A-Z of the little blue shack's garden - a little more "A"

Asparagus

Asparagus can be grown from seed or from crowns. Seed however requires a lot more patience and work, as you need to wait at least 2-3 years to start harvesting from them, whereas crowns can be purchased to avoid that wait. A crown is just the rootset which stores nutrients during winter ready for the plant to burst forth again in spring. You can get 1, 2 and even 3 year old crowns If you grow from seeds, then the seedlings need to be checked the first year and you are best to go with male plants rather than females which produce an abundance of red berries and skinnier stems. When you plant asparagus you want to ensure you pick a place they can remain undisturbed for the next 20 years as they will produce for many years to come. Unwanted seedlings from berry fall can 'choke' your garden bed. Crowns are more expensive, especially when you are trying to establish enough of them to make a good feed. I raised mine as bought seedlings and planted them into larger pots each year until after their third year. This has been handy as I didn't have a set place for where they would be located in the first years I had them, and it's allowed me to ensure they have had enough food and water to thrive. What I would suggest is that they need plenty of root depth, I've read they can have roots growing up to 1 metre down. To  help give them more depth I planted them into 20 litre food grade buckets that I had been using to store chicken food. I drilled holes around the sides about 5 cm up and filled to this height with gravel  to allow a water reservoir in the bottom to help offset our hot summers.

Asparagus growing in 20 litre buckets, this photo was taken late in the season when the plants had been left go to fronds.

 By the time I transplanted the first lot into their permanent beds last winter ready for spring their root systems were well developed and able to produce a great crop. During their first harvest year, normally the fourth year from seed/seedling, or the first year from crown, it's recommended to only harvest for about the first 6 weeks and then let them grow fern ready to build up the crown for the following season. After that I've found you can stretch the harvest by allowing tiny thin stems to frond, while still picking any thick stems. But you must ensure you leave them some time to replenish the crown during the last half of summer. When fronds start browning off (in my subtropical climate  this often doesn't happen so I normally limit any watering to force them to have a "dormant" period in late June/early July) you cut back the fronds and top dress the garden bed with good organic compost, manure and mulch well ready for the growing season as asparagus are heavy feeders.

Smaller pots being used for very young seedlings. This photo taken almost at the end of the season when they were due to be cut down and transplanted into the bigger 20 litre buckets.

I recently top dressed the Asparagus gardens with a mix of compost and composted manure and added some "Rooster Booster" chicken manure pellets as once they start growing again they are heavy feeders. In this image you can see some Asparagus starting to come up early.

More Asparagus coming up. Since these shots I've also heavily mulched the beds with sugar cane mulch. This helps keep the moisture in and gives the Asparagus some cover as it starts to come up. I've found the more depth the shoots need to grow through the more the stems seem to thicken up.

Ok, so I think that covers the last of my "A's". Do you have any plants starting with "A" that I've missed?

Coming up next in our alphabet we'll proceed to"B"... 

Catch up begins

Work has begun in earnest on the August to do list.

The Murrayas planted last summer to form a hedge to screen the garden beds have been weeded, top dressed with compost and then mulched.

Murrayas with their new top dressing of compost. 

A thick layer of sugar cane mulch was then placed on top to help prevent moisture loss as it heats up going into the warm weather, plus there's the added benefit of helping to keep the weeds down.

As too have the planter boxes.

Even though these planters are a wicking design like the garden beds, the mulch helps to minimise moisture loss.

This top dressing and mulching helps to get the plants ready for spring growth, and coming summer heat.

The chinese Artichokes were dug up, but I'm sure there's been heaps of small ones missed, and no doubt we'll see them come up in this bed again closer to Summer.

These look like some sort of grub, and they are even about that size, but they are actually Chinese Artichoke.

The turmeric and ginger were also dug up.

A muddy looking clump of roots will hose off to reveal fresh Turmeric and Ginger.

This garden bed is starting to look a little more empty, at least in one half. On the other the tomatoes and sweet potato has taken over. It may take a little longer to get that sorted and tidied.

Now you can see at least one half of this wicking garden. The large upright pipe is used to fill the base layer which holds a bladder of water. The other were an experiment to see if worms could be integrated into the system.

We've still got a long way to go to finish preparing the garden for the start of spring, but at least the first steps have been taken.

What are you doing in your garden to prepare for the coming season?

August to do in our subtropical garden

Well the pond is done, and it was definitely overdue. The water chestnut harvest normally happens before now. The few water chestnuts we got out of the mass of roots were planted out in a new area, separate to the other water plants and that should make for an easier and much lusher harvest next year. But for now as I look around the garden, there is just so very much to do, and with me not having spent much time in the garden last month I need some serious catch up time.

My to do list this month is epic, more than a little overwhelming and the month is almost half gone. Some things have truly gotten out of control, a bit like the pond.

The asparagus in the garden beds has been cut back already (in our climate it doesn't die back completely), I'd managed to top up the beds with some compost and composted manure, but I haven't yet put on it's warm weather sugar cane mulch protective layer. I've found this is essential, even with wicking beds, it helps to stop the soil drying out like concrete. I still have to make a decision on the asparagus in the 20 litre buckets, do I make them wicking garden beds this season and plant them out as was the original plan, at three years old now they are well and truly ready, but I still don't have it straight in my head where their long term place will go. Worst case scenario, they need cutting back, topping up and mulching, along with being moved to a sunnier position then where they were dumped while we put up  the side fence.

One of the wicking Asparagus beds, topped up with compost, but still waiting to be mulched and I'm running out of time as it's already put up it's first fronds while I wasn't looking.

Asparagus still in 20 litre buckets. It was on this winter's to do list to get a long term wicking bed ready for them. That hasn't happened yet and I don't know whether it will now. We can still harvest from the buckets, but they aren't as productive and I doubt there's much growing room left there.

The soil level in the wicking planters has dropped, they all need a top up with great compost, as my own home made stuff still isn't exactly producing any great quantity it will have to be bought in. I normally mix a combination of composted cow manure and standard compost. This then gets topped with a good couple of inches of sugar cane mulch (it's amazing how this just disappears into the soil) and at the start of spring growth a feed of organic chook pellets. We planted new hedges last summer, and although they are in the ground rather than a wicking bed, the poor quality of our island soil means that to thrive, these plants will also need a good feed, added compost and mulch, after a really good weed!

And talking of compost, I feel it's time we built another chook compost bed. These beds are the same size as our wicking beds, and the chook pen fits over them in the same way. The idea is we put all the garden waste, kitchen scraps etc in them and allow it to build up, the chickens while roaming have the occassional dig and turn it over a bit, then when getting fuller, we top it with some soil, seed with green manure, and then when a good bit of growth is reached, move the chook pen onto it for them to dig it all over.We have two beds now, started last summer. The chook pen has been residing on one across winter, and the remnants are now a fine compost, but what started as a layer of more than a foot in height has dropped to just a couple of inches. Apart from a little sugar cane mulch, we don't add anything to the bed while the chickens are there, so the other bed is right to the brim with garden waste and ready to be topped with soil and green manure cropped.And another pile of garden waste is sitting on our driveway waiting for a place to go. While I intend to rotate the chickens across the garden beds in the coming month or two, I still feel an additional compost bed is required to make the rotation timing better in the long run.

The wicking beds need to have all the remaining Jerusalem artichoke, ginger, turmeric, indian arrowroot and possibly the chinese artichoke (not sure if it's ready yet) harvested, then if time permits a rotation of a green manure crop as mentioned above, followed up by the chook pen to work it all in.

Turmeric, some ginger and Chinese Artichoke in this wicking bed awaiting digging up so that the bed can be prepared ready for new spring crops.

Add to this that almost all of my potted plants need repotting into bigger pots ready for spring growth, my potting bench area and accompanying stacks of pots is completely covered in leaves (no seriously, it's buried under a layer of leaves), and I haven't even begun to think about spring crops, let alone get seedlings underway! The list could just keep going, but for now, this will keep me occupied enough until September when we'll bring on Spring proper.

What's on your garden to do list this month?

New additions to the garden

You know when you've been sick for what feels like forever, not seriously sick, but  ridden with colds, virus and just rundown, sick of looking at your own four walls, sick of your own uselessness, and just feel like you've got to change something or it's never going to change, I reached that point a couple of weeks ago. Desperately craving normality, I just had to get out of bed, get some fresh air and be surrounded by plants for a while. It may sound crazy, but I just feel better when I'm around plants, it never fails to lift my spirits, to get me inspired and motivated all at once. So I encouraged hubby to take me to the nursery. One of my local favourites is Neilsen's Native nursery. I like their great selection of fruit trees, I love that there are always little birds zooming around their plants, and even last spring, nesting in amongst them. Add to that their amazing selection of native Australian plants which I know almost nothing about and I'm in heaven.

I always get inspired by a visit to a plant nursery, and especially a visit to this one. I see so many plants that I'd like to add to our garden and get ideas I'd like to incorporate. This visit was no exception.

Amongst the things that excited me this time was a large tree house bird feeder. It stood about 6 foot tall, on a fairly solid base, had a little house with doorways sat on a tray to hold feed. It was probably a little over 2 foot square. I've always loved the idea of looking across the garden to a Victorian inspired bird house, and these while not overly ornate, looked really practical. I would have loved one, but at just over $200 for the most basic one they had, it's not really in the budget, plus I'm sure with a little encouragement hubby could build me one that would be a little more solidly constructed and I'd get to decorate it which would be even better.

What I did weaken and buy to add to our garden included two strawberry plants (not that exciting for some, but for me they are one of those plants, you know, the ones you really want to grow when you first think about gardening, but never manage to have any luck with), I've given up counting the number of times I've tried to grow strawberries, but never say never. I read somewhere they are good to plant with asparagus, so that's what I've tried this time.

As well as the strawberries, I bought a thornless blackberry, this was rash on my part. After having had many close escapes in buying or trying things that don't or won't grow in our climate, I normally research each new possibility thoroughly before buying now. Clearly it was my foggy brain that got the better of me this time. With increased clarity and a Google search I know it wasn't a good decision, but now I have it, we'll give it a try. At least I know where it can go in the garden and it would give me another type of berry,

And lastly, a big commitment, well not big yet, but hopefully over the coming years, a Davidson plum. I fell in love with them earlier this year after buying some at the local organic market and making a delicious jam from them. I planted the seeds. Of the six only two came up, one fried during the summer heat when I wasn't keeping watch, the other is still only about three inches high, and has never looked a promising specimen. So for about $23 I now have one that is 3 foot high. After cleaning the pond out, I've planted it out in the bottom garden right near the newly cleaned out pond and bananas.This should give it a little bit of a rainforest feel once everything is back and thriving.

Our new Davidson Plum tree, in the background you can see a blue kids shell sand pit which we've used to plant out the water chestnut corms. It was previously a wicking test garden, but in a bad spot. Now filled with soil and covered with about an inch of water it should be ideal to grow water chestnuts and any water overflow will go into the canoe pond. You can see some clumps of water plants, well mainly their roots near the plums base, I'm hoping that these will help hold water and moisture around the tree to help simulate it's rainforest environment until other plants around it fill out for spring.

I'm excited to welcome this tree. I don't have many Australian natives, especially not food source ones. Do you grow any Australian native fruits or food plants in your garden and what do you do with them?

Clearing the pond

One of my biggest and messiest jobs I try to do each winter is to harvest the water chestnuts and give the ponds a clean out. Last year I harvested only some of the water chestnuts and ran out of time to do much more before the new shoots started appearing, so I chose to just leave it for that season. It was a big mistake, a big heavy, muddy, messy mistake that I've had to pay for in extra work this year.

The roots of the different water plants had grown so dense that they completely filled the pond, so completely they formed a perfectly shaped canoe (my pond is a recycled canoe mould). They had grown so much that when the pond was filled it only left about an inch of water free on the top surface. They were so dense that it was almost impossible to harvest any water chestnuts as they were  tightly bound up in the roots and difficult to find.

During summer the canoe pond was buried under all that green. 

I couldn't actually pull the roots out or separate them by hand they were packed so tightly.They formed a solid mass and I couldn't lift them. Hubby came to the rescue by suggesting using some timber off cuts to form a fulcrum lift point, putting the length of the timber under the front edge and lifting it up enough to put another piece across under it to hold it up. We then got a large serrated kitchen knife and had to cut our way through, bit by bit. We worked on it across two days until finally the pond was cleared.

Large clumps of the matted roots and the odd plant it was just too hard to pull apart and save.

After lots of cutting and lifting I almost had the canoe pond clear

I've kept a lot of water plants, vietnamese rice paddy herb, pickerel rush, vietnamese mint and taro to repot and replenish the pond, just enough though so that the local green frogs have some protection, but now will have plenty of water for laying their eggs. The water chestnuts have been moved to a new pond where they will grow on their own, hopefully making it much easier to harvest next year, and giving me a bumper crop now that they will have some space to grow again.

Do you have a pond? What water plants do you grow?