Veggie Gardens in Canberra

ayajam said :

Cabbage white butterflies are territorial I read somewhere. So I cut out a little white plastic butterfly shape and pinned it to a stick next to my brussels sprout plant! Lo And Behold! the two circling butterlies turned round and went elsewhere, and I have had no new grubs in 2 weeks. I have no clue where I read or saw this, but really thank whoever it came from!!!

That is an awesome tip. I’ve not planted any veggies from the cabbage family since mine were all eaten when I tried broccoli and cauliflower previously. I might try again, armed with this knowledge. Though may be a bit hot to plant those.

Cabbage white butterflies are territorial I read somewhere. So I cut out a little white plastic butterfly shape and pinned it to a stick next to my brussels sprout plant! Lo And Behold! the two circling butterlies turned round and went elsewhere, and I have had no new grubs in 2 weeks. I have no clue where I read or saw this, but really thank whoever it came from!!!

I recommend Ezy Vegies too – they have a sample garden in Canberra, and recomend what to do every month.

To start out, either buy a raised bed, or set aside a small patch of your existing garden that is fairly sunny.

right now I would plant a few different lettuce seedlings, radish seeds, pea seeds, and some cherry tomato plants. Sprinkly parsely seed over the whole lot. And put in a rosemary plant.

Water them a lot, (daily in hot weather), every second day in cooler weather.

Pile up straw or dried leaves around them for mulch to keep the soil shady and wet.

We tried this method with great success

http://www.food4wealth.com

I cycle onions right through the year. You have to get your varieties right to make this work, there’s early, mid and late varieties, I’m into the late varieties now and have also started putting in spring onions, which are fast and don’t much care what season you plant them. I’ll be cycling those 2 weekly. When you have seeds you can easily do this. Carrots ditto. Beetroot are like radishes, no-fail, quick, trouble-free AND you can eat the leaves in fancy salads.

And Coridander, you have to cycle that as it bolts to seed in the warm. I had great coriander all winter but now am depending on the self-sown ones coming on. I wonder if there’s some way of preserving it, coridander glop or something?

Cucumbers are odd things, you pretty-well have to have a program of putting in 1 seed every 2 weeks. If you can make a really warm, moist, fertile growing spot I think they do better, but in the normal garden they don’t seem prolific or long-lived. I’ve got some Yates ones and Mr Fothergills ones, and can’t determine if one’s better than t’other.

I’ve started crop-rotating, it’s sensible and cuts down on having to deal with soil-borne diseases, and deficiences later. It’s good to have a map of your garden to keep it all working. And remember it’s plant families. So this year I have tomatoes and chillis in one bed (same family), leafy greens in another with the onions, cucurbits in another (zucc and cucumber, given up on pumpkins!), spuds in another… Less problems to deal with ultimately. After your gross feeders have been in a bed, that’s the time for onions and carrots, as they’ll enjoy the depleted soil.

Transplanting the tomatoes should work, I do it all the time. Take plenty of dirt with them, don’t do it in the heat of the day, and saturate them in their new spot/pot, keep out of sun until they’re over the shock. Volunteer tomatoes are WINNER tomatoes. And I highly recommend Tommy Toe. It’s a large cherry style, but the taste is mind-blowing. In salads, you’ll be in tomato heaven. I make passata in autumn from them too, and it taste so good.

EvanJames said :

Watson said :

I have literally hundreds of self-seeded tomato seedlings in my flower beds atm! I reckon if the “feral” ones think it’s time, then it must be time. 🙂 I find they can usually deal with some mild frosts too, despite common believes.

This is interesting… apparently, things that have self-seeded are adapting to your environment. If you are keen, mark the best self-seeded plant (or a few of them) and save seeds from them, as these will do better in your climate and soil than the originals.

I had Tommy Toes coming up in August, yes August, and left a few to see what woudl happen, they’re still going, albeit slowly.

But one in particular is being marked, and when it produces fruit they”ll be saved.

Watson said :

I can highly recommend potatoes for a confidence boost too. Takes longer than the leafy veggies, though I was harvesting my first ones about 6 weeks after planting. They don’t seem to care much about water or the condition of the soil. You can harvest some when they’re little baby potatoes and then wait for the main crop when the plants flower. Oh the joy of digging up a patch of potatoes!

I’m a recent-comer to the joys of spuds. I have some in a non-garden area that have leaves every year… one day I’m going to have to get busy with a fork. Very annoyed that these healthy plants got done-in by some disgusting grub (it was green) and it wont’ happen again! I’m going to get some fancy seed varieties and try again. Meanwhile, I have got some of those new Low GI Carisma spuds from Coles to sprout (you’d think they’d make them sterile to keep their copyright) and they’re going gangbusters.

The joy when you find perfect spuds in the ground is something to experience, I agree. And you can use spuds to work the soil for you… ground that is hard or not fun to cultivate can be cultivated by the spuds, for you.

Watson said :

Zucchinis are prolific too. They get mould issues if their leaves get too much direct moisture, but it doesn’t usually affect their productivity much. Finding a monster zucchini is always fun. Though they are not very tasty when they get that big.

I have learned my lesson and only plant 1 seed nowadays. I put one in yesterday actually, and expect to see it pushing up before the week’s end. They do seem to suffer from mildew, which has no effect, and if you’re worried just make up a solution of milk and water in a squirty bottle and go over the plant, that fixes it.

Best to keep harvesting the little fruit, and when the plant is a couple of months old, plant a new seed. The old plant will get all leggy and woody and unproductive, so have 2nd one coming on.

I put in some Lebanese cucumber seeds too, I find I have to keep cycling those through the summer.

My Cos lettuce that went in last autumn are works of art, if there was a lettuce show on now, I’d clean up. It’s a shame to eat them. Furiously eating spinach (the real sort) before the heat has them bolting… lots of spanakopita in the freezer!

Ooh, some good advice there. I intended to keep some of the tomato seedlings because my 6yo daughter cried (big teary sobs!) when I told her I did not order those particularl tomato varieties from the Diggers Club this year. It was so exiting to show her that they decided to grow back in huge number for her. I wasn’t intending to leave them in the same flower beds though, crop rotation and all that. So I hope they will cope with being transplanted?

And I had honestly never thought about planting new zucchini or cucumber plants mid-season! I just remained loyal to my original ones but especially the cucumber didn’t produce much at all after a while.

That reminds me, staggering your planting for some things is good practice too. Like one row of carrots and beetroot every couple of weeks, so they are not all ready at the same time. Same with leafy veggies, I suppose though I rarely grow those. Lettuce is rabbit food. 😉

You really can’t the beat the flavour of stuff grown at home, especially if you take a bit of time look after things. There’s something really nice about picking or pulling up veggies, taking them inside for a wash then cooking them. Eating veggies that were in the ground or on the plant a couple of hours before a meal is served is something I love.

Watson said :

I have literally hundreds of self-seeded tomato seedlings in my flower beds atm! I reckon if the “feral” ones think it’s time, then it must be time. 🙂 I find they can usually deal with some mild frosts too, despite common believes.

This is interesting… apparently, things that have self-seeded are adapting to your environment. If you are keen, mark the best self-seeded plant (or a few of them) and save seeds from them, as these will do better in your climate and soil than the originals.

I had Tommy Toes coming up in August, yes August, and left a few to see what woudl happen, they’re still going, albeit slowly. But one in particular is being marked, and when it produces fruit they”ll be saved.

Watson said :

I can highly recommend potatoes for a confidence boost too. Takes longer than the leafy veggies, though I was harvesting my first ones about 6 weeks after planting. They don’t seem to care much about water or the condition of the soil. You can harvest some when they’re little baby potatoes and then wait for the main crop when the plants flower. Oh the joy of digging up a patch of potatoes!

I’m a recent-comer to the joys of spuds. I have some in a non-garden area that have leaves every year… one day I’m going to have to get busy with a fork. Very annoyed that these healthy plants got done-in by some disgusting grub (it was green) and it wont’ happen again! I’m going to get some fancy seed varieties and try again. Meanwhile, I have got some of those new Low GI Carisma spuds from Coles to sprout (you’d think they’d make them sterile to keep their copyright) and they’re going gangbusters. The joy when you find perfect spuds in the ground is something to experience, I agree. And you can use spuds to work the soil for you… ground that is hard or not fun to cultivate can be cultivated by the spuds, for you.

Watson said :

Zucchinis are prolific too. They get mould issues if their leaves get too much direct moisture, but it doesn’t usually affect their productivity much. Finding a monster zucchini is always fun. Though they are not very tasty when they get that big.

I have learned my lesson and only plant 1 seed nowadays. I put one in yesterday actually, and expect to see it pushing up before the week’s end. They do seem to suffer from mildew, which has no effect, and if you’re worried just make up a solution of milk and water in a squirty bottle and go over the plant, that fixes it.

Best to keep harvesting the little fruit, and when the plant is a couple of months old, plant a new seed. The old plant will get all leggy and woody and unproductive, so have 2nd one coming on.

I put in some Lebanese cucumber seeds too, I find I have to keep cycling those through the summer.

My Cos lettuce that went in last autumn are works of art, if there was a lettuce show on now, I’d clean up. It’s a shame to eat them. Furiously eating spinach (the real sort) before the heat has them bolting… lots of spanakopita in the freezer!

Watson said :

I didn’t use any pest control and the one thing that I didn’t manage to grow was broccoli and cauliflower. Swarms of those white butterflies made sure that none of them survived their ravenous caterpillar babies’ infinite appetite!

Ditto. I now have soem Yates Success and Dipel, for squirting for caterpillars. You need it for tomatoes and chillies too, or you end up with foul black stuff inside perfect fruit. Some rotten grub just got all my red potato plants too, did something awful to the stems and they just died, yet teh spuds underneath were perfect (and tiny).

Ditto on the no dig thing. Fair dinkum, why? I keep putting on the pooh, any other elements needed, bit of liquid stuff, and let the worms do the work. Bit of nice mulch every season becomes part of your soil structure (I’m liking the pea straw currently, mainly cos it’s very cheap). And I do tend to grow flowers in my veggie patch, as they look nice.

EvanJames said :

yep, grab a copy of the Canberra Gardener. The current edition is very good (I’ve got older ones) with pictures and things, and it’s fun to contrast what it says with my older copies. The oldest contains the amusing statement that Canberra enjoys abundant water and is never likely to suffer from shortage. Oh boy.

I think those raised beds they flog in shops are a ripoff. I hope the price comes down! If you’re just having a go, you can make your own with some big bits of wood, sleepers or whatever, line it with builder’s plastic (not the bottom though, leave that open for drainage and Worms), and anchor it however is easiest, it doesn’t have to withstand attacks from tanks. Then fill with dirt and pooh.

Pay attention to what the book says about when to plant things, and whether they mean seeds or seedlings. Read your seed packets too, there are different varieties of teh same veggie that go in at different times. Bunnings have a good cheap range of seedlings (grow your own or somesuch), and most nurseries also carry a cheapo-range of seedlings, along with the pricey range.

For instance, popular lore has it that you don’t plant your tomato and chilli seedlings out until Melbourne Cup day, but I’ve cheated and taken a risk and put them out. Likewise, sweet pea seeds go in by Anzac day.

Have a think about the different nutrient requirements of different things too. Things that produce fruits require different fertilizer from things that produce leaves, so think about separating those.

Sun! Vital for veggies. Have a look at where the sun shines through the day. Morning sun is the best sun, late afternoon sun can be damaging, north sun is good too.

And for a confidence boost? Lettuce, asian leaf veggies and radishes! Radishes in particular make you feel like you’re Peter Cundall.

I have literally hundreds of self-seeded tomato seedlings in my flower beds atm! I reckon if the “feral” ones think it’s time, then it must be time. 🙂 I find they can usually deal with some mild frosts too, despite common believes.

I can highly recommend potatoes for a confidence boost too. Takes longer than the leafy veggies, though I was harvesting my first ones about 6 weeks after planting. They don’t seem to care much about water or the condition of the soil. You can harvest some when they’re little baby potatoes and then wait for the main crop when the plants flower. Oh the joy of digging up a patch of potatoes!

Zucchinis are prolific too. They get mould issues if their leaves get too much direct moisture, but it doesn’t usually affect their productivity much. Finding a monster zucchini is always fun. Though they are not very tasty when they get that big.

yep, grab a copy of the Canberra Gardener. The current edition is very good (I’ve got older ones) with pictures and things, and it’s fun to contrast what it says with my older copies. The oldest contains the amusing statement that Canberra enjoys abundant water and is never likely to suffer from shortage. Oh boy.

I think those raised beds they flog in shops are a ripoff. I hope the price comes down! If you’re just having a go, you can make your own with some big bits of wood, sleepers or whatever, line it with builder’s plastic (not the bottom though, leave that open for drainage and Worms), and anchor it however is easiest, it doesn’t have to withstand attacks from tanks. Then fill with dirt and pooh.

Pay attention to what the book says about when to plant things, and whether they mean seeds or seedlings. Read your seed packets too, there are different varieties of teh same veggie that go in at different times. Bunnings have a good cheap range of seedlings (grow your own or somesuch), and most nurseries also carry a cheapo-range of seedlings, along with the pricey range.

For instance, popular lore has it that you don’t plant your tomato and chilli seedlings out until Melbourne Cup day, but I’ve cheated and taken a risk and put them out. Likewise, sweet pea seeds go in by Anzac day.

Have a think about the different nutrient requirements of different things too. Things that produce fruits require different fertilizer from things that produce leaves, so think about separating those.

Sun! Vital for veggies. Have a look at where the sun shines through the day. Morning sun is the best sun, late afternoon sun can be damaging, north sun is good too.

And for a confidence boost? Lettuce, asian leaf veggies and radishes! Radishes in particular make you feel like you’re Peter Cundall.

RedDogInCan said :

The thing I hate about veggie growing in Canberra is the ridiculously short growing season for summer crops. Frosts can still catch you by surprise up until early November but if you play it safe then nothing is ready until after New Year. By the end of February everything has cooled down again. By the time the capsicums have ripened they end up frost damaged.

But not this year. We finally got around to using the cold frames we bought from Aldi a couple of years ago and boy what a difference. The lettuces we planted in early September are now ready and we currently have so much lettuce that its BLTs and caesar salads every day. Our tomatoes are just beginning to bear fruit and should be ready to harvest next month.

I was getting loads of tomatoes right up until those severe frosts in early May. 😀 The capsicums that I left to get them red did got frost damaged in the same frosts…

Root vegetables are great as they don’t usually mind the frost. Same with broccoli and cauliflower – I intended to grow them through winter to beat those bastard cabbage moths, but gardening in winter sucks. Potatoes, garlic, peas and leeks are other veggies that do well in non-summer seasons. My potatoes came up a couple of weeks ago and are doing great.

Those cold frames sound interesting. Should have a look. I once bought one of those plastic hot houses from Bunnings and the plastic completely desintegrated after one summer.

About all I can add to the other advice here, is to start up your own compost. It probably won’t be ready for a year or so, but you’ll end up with free compost, and won’t ever have to throw your kitchen scraps in the bin again.

This year, my compost is beautifully rich, and is literally crawling with earth worms. The new herb garden that I’ve started this year is going nuts, even though the soil at my place isn’t all that great – a good helping of compost has made all the difference!

The thing I hate about veggie growing in Canberra is the ridiculously short growing season for summer crops. Frosts can still catch you by surprise up until early November but if you play it safe then nothing is ready until after New Year. By the end of February everything has cooled down again. By the time the capsicums have ripened they end up frost damaged.

But not this year. We finally got around to using the cold frames we bought from Aldi a couple of years ago and boy what a difference. The lettuces we planted in early September are now ready and we currently have so much lettuce that its BLTs and caesar salads every day. Our tomatoes are just beginning to bear fruit and should be ready to harvest next month.

Postalgeek said :

Canberra Organic Growers Society

They also provide planting calendars for the Canberra region on their website

http://www.cogs.asn.au/

Hm, I only have a fairly old edition, but I never got much out of the Canberra Gardner. There are resources online to find out when to plant things in our climate. I also buy my seeds from the Diggers Club and follow their planting advice.

One of the best starting points is to go out to one of the many garden/landscape supply stores around town and get two things…

A steaming bucketload of compost – perhaps go with CSG’s mushroom compost – it’s pretty bloody rich and will have your produce going nuts in its first year.

A big bucketload of mulch. You can’t have enough of the stuff in our dry climate.

After you;ve got all that, plan out how you’re going to get water to your plants in a regular, efficient and sustainable way. Direct line drip irrigation from your own water tank is a good option. Does anyone else have any other good ideas?

Canberra Organic Growers Society

They also provide planting calendars for the Canberra region on their website

http://www.cogs.asn.au/

I haven’t read it in a long time but this book had some great localised hints and tips…

“The Canberra Gardner”
ISBN: 9780646540610

http://www.botanicalbookshop.com.au/book.asp?ISBN=9780646540610
http://www.hsoc.org.au/pages/canberra_gardener.htm

‘One Magic Square’ by Lolo Houbein is a wonderful book that I would recommend. Diggers.com.au has some good resources and a fantastic variety of heirloom seeds. ABC Canberra local radio has a plant and harvest guide on their website at http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/03/29/3176876.htm
Lots of other resources around, but these are probably a good start.

We bought a book from Dymocks, which was specifically targeted to growing plants and vegetables in Canberra. I can’t seem to locate it on our bookshelf to give you the name.

There are a lot of tips however the simplest are:

– Sunny position preferably somewhere that will get 6 to 8 hours of sun a day, including winter.
– In the ground is a lot better than pots. We always find that veggies and fruit grown in pots never yield as much or even grow at all. Whilst in the ground they get regular nutrients from different sources.

For the most part we grow our crops by trial, error and a lot of patience.

Welcome to the market garden!

Easy:

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/03/29/3176876.htm

abc666 saturday mornings.

garden centres – not major hardware retail chains’ versions of them – for good advice.

hard work and time for good results, but as stinger notes, nothing beats home grown produce so all worth it. oh, and get a worm farm – worth its weight in gold [well, mebbe not that much – they weigh a tonne!] for the worm wee alone…

A good book to pick up is The Canberra Gardener, produced by the Horticultural Society of Canberra.

Most of the other material available in gardening magazines and the like is aimed at more temperate climates than ours, like Melbourne. We have extreme heat and cold and thus need more specific info. Canberra Gardener is the best reference – it has a calendar on when to sow and plant. Most bookshops carry it. There is a 2010 edition out. http://hsoc.org.au/pages/canberra_gardener.htm

You can also get gardening advice on 2CC 1210 (Sat and Sun 7-9am) and ABC 666 (Sat 830-10am). Both programs take questions from callers.

Basically though, put your patch in full sun (6 or 7 hours of sun a day), keep the water up to it if it isn’t raining, and watch out for snails when your seedlings appear. (Beer – or vegemite water in low plastic containers attracts ’em and they get sozzled and die).

Your beds can be as simple or fancy as you like. You can start off simply or fit more permanent vegie beds into your landscaping, eg prefab steel or the awesome ones shown on Costa http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/costa/listings/detail/i/1/article/6172/Wicking-Garden-Beds . You can also use sleepers. If using treated pine, use the ACQ arsenic-free sort.

I just have two ‘beds’ (just allocated space, really) surrounded by a layer of left over second hand pavers – it looks rustic and does the job. I also put various herbs like parsley and chives in amongst other garden plants, where they look after themselves.

Have fun and enjoy eating your own produce!

Sorry, that was a ridiculously long post. 😮

Pots were a disaster for me because I have the memory of a goldfish and always forget to water them. Miss one day and your plants are dead.

I started last year and after umming and arring for ages about raised garden beds etc. I just got a couple of friends to come over one afternoon, dug a couple of patches along the fences and planted seedlings with some cow manure sprinkled around them. I then installed a watering system (took me a few hours, but the most time-assuming thing was to keep going back to Bunnings for the right bits) added a digital tap timer and my veggies took care of themselves. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes, zucchinis, carrots, beetroot, potatoes, cucumbers and capsicum. Even had a few rock melons. This was all without adding anything more to the soil than some cow manure and a couple of applications of seaweed fertiliser to boost some of the stragglers.

But my soil seemed quite good from the start.

My best crops were the ones that I planted in the existing flowerbeds in between the native bushes. Against an East facing fence, mind you! And I reckon it was because they had been mulched with fine forest litter a few months earlier. The mulch has now pretty much broken down and that soil looks so fertile I could eat it. Full of worms and very easy to dig. So I would highly recommend the mulch to boost your soil. To start now, you probably want to dig in some compost too. There’s a couple of landscaping places that sell both by the cubic meter and can deliver too. I’m a bit weary of the Mitchell place though as their soil introduced couch to my garden.

I didn’t really get much from the books I’ve read. They all take it way too far and it put me off, the amount of work they seem to say you have to do. The one resource that got me fired up was a blog post that basically advised to do some minimal digging and stick your seedlings in. They’ve since changed that blog to the usual “test your soil, add all sort of expensive stuff to get it right, dig for 3 days straight” kind of advice. Pity…

I didn’t use any pest control and the one thing that I didn’t manage to grow was broccoli and cauliflower. Swarms of those white butterflies made sure that none of them survived their ravenous caterpillar babies’ infinite appetite!

Have a look at this website http://www.ezyvegies.com.au/ . For a $20 subscription for the year, you get weekly advice on what you should be doing in your vegie garden, with the aim being to grow continuous cropping vegies, rather than those which take up a lot of space for a long time then deliver their crop all at once. For example: cabbage is terrible in limited space vegie patches because you end up with 10 cabbages all at once and then that is it – plants are done. Broccoli is better because you can harvest the central broccoli part and then it sprouts more heads so you can keep harvesting.

I think the vegies the website tells you to grow are spot on, but my experience on growing times/harvesting times is that the website tends to be a little bit out – I find the growing times are usually a bit longer and the harvest times a bit shorter, but it is a really good way of getting started if you are only at that skill level where you would try and plant basil in Autumn and Coriander in Spring.

Right now in my garden I am planting/getting ready to plant: tomatoes, chillies, capscicum, lettuce, zucchini, cucumber, basil, radishes, green beans and corn. With regards to tomatoes and chillies, I don’t bother with raising from seed, I just buy a selection of different varieties at different times from the Farmer’s Markets. Everything else I raise from seed.

Hey Hoo Haa

A good place to start is with prefabricated veggie patches. The missus & I picked us some of the Birdies veggie beds from Bunnings and they work a treat!

Alternatively, use lots of pots. Its cheaper and you can clump them for ease of watering.

Nothing beats fresh greens from your own garden!

Enjoy!