When I'm Feeling Blue

I'm feeling a little blue today. After weeks of fabulous late Autumn weather things have turned cold for us here.
And after a miserable overcast day yesterday that only managed to deliver us a grand total of four mils of rain I've decided to cheer myself up with a heap of photos that I took of the garden last Tuesday.
These were taken at around 11:00 am and the weak, late Autumn sunlight, was simply marvelous for taking photos.

 Spinach is just getting going. Made a nice spinach spaghetti with them the other day.

Two tubs of lettuce is keeping me going.

A Lisbon Lemon tree I planted on Tuesday. I've got a video to edit on planting it and then you'll be hearing a lot more about this

Might be my last strawberry now until the weather warms up again. They are still flowering but I suspect the cold will take care or that for a while. 

Same for my chilli

And tomatoes. This is a late planting of tomatoes in the warmest part of my garden in an effort to see if I can get tomatoes to fruit here during winter in Toowoomba.

More lettuce. Never too much lettuce. What I don't eat the chooks (chickens) will take care of.

Silverbeet going gangbusters 

 as is the garlic.

Peas are powering and I've sown some old purple podded pea seed I found while tidying up and they are sprouting up out of the ground too.

I came out of hospital in early July last year and was greeted with mandies from my tree so I'm looking forward to a big mandy feast very soon.

Broad beans are growing strongly.

 Biggest and best parsley I've ever grown.

This might finally be the end of my Basil too.

Rhubarb's getting ready for winter.

And sage.

I feel better now or at least not so blue.

Cheers

Stewart.

Bright Idea.

I hardly ever watch TV but sometimes out of the blue something draws me to it.
In this case it was a story on landline and I thought what a cracker of an idea. And as the bloke on the interview said it's not rocket science.
I can't embed ABC video on my site but follow this link, make sure you click on the 'Play Video' Link just above the main story, have a look and I'd love to hear what you think.

From the ABC landline site:-  PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: Experts tell us that just 2.5 per cent of all the water on the planet is fresh and very little of that is accessible, locked up in ice caps and deep down beneath the earth. And with so much of the available fresh water used up by agriculture, it's becoming an increasingly scarce resource.

A group of international scientists. which has based itself in outback South Australia, has devised a system of growing crops which doesn't rely one bit on that diminishing fresh water supply.

And as Pru Adams reports, they're now ready to take their ground-breaking technology to the world.

heirloom tomato soup with basil pesto

Heirloom tomato soup with basil pesto

Have you been looking for a really good Tomato soup recipe? Well look no further.

Watch Rodney as he takes you into his garden and shows you how to make a tomato soup using heirloom tomatoes and basil from his garden.

I'm so jealous of his Tomatoes.

Heirloom Tomato Soup with Basil Pesto from The Agrarian Kitchen on Vimeo.

Impressive huh?

Not a good year for growing Tomatoes around these parts this season.

Here is the sum total of my Tomato harvest this Summer.

Impressive huh?

And this one was self sown, all the Tomatoes that I went to the trouble of actually planting failed miserably. 

The rain has arrived as predicted so all my planting yesterday is getting a good soaking at the moment.

It goes without saying that I'm stuck indoors for the next day or so but with nice steady rain falling on the veggie garden outside I wouldn't have it any other way. Gives me heaps of time to look through all the online seed catalogs.

Cheers

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

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.

Here's something you might want to try.

 The accumulator.
In the latest edition of 'Organic Gardener' (OG) there is an excellent article espousing the virtues of comfrey. One of those virtues is the high level of potash and good levels of nitrogen and phosphate contained within their leaves.


They, OG,  also suggested to use the leaves in layers about 5 cm thick as a mulch so that while the leaves are wilting and breaking down, which happens quickly, the nutrients are leached into the soil and become available to the plant you have mulched.

Here is my tomato with the comfrey stuffed around it. I'm using it on my tomato because it needs a good regular supply of potash for fruit setting and with all our rain lately they have become a bit etiolated.




I went one step further than OG suggested and covered my comfrey with compost and then mulched with some aging straw.


I also mulched and composted right up to the stem of my tomato. I did this because tomatoes don't get collar rot because they have a very active advantageous root system which allows them to produce new roots from their stems and thereby increasing their ability to access available nutrients from the soil

Cheers and happy tomato cropping

Stewart

Taxi Tomato

 Boy o boy o boy, how one thing leads to another.

Regulars will remember me banging on about getting this here potato scoop from 'The Lost Seed' online shop by setting aside one or two dallars a week.
So while the Queen was eating bread and honey the King (that's me) was counting out his money and found out he had saved enough to put in his order for his potato scoop Which he did, me did, I did that is. All well and good you might say but and there's always a but, afore mentioned said King (me again) couldn't help himself (and didn't really want to truth be known) and here's how.



You see while I was at the lost seed web site I started thinking to myself (often a dangerous or expensive thing for me to do ) and began wondering what seeds they had to offer considering I wasn't really after any I felt safe to browse.

Then I though, 'climbing beans' yes I'd like some of them and sought them out and clicked the 'Add to Basket' button.
That was ok but, and there's always a but, the postage for one packet of seeds was $5.20 and again started thinking to myself,'That's not very economical, I wonder what else they have and then I noticed the Lettuce link and again thought to myself, 'Yes I could use some lettuce seeds' and clicked the 'REINE DES'GLACES' button.

Then once more I started thinking, 'In for a penny in for a pound' and hit the 'CAULIFLOWER - EARLY SNOWBALL' button.

Then I stopped thinking and let curiosity take over (damn who's driving this thing) and for some left of field reason wondered if there was a Tomato variety starting with the letter Z which I was happy to find out there isn't, though I have a suspision there is a variety called Zebra but I could be wrong.
Not content with finding out there was no Z varieties I went and had a look at the Bush varieties page and you wouldn't believe it there in all its glory was a variety called 'TAXI'(about half way down the page). 'Bugger' I thought, me being a driver of a Taxi and all, how can I not buy them.
So there you have it. A little bit of thinking and a bit of curiosity and I'm now up four packets of seeds and down $18.20. but in time enriched for the experience.

I got say I'm feeling excited with anticipation to get my hands on the TAXI tomato seeds.

Cheers and happy seed buying,

Stewart.

Oxheart

Planted these guys over here on the left today. And to save me a whole lot of typing and to show you the effort and the amount of info Green Harvest supply with their seed packets I scanned the front of the seed packet fyi.

If you click on the photo it will bring up a bigger photo that should be readable.

Cheers and Happy Tommy growing

Stewart

Potato time

The rain had reduced to a shower on Wenesday or two and the sun had been able to peak through a few clouds enough to allow me to get the last of my spuds out of the ground at the

Toowoomba Community Organic Gardens. I was a little disappointed with the harvest though, returning only two or three smallish spuds per bush. All things considered with the weather they had to endure I suppose they did alright.

Here is Neville with one of the bigger Sebagos that he took home for making chips with.

I'll be preparing the now 'ex', potato patch for members of the onion and brassica family over the next few weeks. So I'll be adding lime, horse, cow and chicken manure to the soil and digging it all through.

One of the more disappointing things going on at the Toowoomba Community Organic Gardens is the crows getting into the corn before I even get a chance to get near it. I have some bird netting in the shed I purchased a while to keep the birds out of my plum tree so I'm going to throw it over the corn an see if I can salvage a cob or two for myself.







Tomatoes; I've had an absolute dismal year for tomatoes so far. First it's been bone dry, then scorchingly hot, then rainy and overcast and on top of all that I think I have over done it with the potash and the fruit fly has beaten me to nearly every piece of fruit available.

So it tomatoes take two, hoping I'll have better luck in the second half of the season. I have planted seedlings of Burke's Backyard tomato at the community gardens and some seedlings of Yellow Perfection and Reisentraube (chreey tom bearing trusses of 20 to 40 fruits) at home.


Spelt Wheat I'd like to say I've been busy preparing the spelt wheat patch at the Toowoomba Community Organic Gardens but I suspect someone there likes using the rotary hoe a lot because I haven't done a thing. That might all change tomorrow (Sunday) because now that it has rained and the soil is moist it's time to get the green manure crop started.








The cow-pea seed needs to be planted up to three inches deep so I'll hand broadcast them first and rotary hoe them in and the Japenese millet only needs to be sown shallowly so I'll be hand broadcasting that and rake it over lightly and hopefully we'll get a nice storm and water the whole lot in. Fingers crossed lets see how I go.







This is the progress of the red kidney beans (5 x 10 mtr rows). Flowering like mad and setting heaps of pods after the rain. Am I looking forward to harvesting? No, not really, but then they won't harvest themselves. The Navy beans planted 2/3 weeks after have enjoyed the rain as well and are flowering and setting beans like mad.

This is just a pretty photo of a pretty Gerbra to say good-bye with.
Good-bye and cheers till next time

Stewart.

Experiment time!

Experiment time!

I find it hard to believe that a Tomato could be tasteless if grown organically and harvested ripe from the bush. Even highly hybridized ones.

So to test my theory I selected a pretty tasteless Coles variety tomato, from here on in known as 'my shoppe tomato'. I saved the seeds as recommended on the seed savers web site.
Planted then into seed raising mix about 4 weeks ago and I have just transplanted them into the garden this morning.

So what do you think? Will they have taste or still be the same tasteless tomato I bought from the shoppe.

I'm thinking they would have been field grown without any other varieties around to cross pollinate with. Therefore they should come true to type, but I will have no way of knowing if they are the same as to original parent plant or some what different to the original parent plant.

Cheers and happy experimenting

Stewart

I need to Pee

I pinched this from Tomato Casual, I think I'll have to experiment my self.

By Vanessa Richins

Many people are looking for natural ways that they can boost the production and nutrition of their plants.

In Finland, scientists have been studying the effects of using human urine on tomato plants.

Before you worry too much right off the bat about the possibility of diseases, I learned years ago in my microbiology studies that urine itself is naturally sterile, and no microorganisms are usually growing there unless fecal matter has been introduced.

Another benefit is that urine comes complete with the ingredients that are the basis of your standard fertilizers - N (Nitrogen), P (Phosphorus) and K (Potassium).

When they tested three different groups - a control with no fertilizer, one with standard fertilizer, and one with a mixture of urine and wood ash - they found that both methods of fertilizing made the plants produce 4.2 times as well as the tomatoes grown with no fertilizer.

As Popular Science explains, scientists in Finland “collected human urine during the winter of 2007-2008 from several eco-toilets in private homes. The urine was stored for about six months at 45 degrees F and tested for microbes and bacteria. The team mixed it with wood ash collected from a household furnace, and found the mixture was just as good as — or better than — conventional chemical fertilizer.

In taste tests, the urine-fertilized tomatoes tasted different from those fertilized with urine and ash, but tasters didn’t have a preference — “all tomato samples were evaluated as being equally good by the tasters,” the study says.”

It’s an intriguing idea, at least. Have you ever fertilized your tomatoes this way?

B is for Birthday, P for planting and H for hope.

B is also for Bugger, bastard, bum, bitch, bloody, bloody, bugger and bum.

But no matter how much I stomp about,

No matter how much I curse and fuss,

No matter how much I wish today would miss the bus
or that tomorrow will be to late,

It ain't gonna change that today I turn 48.



P for planting. I got around to planting the purple A for asparagus this morning and some Beefsteak tomatos. As the soil has been previously prepared for other crops it was just a matter of adding some compost and cow manure and planting straight away.

H is for hoping like heck the two Isa brown hens, Bill and Ben, don't fly the coop and dig them all up.

H is also for Hot-dog. I love hot-dogs and as I am home 'all', alone today for my birthday I'm now going to take myself off to make a hot dog with cheese and fried onion as a present to myself. And unlike the modern version of a hot dog I'll toast and butter the roll as well.

Fare thee well my fellow bloggers and have a nice day

bfn Stewart.

Tomato heaven

I'm lovin' this. 800 grams of Tomato heaven in two Tomato's.

Downside of getting rain after a dry spell is having your Tomato's split their skin, but hey, if that's as bad as things get then bring it on. I can always make Tomato jam or Tomato sauce or, you know, etc, etc.


Click on the photo if you want to look at even bigger Tomato's.













I just added the Parsley seed packet for a size reference.

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Worlds biggest Tomato, well not really. Update

The Worlds biggest Tomato, well not really.

Clicking on the photos will give you a bigger picture if you want.












Is now lunch.


The big one in the middle will be lunch.
















All sliced and ready to go.


Now in my book there are only two ways to eat a Tomato like this.

Both involve bread, white bread, I grew up on the stuff so anything else just spoils the taste.









One involves cooked silverside and the other involves ham, any kind, sliced, pressed, off the bone, dosen't matter.

First is fresh white bread, silverside, 'the Tomato' and cucumber, I usually have beetroot and lettuce but I wanted to enjoy the taste of 'the Tomato' without too much distraction. Bit off salt and pepper.

Verdict, terrific, damn terific.










The second way to enjoy a Tomato like this is toasted, again with fresh white bread, cheese and ham, in this case just sliced ham 'cause that was all there was left in the fridge.

Butter the outside of the bread, sit it in a frying pan, just hot enough to toast the bread, cook till golden brown and the cheese has melted









Verdict, Heaven, If heavens got food like this I want to go to heaven.



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