Gardening Australia

I wasn't going to plant a veggie garden at home this year. We're hoping to move soon, so it seemed like wasted effort - I rented a plot at the community garden instead. But finding a new place has been slow, so we've just put in some leafy greens in the home garden. We'll be able to eat from them even if we do manage to move before end of summer. Hopefully the heat will slow down the grass that likes to take over this bed.

The bed at the community garden came with a lot of leeks. They're very crowded (I suspect mostly self-sown) and we really need to pull some out this week. I'll keep the roots and re-plant them at home to grow new leeks.

The zukes seem to be forming flowers. One fell off but others are budding.

The plastic bottles I’m using as makeshift ollas are running the water out way too fast, wasting it. I think I’m going to get smaller bottles and with water inside make a single hole at the bottom… and then adjust the cap to watch the flow. Mark the lid and neck in alignment for that drip speed. Then install them like that in all 4 pots.

Wish I’d sorted this ages ago as this has to be disturbing their roots but I’m doing the best I can.

Not much growing because I was running down the beds to complete a planned reorg, replacing one larger bed to end up with three smaller ones that give me more total growing space and better access to each bed.

So now I have some small seedlings getting started in fresh new beds, will see how I go.

My sugar baby watermelons are growing very nicely, probably thanks to all the rain and humidity here in Queensland. I have quite a few decent sized ones now. Looking forward to when they are ready.

Yesterday I roughed up the abandoned patch with a garden fork and sowed some of the seeds. …Not many alyssum. I don’t think that was 300 seeds. The nasturtium seeds are big.

I’ll sow more in trays in case those don’t take. I’m already going to have to do it for sunflowers.

I would have liked to do more, like chip away the shallow weeds, pick out the broken glass, and dig it over with manure or compost. But that’s not really feasible. What I’m trying to do is simply start pulling good bugs and pollinators into the area with what I have available right now.

I sprayed the zucchini down with a weak solution of dish soap for thrips in the meantime.

I’m doing one more coat of yellow paint then will put the cardboard in plastic bags for waterproofing and smear Vaseline and dish soap on the outside.