Category Archives: Vegetable Planting Diary

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 4

November 27, 2014 darling downs 6 Comments

The vegetables are growing really well and I must admit to being very excited about it, both my husband and myself like just going out and watching it all.

Here are a few photos to update you on the progress, but here is a reminder of what it looked like before.

This is what it looks like now…

The first row is the first lot of tomatoes that we planted, they have been mulched (as stated in update 3) and have a length of mesh next to them to support them. Some of these tomatoes even have flowers on them.

Next to the tomatoes are 3 rows of potatoes, the first row has been mulched down the middle with hay to prevent weeds growing up and to keep moisture in.

My husband is then going to go down each row of potatoes with a double sided mulboard plow which will turn the soil from the middle of the drain between the rows and put it up against the potato seedlings. This plow is a tractor mounted implement.

We haven’t mulched the others yet, but will probably do so in the next week. We are amazed at how the potatoes are growing, we haven’t grown them like this before. We have grown them in tyres in the past like this.

Here are the next couple rows of potatoes.

Here are the zucchinis that were planted last week, we also planted the same amount of cucumbers.

The corn is going great guns as well and there are heaps of pumpkins coming up amongst them too.

Here are the men staking up the tomatoes. We planted another 3 rows of tomatoes and we have had some losses, maybe 20 or so but we are going to replant them over the weekend.

The weather has been great for growing vegetables, we have had rain and then some clear sunny days – just perfect.

I don’t think we will have our own tomatoes by Christmas, but that’s ok, if everything keeps growing like it is it won’t be too much longer.

God is really blessing our vegetables and us, thank you Lord.

What’s up in your garden this week???

Vegetable Planting Diary

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 3

November 19, 2014 darling downs 4 Comments

It is so exciting to see our vegetables growing (it’s the small things that make us happy).

The children and I went out this morning and mulched some of the tomatoes with hay and I took some more photos whilst I was out there. We have three more rows to mulch and will finish them on the weekend.

Here are the potatoes, there are five rows of them and they are all coming up now, reds and whites.

Mrs Abella of Sunny Patch Cottage and my daughter at Clay Clan Cultivates told me about the planting system called the 3 sisters. It’s a corn, bean and squash/pumpkin mix, the beans climb the corn, the vines grow at the bottom and the corn goes up. All 3 require plenty of water so they all get watered at once. When the corn is done the beans use it as a natural pole to climb up and the corn provides a place marker to find the middle of the vines trailing out from the bottom.

Here is a picture (above) of the corn in rows and the ones below show the pumpkins coming up amongst the corn. I think the corn has grown at least an inch in the last week. We have had some rain this past week and now it is warming up – just great growing weather.

My husband is going to plant another patch of corn, using the full system mentioned to me by Mrs Abella and my daughter. He is going to plant corn, beans and pumpkins. I will keep you updated on how this goes.

That’s all for now but more to come next week.

Once again, what’s happening in your vegetable patch in your neck of the woods??

Blessings to you all.

Vegetable Planting Diary

THE VEGETABLES ARE GROWING

November 13, 2014 darling downs 7 Comments

Our vegetables are growing and it is so exciting to see them poking their heads out of the soil. The weather is warming up and my husband has been busy trying to get some base moisture in the vegetable patch.

IMG_0386[1] — The first lot of tomatoes that we planted.

These are the first tomatoes that we planted in late October. They have done really well and are quite sturdy now. They really benefited from the early warm days that we had.

The potatoes are coming up and are just about ready for their first weeding. My husband is going to use a rotary hoe to go down in between them, quite shallow, to loosen off the weeds.

We’ve now planted another 240 tomatoes so that makes 300 (about) all up. These tomatoes are planted in raised beds using the machine in the picture below. We have had this seedling planter for years now and used it originally to plant broccoli which was sold overseas.

Hopefully we will get enough tomatoes to bottle, eat fresh (yum) and sell. Maybe we could pay for a holiday – who knows!!!

My husband planted a heap of corn and that is what is green in the picture above. It is coming up in the rows really well, it is great to eat fresh buttered corn straight from the paddock.

A view across the patch, it does look a bit bare now but hopefully in a month I will be able to show you the same view with heaps of green growth.

Our beautiful plum tree in the front yard, it is absolutely loaded.

Well I hope that has given you a bit of an idea of what is happening on the vegetable side of things here at Darling Downs.

We are only 2 weeks off receiving our first lot of 100 Silver Perch fish for our aquaponic system, so Graeme is busily trying to get that organised now. Unfortunately it is the busy season for his work with balers and headers and other machinery breaking down and needing him straight away, so he is going to try and take a day off to get into it and get it finished.

Well that’s our update for now, may your life be full of Gods goodness where ever you are.

Vegetable Planting Diary

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 2

November 4, 2014 darling downs 8 Comments

We are back to planting vegetables and my husband took the day off work so he and the children could get them done.

The children finished planting the potatoes, so we have nearly 90 kg planted, half whites and half reds.

Here’s a picture of the first potatoes coming up. This is very exciting!!

Here are the gang planting the potatoes. The children did a fantastic job and saved their father and myself from doing it. We are trying to teach them diligence and consistency when they work.

Here’s a picture of my very handsome husband after he had finished laying out the potatoes for the children to plant.

After they finished planting the potatoes, No 2 son and his father planted pumpkin and corn seeds. The pumpkin they planted with the corn was Jarrahdale and then they also planted peas with Queensland Blue Pumpkins amoungst them.

We have been buying our seeds from a bulk supplier so we have enough for a few years and it is more cost effective this way. This year we bought 15,000 corn seeds (this was the smallest amount we could get), this should last a little bit!!!

I just asked my husband why they planted the corn and pumpkin together in rows. His answer was very technical and might take up a bit of room, but here goes:

Hopefully the pumpkin leaves will shade the ground and keep it moist and cool.
Both corn and pumpkins require a lot of water, so this will water 2 birds with 1 stone.
The corn will finish off before the pumpkins so hence allowing room for the pumpkins to spread out – and the most important reason of all….
That was how they did it on the movie “Fiddler On The Roof”!!!!

We got some cucumber seedlings from our local nursery and planted them in an area that was heavily manured.

You can just see the green of the cucumbers in this photo. They are apple and continental. The manure comes from our feedlot pen where we had been keeping our pigs and cattle over the winter. They were bedded down on hay so now it is ready to be dug out and hoed into the beds,

This is the tool that my husband uses for planting seeds. You put the seeds in the hopper on top and then there is a plate in there that has holes big enough for the specific seed to go through. There are a number of different plates for different sized seeds eg: carrots. Then you push this along the bed and it places the seed on the ground and then covers it over and rolls it down. This is very handy and saves a lot of back breaking work.

The tomatoes that we first planted are going quite well, but we didn’t get the plastic on as it had holes in it, so we put preserving jars over them. Now as the weather is warming up we took them off and they look good. We did loose a few though but this happens.

So that’s our latest vegetable news for now, will post more photos once everything starts coming up.

Blessings to you all.

What are you up to in your garden, is it winter or spring???

This post is linked up here…

Vegetable Planting Diary

IT’S VEGETABLE PLANTING TIME PART 1

October 5, 2014 darling downs Leave a comment

It’s vegetable planting time in our place of the world. Spring came on the 1^st September and the weather has really warmed up quickly.

We don’t usually plant tomatoes here until after the Melbourne Cup Race on the 1^st Tuesday in November because we can still get frosts, but this year we are trying something different.

We planted 60 tomato plants today and plan to put them under plastic.

The paddock that we are planting these vegetables in was sown with peas last year and after we harvested them we left it for the winter. In late winter we moved the pigs into the paddock and let them eat the grass and work over the root matter, which then fertilizes and aerates. Graeme then ploughed the whole paddock with the tractor.

He then prepared the bed by rotary hoeing it and making raised beds, so that we can get a deeper top soil. We then found drench drums and placed them between every second tomato plant and filled them with water.

We will run hothouse plastic over the top and make a sort of poly tunnel which is held up by the drench drums. The theory is that the water will heat up in the drums during the day and then at night when the temperature drops the drums cool off a lot slower than the atmosphere does thus stopping a freeze happening around the drum (It is a cold framing idea that my husband found on u tube).

After they planted the tomatoes they planted about 40 kg of white potatoes. My husband once again prepared the bed and raised it. He then spread sheep manure down it and rotary hoed it in, then the children planted the potatoes – two rows per bed. Finally everything was watered in.

Graeme spreading sheep manure on the potato bed

This is just the beginning of our plantings. In a month, once the chance of frosts has gone we will plant another 300 tomatoes. At the moment we planted Grosse Lisse tomatoes but we will probably put in some Romas as well. Next week we will finish planting the potatoes, another 10 kg of whites and then 50 kg of reds. We haven’t really grown potatoes before with much success so we thought we’d give it another try this year.

We will also be planting zucchinis, corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, beetroot and carrots in another week or so.

I will keep you updated with more photos and information as we go.

What are you planting at this time of the year in your place in the world???

Darling Downs Diaries

Category Archives: Vegetable Planting Diary

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 4

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 3

THE VEGETABLES ARE GROWING

VEGETABLE PLANTING PART 2

IT’S VEGETABLE PLANTING TIME PART 1

what's happening on Darling Downs