green manure Archive

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Green Manure Stage 2: the Dig In

My green manure got to a point where I believed it was ready to dig in. It grew tall, and was very lush and some of the pea were a...

My green manure got to a point where I believed it was ready to dig in. It grew tall, and was very lush and some of the pea were a metre long. They also started to grab at eachother with clingy tendrals and formed a netting over the vetch and oat.

It was all still really young, and tender and sappy, but I started to get concerned it would flower or harden the stems and really there was so much there it was ready to be slashed and dug in.

So the first part was relatively easy, with a fairly blunt shovel, I pressed it all flat and then started to cut in into pieces making sure to sever them at the base. It took a little while to complete the whole bed, and I really tried to make sure all the pieces were 10cm long at most.

And here it is, all slashed. This photo was taken immediately after.

The next step was to pour a bag of organic compost over the top. I did start to try to dig it in at that point, however it was a bit too much effort and power needed and my arms just weren’t up for it. So I left it for a week and a bit and got the hubs to do the hard work of digging it in.

And I must say he did it fantastic job. You can see a little here that it had dried out, but that isn’t really an issue.

Here is the whole bed dug in. And then it was left to rot and compost and build up. The soil level in the bed is now higher than the others, so I wil just do this as a rotation every autumn, maybe even two beds a year. What a great thing to do for your soil.

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Vegetable Beds June-August 2012

Plans for plantings and layout in my vege garden for this winter. Some of it is already in and ready and growing, others are not even in the seed sown...

Plans for plantings and layout in my vege garden for this winter. Some of it is already in and ready and growing, others are not even in the seed sown stage.

I really want to try my hand at growing artichoke. I love the look of the plant, and I love eating the globe. Being they need at least 2 meter spacing I will attempt to grow three plants (three whole plants omg!) in the last bed of my patch. As they grow so high they will not shade any other bed in the morning sunlight and will be well enough out of the way for maneuvering between beds.

As they take a while to grow, I will make as much use of the space as I can trying to get some herbs up and running in the richness of my garden beds (and out of the way of trampling puppy paws). I realise it is a commitment as I will need two years to really grow them to get a decent crop, so I am giving over a bed for a substantial amount of time. I am really hoping it will be worth it.

Dad brought down a fantastic magazine for me. Its a basic ‘how to’ gardening guide put out by the organic gardening magazine. In it there was a sowing and seedling season for a range of vegetables and herbs. Using this I will also be growing some carrots and beans in one of my current beds only occupied by basil.

Yet again the planning is part of the experiment to see what I can and cannot grow and if the yield is worth it.

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May updates and garden bits n pieces

The garden is going well, however due to it starting to get cold, everything is slowing down, watering is only needed every few days so there isn’t much to do...

The garden is going well, however due to it starting to get cold, everything is slowing down, watering is only needed every few days so there isn’t much to do around the garden. One of the things I want to do is clear out some of my basil. There is so much and its now taking up space in two separate vege beds. One is at the end of my brassica beds, and it seems I might only get one broccoli plant, so I want to clear that and try and get at least two more plants.

This is the amount of basil I harvested with the plans of making pesto. We filled that steel bowl with only the best leaves, discarding any older or slightly damaged leaves. We still had a few stalks that were unharvested so the pile and stems went on to the compost. The pesto was excellent. We had it on pasta less than 30 minutes from it being made, and had more on potatoes in a bento the following day. The rest has been jarred or frozen.

This was my basil AFTER that harvest. Super unsure what to do with the rest apart from harvest or appeal to any friends who want bunches or just cut it and put it onto the compost pile.

This is the other bed of basil. It didn’t have any competition so it has gone nuts. And the amount of bees that visit it are fantastic. The dogs brush past them, I brush past them, they just move about the flowers collect the pollen. Very happy to have bee’s know where this place is and I will try my best to keep up enough flowers to keep them returning. But obviously I am not running out of basil any time soon.

This is an update on my green manure. So so lush. The pea tendrils are starting to form weaves around the other plants. Fun to watch.

A couple of kale seedlings. I will move the secondary one that came out of no where when I have cleared the basil.

Half of my lettuce bed. Baby cos in various stages of growth.

The other end of the lettuce bed. Some cos, Australian yellow leaf and spinach.

This is the side of my house.It is right next to the carport, with a path to the back yard and gate. It was just a massive pile of rubbish. But when we returned from our trip over seas my dad had cleared it off, put up some railing and repositioned our spider plants to allow them to hang down. As this rarely gets any direct sunlight it is the perfect position for them.

This little beautiful fern was found as a small guy sprouting just under the edge of our back deck. So I carefully dug him up, and put him under the spider plants. He is three times larger than when he was first moved. I think he likes it here.

At the front of the house, outside the fences on the edge of the driveway we have an area of grass. So I planted a lime verbena (I wanted lemon, I ordered lemon but ended up with lime in my delivery). It gets just enough sun, and it will grow well. It is surrounded by some newspaper and mulch to kill the grass underneath to make a garden bed I can plant some flowers in.

I love this night scented jasmine. I love the story of it. The hubs’ father had a really large beautiful jasmine in his garden at the house Mark grew up in. We took a cutting and propogated it and grew it in our old house. When we were moving we took a cutting of that plant and did the same. Propogated and grew it and now it is ready to flower. The smell and beauty of this shrub. It reminds him of his childhood so I think we will always take a cutting of this plant and move it around with us. I just love that technically it is the same plant he grew up with growing in our second house.

Yep, it seems I have a bottle recycling problem.

It took only a day for ants to find the worm farm and try to get settled. So I dug them out and put the legs on the farm and have not had an issue with ants since. The worms are having a great time and have had their first bath on the weekend. I love watching them hide when I put scraps into the top.

Next are sunflower seeds that I harvested from my two largest sunflowers. I still get awed by the concept of one tiny seed making a large sunflower head, that then produces hundreds of seeds. I could plant a field of sunflowers from just the first sunflower.

And lastly an update on neo and his companions. He is doing so well. We have lots of leave shoots and already some flower heads. When I opened the greenhouse to take this picture, it was so warm and humid that the camera lens fogged up.

So lots of things happening, but slowly, and not much to do daily, but lots of things to watch.

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Green manure

As I live in a subtropical environment. Free from snow and frost during the winter, my vegetable garden can be very productive during the winter without the need for netting...

As I live in a subtropical environment. Free from snow and frost during the winter, my vegetable garden can be very productive during the winter without the need for netting or frost protection. Sure it gets cold, we can have the coldest night of the year in winter reach a staggering 2°C. So I will be growing brassica’s and lettuces and herbs during this winter. But it has also allowed me to grow green manure in one of my beds to get the nutrients back.

green manure seeds

I ordered Autumn Green Manure Mix from the Diggers website. It is a mix of pea, oat and vetch. A great mix to give back carbon and nitrogen. The purpose of green manure is to grow vegetable and grain crops to a point just before flowering, when they will give the most of their nutrients back. Before flowering something like pea’s can give back 50% of their nitrogen back to the soil, after flowering it’s is only 5%. So you grow them over winter to about 30cm or before flowering or seeding and you slack it back and dig it all, leaves, stalks and roots everything back into the soil. When the plants are still young and tender and sappy they are slashed and cut and folded into the soil to compost down into the very soil it grew in.

prepared garden bed

Here is the bed all prepared. I weeded it and raked it over, and watered it for over a week to let any residual weeds grow through so I could keep it weeded and fresh (I have a real problem with onion weed due to the soil I brought to fill the beds). So after two weeks of weeding and watering this is the bed re-raked and ready.

garden bed with green manure seed spread

Next step is to spread the seeds liberally. All over. Every inch.

garden bed with green manure seed spread

Here is is from another angle.

green manure seed spead, raked and watered

Next step I raked it over and watered it heavily. I got an innoculant to boost the legumes with my mix so I put that into my pink watering can and watered it over the seeds. Then all I had to do was keep it well watered each day.

green manure growth after a week

Here it is after a weeks growth. The oat and vetch were the first to really kick off. The pea’s were slightly less enthusiastic, but have caught up.

green manure after two weeks

Here it is after two weeks growth.

green manure after two weeks close up

And this close up gives you a good idea that its mixed well. You can see the three different plants. All lush and healthy and sappy and young. I can’t wait to see it in a months time. I will keep you posted with updates.