The Veggie & Herb Garden

[Jeremy]

I thought it was high time that I post some pictures of my vegetable and herb garden here. I’ve had to cut it back by over 50% due to rain shortages but despite the downside it’s actually created an opportunity to focus on quality over quantity. The basic premise now I’ve come up with is to simply grow stuff that’s mostly fast growing and nutritious (by nutritious I mean being able to receive trace element nutrients from lettuce, spinach, a mixture of herbs, shallots and what not) - instead of trying to be completely self sufficient (which is for the most part unrealistic). All this despite getting on my soap box when I penned Gardening for Sports Nutrition

But having said that I still believe you could be self-sufficient but you would need access to copious amounts of water and that’s something that seems to be getting harder to do in this day and age, particularly in Australia.

The aim now is to just have high quality nutrients that supplement the main diet that is derived from bought products (groceries). And that’s where cutting down on the area of garden has allowed this to happen. I’ve been able to focus on providing top quality nutrients to a smaller square area of the soil and from this I have healthier plants that are mainly used to create salads and to sometimes supplement the main ingredients in other foods - which is good enough for me

With that I’ll leave you with some photos I’ve taken recently.

[.S.]

Clever tactics J - and that all looks luscious!

Maybe i should try loading a little barrel full of nutrients and see if a sprig of anything grows for a change!

[Jeremy]

The June 3rd episode of Costa's garden odyssey featured a lavender farm. The owner made the following comments;

Carol recommends a good all round lavender for the home garden is an English variety called Lavandula angustifolia ‘Miss Donnington’. It’s hardy, easy to grow, attracts bees as pollinators and so is a great companion plant. “It’s great for vegies, roses, fruit trees, and olives so every house should have a lavender bush,” Carol says. Source

Now given that, its worth growing a few of these things just to attract the bees for pollination and they'd also make a great wind break too given that each plant grows to approx 1m high by 1 m wide.

[Jeremy]

So these broad beans (dwarf variety) were planted around March 9th 2010 and these pictures were taken on the 31st July 2010 so that’s 144 days they’ve been in. They are about 140cm tall. They are 3 rows thick (about 70 cm) and the rows are about 2 metres in length. About 2 weeks before you plant them prepare the soil by adding a good sprinkling of lime; they just won’t grow without it. Lime acts to ‘sweeten’ the soil which means it helps to release the nutrients of the soil so as to make them available to the plant.

You’ll note I planted them near a fence for some protection from strong winds. They’ve been in all through winter and what this does is helps to harden the leaves and that will help prevent them from being attacked by black mites in the next month or two when they are beginning to bear some fruit. About 2 weeks ago I gave them a good sprinkling of pot ash and this will help them fruit even more. They do flower a lot and this tends to bring in a lot bees which is good for other plants to help pollination.

The nutrition from these plants is very good and the beans work well in hot-pot type dishes, side salads or just eat them from the vine.

Edit: I did have other photos of these posted but that night after I posted them up there was a huge down pour of rain and howling winds and I've posted up some new photos to show the damage to the broad bean crop.

The first photo here shows how they looked prior to the damage. This sort of carnage is fairly typical with broad beans and despite the dwarf variety supposedly being 'wind proof', they aren't! Heavy rain combined with wind will knock them about and as you see they look like a total loss, some are even broken, but in the face of this these damaged plants will continue to grow and produce a good crop – which I hope to post when they do. Basically the crop was leaning on the ground from the wind but all you have to do is drive a few stakes into the soil around the beans and get a wide piece of rope and tie them back up and they are good to go.





More info about broad beans here http://www.thebegavalley.org.au/broadbeans.html