Garden Bed Update - August 2011

I had mixed success from the garden beds last year, but I think this year will be a lot better as the organic materials from the previous year have had time to decompose and be devoured by the army of worms that lay within.

This time last year, I had put the garden beds in place and filled them with layers of lucerne hay, chicken manure, soil and sugar cane mulch. While I allowed for about 3 months before planting, I think there was still too much nitrogen in the soil for the chilli plants to really flourish in the intense biological conditions.

The above is the one garden bed out of the six that I haven't topped up since last year. Despite layering all the ingredients to the brim of the garden beds, it has sunk heavily to the point that it's now less than 50% full.

The rest of the beds have been topped up with compost that's been in my compost tumbler, dynamic lifter, 6 bags of soil and finally more sugar cane mulch.

When I pull back the top layer of sugar cane mulch from the topped up garden beds I can generally find a magnitude of worms, which to me means they love to feed on the wet sugar cane mulch. I hope that the conditions for the chilli plants this year results in a bumper crop which will in turn be converted to some seriously hot sauce!

The best way to start chilli seeds

The way I germinate chilli seeds is not a conventional method that others would do. I've tried putting seeds in wet paper towel and then in plastic sandwich bags, soaking the seeds in a weak tea solution and then planting, and just popping them straight into soil.

But nothing quite beats the method I am now using to germinate my seeds. I have to credit Neil from The Hippy Seed Company for the idea, and it's really made it quite easy and consistent to germinate the seeds.

What we have in the above is a plastic container with 30 lots of coco jiffy pellets, floating on top of water that is heated to 30C with a small fishtank heating rod, and a few air stones at the bottom to just circulate some oxygen around.

While I've been able to germinate with the other methods, this has easily been the most consistent because with a lid on the plastic container I am easily able to keep the humidity at high levels and stop the jiffy pellets from drying out.

As I travel quite a bit, it means I can sort of forget about the chamber other than cleaning the water out once a week and making sure I disinfect it from all the algae that starts to form within the water. Once I see roots penetrating the fabric webbing of the peat pellet, I put the pellet in a small pot with some soil and move to under a LED light somewhere.

These 14 plants are house in a small tent in the garage. There's a fan that blows the air around, yet it still has a very high humidity because there are clay balls at the bottom of the orange tray filled with water, and as it evaporates it contributes to the high humidity - which chillies love!

Overwintering chillies

Most people think chillies are annuals, which means they grow, flower, fruit then die.

Chillies are in fact perennials, meaning that if you can keep them alive over winter protecting them from frosts, they'll survive and in fact give you a head start for the new season.

The above is an Asian Birdseye in one of the garden beds that I cut down about a week ago, but it's now sprouted and hopefully will go nuts in the next few weeks as the weather starts to warm up. There is another 14 plants in that garden bed that seem to have survived and have all sprouted.

I grew these from my own seeds, and I have a theory that because I took the seeds from a pod that has already grown in the Melbourne climate seem to be more likely survive our winter.

This one is more of a surprise as it's one of my Bhut's, which are from the Capsicum Chinense family and not really known to survive our winter. Again, this along with another 7 plants in the front row of the garden were grown from seeds taken from previous year plants.

The majority of my other chillies have died, and as I expect this I generally grow extra plants to replace these.

Let's hope I get a head start this year with the overwintered plants, it's definitely been a warmer than usual August here in Melbourne and I expect to be picking some Asian Birdseyes in early to mid November with the way it's heading.

There's a weed in my garden

Thankfully the weed in my garden is edible, in fact it's loved my dessert lovers around the world.

Raspberries are just one of the berries growing in my garden, but I never quite expected them to take off as well as they have. I bought a single cane from Bunnings this year, and now it's turned into a monster!

You can't see it in the picture, but I've had to buy some 2.4 metre stakes and put some sort of plastic wire between the two to support those 2 gigantic canes that have sprouted up. Before I tied the canes up, the canes were able to sustain themselves, but the moment there was any rain these things become very heavy and pretty much slumped down to the ground.

Apart from the 2 big canes shown in the above picture, there are another 4 or 5 sprouting in the pot. It's not the canes growing in the pot that I'm worried about, it's these canes that have somehow start shooting up from the ground where the raspberry plant has spread from holes in the pot into the surrounding garden.

This leaves me with a dilemma, do I let them flourish and see how they go, or do I cut them now knowing that these things could invade my garden and take it right over?

Pumpkin vs Butterfly Bush

I only have a single pumpkin plant in the garden, it's very well hidden in the corner where there's minimal sun and I couldn't quite work out where else I could put it.

Of course the plant is in a pot, and despite the lack of sun, I've still managed to get at least one ripe pumpkin that I'm eagerly looking forward to harvest.

But I didn't quite realise how invasive the vines are, and they pretty much just go in whatever direction they want to. After clearing a whole heap of grass that had spread from the neighbour's property, I realised one of the vines has decided to take on the drought resistant butterly bush that's been around since we first bought the house.

The butterfly bush has spread like wildfire at the front of my house, so here's hoping in this David vs Goliath battle that the pumpkin vine manages to take a few of the butterfly bush out of action!

I wonder if anyone would be keen for some Chilli Pumpkin soup in April perhaps?

What happens when you run out of room in the front yard?

This is the view people get when they drive/walk past our house. As you can see, I've even used the edges of the driveway (both sides, the butterfly bush on the left is masking about 25 other plants that you can't see there), but there's only so much space available for growing plants in your front yard.

Just above the garage is a downpipe to goes around the side of the house to the 2 x 5000L water tanks at the side of the house. These tanks are the lifeline of my garden, in times of severe water restrictions, I can still water all my thirsty plants and not feel guilty.

And one day I was staring up at that pipe, and thought I might just be able to utilise some of that space for growing more plants. Have you ever heard of an upside down plant?

If you look really, really closely, you can actually see a small chilli plant hanging upside down on the left hand side of the downpipe. Here's a closer pic anyhoo:

I had originally put a tomato plant in there, but some heavy winds in spring snapped the plant, and it just never recovered. Not to fear, I had plenty of leftover chilli seedlings with no room to plant out, and this thing is doing alright, in fact there's even some pods that have formed.

The upside down grow bag was bought from Woolworths for like $10 or so, and you can use them for Tomatoes, Chillies, Strawberries etc.

So those of you living in apartments or in really small houses with no room to plant anything, just remember where there is a will, there is a way!

Frangipanis ... from Adelaide!

When you ask people what's the first thing that comes to their minds when you mention the flower Frangipanis, it's usually tropical holiday destinations like Fiji and Hawaii. But my aim is to add South Morang to that list!

Ok, so South Morang is not really a tropical destination, in fact the majority of taxi drivers in Melbourne don't even know where it is, but why can't we add a little tropical feel to the garden with the sweet smell of Frangipanis.

My beautiful wife has family in Adelaide, and I recently learnt that Leisa's Nanna has a 40+ year old Frangipani growing in Adelaide. Last holiday period I was able to see first hand the tree for myself, and while it didn't look exactly in the best of health compared to those I've seen on my honeymoon in Fiji, it still had clusters of flowers with plenty more on the way.

So I got onto reading how easy it is to root a Frangipani cutting. In fact it's so easy, that I've read reports of cuttings growing leaves and flowering even when they have been lying around and severely neglected!

The father-in-law had brought over some cuttings at the request of my wife as she wanted me to see if I could grow them, as I'd pretty much been able to grow just about everything else (except for Tomatoes, I suck at those big time). Low and behold, they were real easy to get going after I had stuck them in some coco peat pellets and placed in my germination chamber indoors.

The "crown" of the Frangipani plant is where the cluster of flowers form, and some of the cuttings I have already had a crown formed, so it didn't take long for these to start flowering:

From what I can tell, these are your standard Plumeria Rubra variety that are probably the most easiest to grow, even in Melbourne. Even though we normally have low humidity here, apparently there is less likelihood of disease, so there's absolutely no reason why anyone can grow them around here.

I have also some purchased Frangipanis that are probably nowhere near close to flowering, but they are all growing well. Leisa read online yesterday that Frangipanis generally only grow about 20cms a year, so you have to have a fair bit of patience when growing these before you'll actually see the rewards of looking after them for so long.

The problem I have now is that every time I travel to Sydney and Brisbane and spot a Frangipani tree in someone's front yard, I try to think of a way where I can cut a branch off and sneak it into my bag to take home!