered the heads of lettuce and shipped them all year round and all the way as far as Maine, as the train pulled into each stop, folks would call out excitedly, "The icebergs are coming, the icebergs are coming!" The name stuck. Before that people had to depend on what you could grow locally and preserve from the gardens.

Last but not least is a packet of Cauliflower Early Snowball. A heirloom dating back to 1830 with small to medium, solid white heads.

New Years resolution.

Thirty mls of rain this year already and it looks like more this afternoon.

Spuds I rescued this morning.

I've managed the first hour of my, 'my veggie garden's, New Years resolution today. I've resolved to spend least and hour every day I'm not working in the cab in 'my veggie garden'.

I've read the warnings from the experts of going too big and getting burnt out and I thought I had it under control but it seems I went in too big and last year I hit the wall pretty hard and did very little veggie gardening. But all is not lost I've experimented along the way and have tought myself a lot as well and this year will see a more committed effort to get myself and my veggie garden organized.

As for the veggie garden I had to give up waiting for the soil to dry out enough to lift the spuddies and to my relief they were in good shape with no rotten spuds to be seen, alays a good thing don't you recon? My main concern was with soil compaction and the effect digging very moist soil would have on my soil structure. After digging up the first of five rows of spuds I thing my soil will be fine as long as I keep adding compost and manure. It has come up very light and fluffy and I could probably plant straight back into the areas where I have dug up the spuds.

I'm thinking I'll put in a quick crop of beans where the spuds have been so I can follow them up wih the bracissias I want to plant over Autumn and winter.

Once upon a time I did my weeding with a bucket for putting the weeds in but due to the massive rainfall we have had here I now using a rubbish bin to put my weeds in.

Here's a photo to give you some idea of how out of control the weeds have gotten since the rain.










Cheers from a slow moving creeper

Stewart.