My first post

What's it all about

Hello to anyone reading on. I decided to start this blog to write down my experiences and mistakes made while learning how to grow vegetables. I'm not talking about just shoving something in the ground and hoping for the best. I want to understand why my tomatoes grow so well for a month and then wilt and die. I want to know why basil in one spot grows to 12 inches high and basil in another spot grows to 5 feet. So this blog is mostly about the mistakes I make and what I discover after the fact. Everytime I make a mistake I can't help but feel that this knowledge was once common place. Was there a time, years ago, that people would have known that basil grows better with tomatoes. Was there a time when people knew the seasons of fruit and veg? How many people these days know the season for even a small percentage of the fruit and veg that they eat. Does this ignorance leave us to expectations that retailers deliver on by selling produce that has been stored for weeks or months? As I said earlier I picked the last of my tomatoes this week but one thing I have noticed with all of the tomatoes is that they only keep for about a week. I was running short on tomatoes a month or 2 ago and bought some from a local supermarket. I had to travel for work and came back a week or so later. I was surprised to see the bought ones still looking just like they did when I bought them, perhaps a little redder. The home grown ones were rotten. It makes me wonder, how can the store bought ones last so long...

Early June - 2 weeks of rain almost clearing, temps around 10 - 20.

Spent a few solid hours in the veg garden today. I wanted to get the last few fruit off the tomato plants so probably left them in way too long. They were so full of water after the 2 weeks of rain we've had, that much of the plant had been reduced to mush. After ripping them all out along with the basil plants I turned the soil over with a fork and chucked a good layer of sugar cane mulch over the whole bed. After turning that into the soil it was starting to look much better.

So for those that are reading along, I have a veg patch about 4m x 8m. I started it last year some time with the intention of building 4 sections that can be crop rotated over time. I have terraced the area on the side of the yard. I chose this rightly of wrongly because it seems to get the most sun during the day and is also in the corner of the yard and gets the most shelter from wind. I had to bring soil in as the existing stuff was very sandy and full of rock. Lugging 3 tonnes of soil and 1 tonne of composted cow manure from the front of the house down to the backyard was exhausting but good exercise I suppose.

Growing

• Choy Sum


• Pak Choy


• Broad Beans


• Sugar Peas


• Silverbeet


• Beetroots


• Red Onion

Planting

• Turnips


• Brown Onions


• Garlic (russian and asian)


• Red Shallots


• Leek

Planning to start a fruit crop but more on that later...