New wicking boxes

Here are my nine new wicking boxes for the coming season’s planting:

Unfortunately, I only had enough compost to fill seven of the boxes, so the remaining two are acting as rainwater storages for the time being. I’ve put them all up on polystyrene fruit boxes to keep them above rabbit-browsing height and before the summer sets in, I’ll put in some polypipe arches to carry shadecloth in case we get any more of those nasty 40-plus temperatures this year.

I’ve sown radish seed into some of the boxes as a quick filler, but mostly they’ll be used for french beans and capsicums when the weather warms. I also sowed purple bok choy into one of the boxes and it has been joined by dozens of lettuce and celery seedlings which germinated from seeds in the compost. These will make a useful harvest for salads:

Noisy Miners should really be called ‘nosey miners’. They follow me everywhere, showing great interest in what I’m doing:

Miscellany

I’m never, ever going to be one of those supa-doopa bloggers who write one post a day. What I’d like to be, however, is one of those who manages one post a week, but here it is a fortnight since my last and…..oh, well…..

What follows is a hotch-potch of what’s been happening in the last fortnight.

I’ve sown the first batch of tomato seed for the season. I do it on the winter solstice, simply because it’s a day I can remember. I’ve sown it in the ‘little nursery’ I wrote about here and it’s sitting indoors, in a sunny window, on the heat pad. I’ve put 3 seeds of each variety into each cell and will eventually thin to one seedling. Varieties sown were Roma, San Marzano, Grosse Lisse, Green Zebra, Purple Russian, Red Pear (a cherry type), Black Russian and one billed as the original wild tomato (from Phoenix Seeds—I grew this one last year and it produced hundreds of grape-sized fruits, good for drying for snacks).  Later on (maybe around the spring equinox), I’ll sow a second batch, in the hope of extending the harvesting season into late autumn.

I’m in the process of putting together another row of water-wicking boxes for the spring/summer planting. These will be near one of the small water tanks and I’m going to set up a dripper line from the tank into the watering tube of each box so I can water them all automatically at the same time. Just in case we have another summer with a succession of days over 40 C, I’ll be setting up some polypipe arches over the row of boxes to support shadecloth.

I’m harvesting lots of greens from the garden—silver beet, kale, lettuce, chicory, bok choy and rocket. The peas sown in February are still bearing. I’ve got a half-dozen broccoli plants just forming heads. I should have sown much more. Leeks are starting to enlarge and I’m blanching the stems with sugar cane mulch. Four varieties of potato have sprouted and are doing well—Desiree, Bintje, Dutch Cream and Nicola. A patch of Kipfler which I didn’t harvest last year have also resprouted. The garlic is growing but the plants are small. I hope this doesn’t mean small bulbs. Maybe they’ll kick on when the weather warms.

I’ve sown beetroot (a tad early but it’s germinated) and radishes into wicking boxes and carrots into the garden. Haven’t tried carrots in a wicking box yet, but some years ago I grew a golfball-sized variety called Thumbelina from Eden Seeds. Maybe this would be ideal in a wicking box. I just checked their website and they still have it in the catalogue.

I harvested my first batch of jerusalem artichokes—boy, are these things prolific growers! I planted a couple of shrivelled tubers in May last year and harvested just under two buckets of tubers 12 months later.

The oca is dying back and I’ve bandicooted a few tubers. I hope there’ll be a few to actually eat this year. Last year’s crop was so small I had to forgo eating and replant them all.

The yacon hasn’t died back yet, but it always seems to produce a good crop of sweet tubers. These are nice sliced and fried and also grated in salads.

And finally, the winter solstice has passed, the days are lengthening and so far they’ve been fine and sunny. But alas, no significant rain.

Silver Beet on steroids

No need to tell you how well silver beet does in a wicking box. Just look at this:

The leaves are as big as dinner plates.  One leaf is a meal, chopped and lightly steamed with a knob of butter. Delicious!

I was going to put three plants in this box; just as well I didn’t, they’d have been pushing one another over.

Hotter than hot!

Well, we’ve just been through four days of 40+ temperatures here in Melbourne and there’s not a single food plant that isn’t either comatose  or sporting crisp brown leaves.

So, as I said in the previous post, I need to completely rethink food growing in the summer.

The water-wicking boxes, which were doing fine after the first day of 41 C, suffered least in the heat. There are two beside  the deck which get morning sun and afternoon shade and I didn’t bother to cover them with shadecloth. They were fine. The three down the back in full sun containing french beans were covered in mosquito netting and the only leaves that were burned were a couple that poked themselves out of the netting. Today I picked a kilo of beans from them.

So it looks like wicking boxes are the way to go for summer vegetables, providing I can give them shade in extreme conditions like we’ve just had.

Here are the two boxes beside the deck—capsicums on the right & Roma tomatoes on the left:

The wicking boxes are sitting up on white polystyrene fruit boxes to keep them away from the rabbits. The 60 litre rubbish bin on the right holds water which I use to water the boxes. I’m going to try growing potatoes in these deeper bins this season and probably some of the larger indeterminate tomatoes  such as Grosse Lisse. I can forsee summer vegetable growing being almost entirely containerised in future, because watering is so easy and all the water goes exactly where it’s needed.

That will free up my (very slow) sprinkler system from the tank to water the fruit trees and shrubs, which were neglected this summer.

Self-sufficiency just bombed out

Yesterday the weather god threw up a temperature of 41 C and the day before that, 37 C.  Welcome to Melbourne in the summer. Huh! Not amused.

Most food plants were badly wilted—some will recover and some wont.

I managed to throw some mosquito netting over most things but it’s not real shadecloth and it just wasn’t enough. In any case even the shade temperature combined with low humidity was just too much for most plants, at least those that aren’t native to the area.

So I need to rethink the whole idea of growing food in the summer if temperatures like these are going to be the norm, and I can’t see any reason they’re not going to be.

But…..here’s the amazing thing. The plants in the water-wicking boxes didn’t turn a hair! I’d made sure the water reservoirs were full in the morning; I didn’t put shade over them and when I went to have a look in the evening after the cool change had come, the plants were standing up, lush and tall and green, no sign of burned leaves or wilting.

So wicking boxes are definitely the way to go. By next summer I hope to have many more in operation.

Our property slopes quite a bit but I’ve managed to find a level spot where I think I can get in another dozen boxes. The location is near one of the small water tanks, so I’m going to rig up a dripper system from the tank whereby I can add water automatically to all the boxes at the same time, because one of the problems I’ve found so far with the boxes  is that adding water by hand via the vertical tube at the side of the box is painfully slow.

I’ll still use the present vegetable growing area, but in a more limited way and will rig up some structures on which I can spread shadecloth when necessary. These areas will still be fine for winter vegetables.

There’s also room for a few more wicking boxes on the deck.

Oh dear….oh damn!

It seems that She Who Prides Herself On Never Making a Mistake has gone and made one (sob!).

What I’ve done is to mix up two varieties of tomato. The San Marzano that was planted into the water wicking box on the deck has morphed into a Grosse Lisse. I became suspicious when the first fruits appeared round and not egg-shaped.

Actually, I became suspicious a while before that, because the plants that were supposed to be Grosse Lisse, planted down in the main veggie garden, were so lush, so compact, so unlike-any-Grosse Lisse-I’ve-ever-grown. Now they’re producing oval fruits and that sort of clinches it. So the mates of the Grosse Lisse in the wicking box (planted down the back) and originally thought to be San Marzano, aren’t. And what I thought were San Marzano’s are Grosse Lisse.

Still confused? I’m not surprised.

If you haven’t clicked away by now, here’s what happened.

I had seedlings of San Marzano and Grosse Lisse. Because SM’s are determinate tomatoes (short-growing, don’t need a stake) I thought I’d try a couple in a wicking box up on the house deck.  The remainder of that batch were planted down the back in the main garden, labelled San Marzano. I never intended to put Grosse Lisse in a wicking box, because they’re indeterminates (tall-growing, need staking) and I didn’t think the wicking box would have enough room for the root system. I intended to plant all those down the back.

So anyway, I’ve now got two Grosse Lisse in the wicking box and true to form they’re sprawling all over the place and I’m trying desperately to find places to put stakes.

Obviously, care is needed during the process of removing labels and planting.

All the tomatoes are looking great and producing fruits and that’s the main thing.

Oh, and I’ve planted three Roma tomatoes in another wicking box. They’re similar to San Marzano so I hope I’ll get a good idea of how the smaller, more compact varieties will go in the wicking boxes.

Wicking box summary

Just a short summary of what’s currently growing in the wicking boxes. I’ve got 12 in operation so far and I think that will be it for this growing season, until I can make a lot more compost.

So….
On the house deck—3 boxes:
(1) Peas, doing well; not flowering yet but soaking up the water from the bottom reservoir like crazy.
(2) Beetroot; slow at first, probably because they hadn’t got their roots into the moist soil and I neglected to water them enough in the early stages. Going fine now and the water in the reservoir is dropping, indicating that they’re tapping into it.
(3) San Marzano tomatoes. Really pleased with these. Nearly 50 cm high and already with 2 flower trusses.

Beside the deck—3 boxes:
(1) Bok Choy chinese cabbage. Red Leaf form from Diggers Seeds. Only small and still being watered from above. Probably will run to seed quickly as it’s getting too warm for them.
(2) Celery. Put out as very small seedlings but growing well and taking up water from the reservoir. I think these will be a great success as celery loves water.
(3) Box waiting for capsicums to go in.

Down the back—6 boxes:
(1) & (2) Broccoli, just starting to flower. The plants are small, possiby because I put 5 in each box. Maybe 3 would have been better. They’ve been taking up water rapidly over the last few weeks.
(3) & (4) French Beans. Just planted, so a bit soon to tell how they’ll go.
(5) Peas, planted the same time as the ones in the box on the deck. Slightly smaller but going well also.
(6) Box waiting for cucumbers.

And that’s it. I’ve created a special wicking box page to record my experiences. Just click on the link to the right.

New links

I’ve added Scarecrow’s Garden blog to my list of links at the right. Scarecrow is a lady who lives in the mid-north of South Australia in a climate which could fairly be described as challenging—below zero temperatures in winter and often into the 40’s in summer. Her blog is liberally sprinkled with interesting photos of her daily activities.

I’m indebted to her for links and information on water-wicking beds. At present she’s establishing more and more of them in a variety of shapes and forms. It was from her that I got the idea of the water-wicking boxes, but instead of using polystyrene broccoli boxes as she has, I’ve gone for black plastic recycling crates. I think they’ll have an advantage over the white poly boxes in winter and early spring as they’ll warm up more quickly, but this might be a disadvantage once the heat of summer kicks in. I will have to check the temperature of the soil in my boxes and provide shade where necessary.

I’ve also put a link to Aussies Living Simply, another good self-sufficiency site which has a variety of useful discussion forums and articles on organic gardening. Scarecrow also posts there and is one of the moderators.

A few recent photos

Calendula flower. The edible petals look great in a salad.

Pepinos—socked & unsocked. For an explanation see here.

Tomato seedlings—ready to go…..

…..and two in a water-wicking box.

Spring has sprung!

Warm weather at last! It’s about time. I thought it was just me getting old, but everyone has been complaining about the lack of winter sunshine and the cool temperatures this year. Normally I don’t mind the winter; the temperatures outside are bearable and I usually get lots done, but this year we’ve had more rain than usual and everything has been so wet and boggy.

In July we had 81 mm of rain; the average for Melbourne is 49. In August, a stunning 125 mm compared with an average of 57. September’s average is 53 mm and so far in the first 4 days we’ve had 12 mm. Still, there is the sunshine and things in the garden are starting to move.

Today I noticed the first Cabbage White Butterfly of the season and did a frantic covering-up of all the brassicas with netting. The native Showy Bossiaea in the bushland area is flowering and is covered in bees; likewise the self-sown Borage of which there are dozens of plants. I’m happy to see the bees around; it’s a real worry that their numbers might be declining. We do have native Blue-banded Bees, but not very many.

I’m busy preparing more water-wicking boxes for the spring/summer growing season. There are already three up on the house deck and five down the back in the main vegetable garden. I’m putting another two boxes beside the deck; these won’t be fenced off from the rabbits but will sit up on polystyrene fruit boxes where I hope their contents will be out of reach. Not sure what I’ll put in them, probably lettuces and maybe I’ll try some french beans when the weather warms up.

In the boxes on the deck, I’ve sown peas and beetroot and will put a couple of early San Marzano tomatoes in the third. They should relish the heat coming off the house wall. It’s just a trial to see how they go in the boxes as tomatoes normally have large root systems.

Of the five boxes down the back I’ve got Bok Choy chinese cabbage in one and broccoli in two others. Peas have been sown in the fourth and I’m keeping the last for celery (seedlings still small and waiting in the polyhouse). I’d have more boxes if I could, but I’m running out of homemade compost to fill them.

Self-sown Borage