Images from the garden



Pictured below are just some of the goings on over recent weeks.

New signage near Camden Town Farm

New signage near Camden Vale Milk Company



 


Results of the working bee last week.  

 

Stormwater pipe ends finding a new home.

Nastursiums companion planted to scare those pests off.

 


"The Veggie Lady" Toni Salter and course participants.

  

Snake Beans,
 climbing over reo mesh and conduit.



Artichokes in the herb garden.

Flood or Famine, succession planting and storing

Succession Planting, avoiding the flood or famine


You don't need this many
 of the same veg unless your a commercial operator.

 Have you noticed you cant keep up with your veggie plot, its either a flood or a famine, all of a sudden you have beans coming out of your ears, your tomato crop could supply the whole street, if you eat any more spinach you will need to change your name to popeye, you get the drift.

The key can be staggering your plantings and succession planting, it can also be a matter of planting early and late maturing crops together, more great info on this can be found here.

Curl Grubs in the Compost

Be sure to check out the latest addition to Camden Community Garden when you’re visiting next time.  It’s the “first born” of our new compost bays.  Eventually we’ll have a few set up at various locations around the garden to make them easy for everyone to use.

Our composting workshop was what prompted our new “baby”.  Just like any new baby, our compost bays will require some TLC from all of our garden members. It will need to be turned every week from one bay to another, so perhaps a roster is in order.  The effort that you put into making the compost will be richly rewarded by bigger, stronger and healthier veggies when you use the final product.

During the workshop we learnt that the most efficient composting system was a HOT compost, which is large and is fueled by oxygen and water.  So if we want lots of compost for our garden beds then we need to have lots of materials to make it.  Layering different material when constructing the compost is essential for success. So save up your newspapers or shredded office paper so it can be mixed with lawn clippings and weeds from the site.  A good mix of wet/hot materials and dry materials works well.

Summer Gardening

Well finally it seems summer has arrived, albeit probably a month late.

Here is the latest Summer Gardening Blog addition from "The Veggie Lady" Toni Salter.

Summer is a really busy time of the year in the productive garden for temperate regions. Not only are you harvesting your first fruits of the season, but you’re also looking ahead to sowing some cool season crops (yes already!).  This is the time of year that pests and disease are at their worst, so keeping on top of this as well as maintaining consistent watering during hot weather can all get a bit heavy going.  This is the time to be most alert but in reality, the opposite generally happens for most of us especially when we decide to take some holidays.  Here’s a few tips to keep it all together.

What to sow

Start sowing your winter crops this month in temperate and cold regions. This includes all of your cabbage family plants like cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and Chinese vegetables. By the time they’re a reasonable size for planting out, the weather should be starting to cool down. Carrots, beetroot, parsley, celery, leek and silverbeet are all winter crops so they can be sown now too. Special care of seedlings needs to happen over the next few months to make sure they survive the heat. Be vigilant with daily watering in really hot weather. I plant my seedlings out with cardboard milk cartons around them. This gives them a bit more protection from critters and gives a bit of extra shade. 

Using whats around you.

New Raised Garden Planters

Concrete Stormwater pipe offcuts

The First of our raised planter chambers arrived last week, thanks to BMD group and Dart West we were able to save these from their ultimate fate whatever it may have been (recycler or crusher i guess), i also have to add thanks to Funnells Electical for helping with the unloading process as these are as heavy as they look. Measuring between 400mm and 600mm in diameter these pipes will be the perfect containment system for some of our more aggressive herbs, in particular the Mint family, these will also feature as part of our accessible garden, the Gardens are extremely thankful for these, several more will arrive over coming weeks with different uses planned as well, so watch this space for updates.


Homemade exculsion bags, compostible as well



Exclusion bags for Tomatoes

Forever on the look out to find ways to save money and beat the bugs, i thought i would try these, now after 2 seasons of growing tomatoes with zero fruit fly control i am sold, there are certainly a few commercial options out there, but they say the simple things often work the best and for me it was the kids sandwich bags and our clothes pegs, once the tomatoes have started to develop i cover the truss with a brown paper bag and peg the top, rainwater doesnt have a massive effect on the bags and they seem to last long enough, guaging when to put the bags on can be a bit tricky as you want to know roughly how big the tomatoes will grow, i have used this method successfully with Siberia toms, Tigerellas, and Green Zebras, although the latter are certainly larger and can only fit 4 or 5 toms in a bags so a truss may need 2 bags. When it comes to Oxeheart, you can allways put extra bags on if they split the bags on you.