September 2010 - Spring Preparation

Over the last 3 weeks I have been slowly preparing the garden to receive the first plants of spring. The remnants of the winter crop have been removed and bags of chicken and cow manure obtained to renew the soil prior to planting.

As well as preparing the beds I have also been attempting to grow some seedlings from seeds. I used the same seed planter from last year and planted lettuce, squash, and tomatoes. These were the most successful of last years crops and I know will provide a good harvest.

Unfortunately, just 2 weeks after the seedlings sprouted I left them on the outdoor table in full sun on the hottest day so far this spring. All of the seedlings bar a couple of the squash plants were withered. Today I replanted  the seeds, hopefully I will be able to plant these out by the end of the month.

Next weekend, I will prepare the garden beds for planting.

April 2010 - Preparation for Cooler Months

Over the last month we have had some failures in the garden. The watermelon seedlings planted in January seemed to suffer during a cold snap and did not survive. The iceberg lettuce seedlings survived but never really developed a 'heart'. The plant produced many leaves but never really looked like an iceberg lettuce you would buy in the shops. Now that these plants have gone to seed I have removed them from the garden and prepared the bed for planting new seedlings.

What has survived and flourished are the tomato plants and the capsicum. We have harvested 8 - 10 capsicums and about 12 truss plum tomatoes over the last 4 weeks.

 The other garden bed where the watermelon and bok-choy was planted will be cleaned up and the garden prepared for winter herbs. This garden bed does not get a great deal of sun and I have decided to use this bed for herbs and other plants that do not require the same amount of sunlight as some of the other vegetables.

Week 15 - New Garden Bed Part 2

After a trip to the garden centre, I have edged the garden using treated pine half round edging. I used five of these to give me a garden 3m x 1m against the fence.

Two bags of garden soil, two bags of cow manure and 1 bag of chicken manure we have a garden ready to be planted out with some new seedlings.

I have some spring onion and bok choy to grow in the new bed. I will be getting some iceberg lettuce in the next week.

Week 15 - New Garden Bed

The new garden bed has been started. Today was the first fine day we have had since Christmas Day and I decided that while the ground was nice and soft from all the rain, I would start clearing the area where the new garden was going to be. This area has basically been somewhere I have been throwing grass clippings and leaves for around 5 years.

Much of this waste material has decomposed and only the top 15cms was still grass clippings and leaves. I moved this pile further down the slope and started to attack the ground with the mattock.

A mesh of fine roots was all the way through the ground and these needs to be broken up and the soil loosened. The roots were thrown into the green garden waste bin. Three quarters of a bin later most of the roots. twigs and grass had been removed from the   garden bed.

The next step in preparing the garden is to determine what I will use for a border around the bed. I will be off to the local garden centre to get some supplies.

The following images show the existing garden.

Week 7 - Lots of Growth

During the last week we got over 100mm of rain. Including about 20mm of rain in about 15min on last Sunday.

This meant that we have had a great deal of plant growth over the last week. The tomato plants have almost doubled in size in 7 days.

The lettuce have grown quite a lot and hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be harvesting some lettuce.

The squash plants have thrived and are now starting to produce prolific shoots and leaves. They are very healthy plants and I am expecting to get a good crop of squash.


The strawberry plants have started to flower and to protect the fruits from birds I created a wire mesh screen to place over the plants.

The final work done this weekend was to put some snail baits down in the garden bed and re-mulch the beds where the mulch was washed out during the torrential downpour last Sunday. I also sprayed the leafy vegetables with pyrethrum spray to protect them from pests.

Week 6 - Extending the Garden Bed

This weekend I spent some time and extended the garden bed to allow me to plant some more seedlings. The garden bed had previously had been a flower bed but had been let go. After cleaning up all the grass and leaves I used a mattock to break up the heavily compacted soil.

Once the soil was broken up and the larger clumps removed, I added cow manure, chicken manure and some slow release fertiliser. I mixed the soil thoroughly and planted seedlings purchased from a local garden centre.

My experiences with growing my own seedlings were varied and the lettuce and tomato plants grown from seeds do not seem to be maturing and I am going to supplement the seed grown plants with seedlings.

This week I planted the following new plants:

• Tomatoes (2 plants)
• Lettuce (cos, butter)
• Capsicum (6 plants)
• Sweet Corn (7 plants)
• Strawberries (2 plants)

Once the seedlings were planted I watered them thoroughly and mulched using sugarcane mulch. This should prevent them from drying out as quickly.

End of Month 1 - First Seedlings Planted

It is the end of the first month since I started the garden. The seedlings grown in the seed planter were reasonably successful and it was time to get the larger seedlings (squash and cucumber) into the garden bed.

After a week of cold and wet weather, the weather on Sunday morning was clear enough that I could spend some time planting seedlings.

There were a small number of weeds in the garden bed that required removal and once this was done I worked out the required spacing and planted out the squash and cucumber seedlings.

It was at this point that I realised that the space was small and that if I planted the seedlings at the recommended spacing I would not be able to fit much in this bed.

I made the decision to plant them closer together with the idea that I would thin them out to the strongest growing plants in a couple of weeks.

The tomato and lettuce seedlings I left in the seed planter. They need a couple more weeks prior to planting in the bed.

The final step was to water the bed with a diluted mixture of seaweed fertiliser. Shortly after completing this the rain came back.

Day Twelve - Seedlings and Garden Bed

Due to unforeseen circumstances, a couple of days after planting the seeds into the planter, I needed to go away for 10 days. I gave the seeds a good watering prior to leaving and hoped for the best. To my surprise the seeds germinated and the seedlings survived both the warm spring days and the freaky duststorm that the Central Coast got on the 23rd September 2009. In the first and second photos are the seedlings that germinated. The only seedlings not to germinate were the Capsicum.

I have also included a photo of the garden bed where these seedlings will be planted in 3-4 weeks.

Edit: new photos of the Sydney duststorm