Collecting Horse Manure

 Horse Manure.

The use of horse manure can be a controversial subject perhaps surprisingly with it being said that the compost is high in antibiotics and that it is a big source of weeds. Although with this in mind I still actively source it and have a great supply that keeps my garden well supplied with organic matter. However it is important to acknowledge the above issues and take steps to minimise their impact. This can be done by composting the manure (the heat helps to kill the weed seeds), and to not apply the horse manure immediately on the vegetable beds (taking us back to point one, composting).

We compost in a big bay for over a year in order to do the above as well as to "mature" the compost. However there is a cost to maturing the compost as this results in a lose of nitrogen in the process but this lose has to be simply accepted so that a more balanced and healthy fertiliser is eventually added to the soil.

Great to have a trailer and ute to pick up the horse manure although it would be very useful to have a trailer that tips but good exercise:>)

A couple of hours latter the job is completed (although could be tidied up a little better). Still need to do one more trip in a months time to really fill up the bay and have a source of manure for the next year.

Garden Harvest

Garden Harvest. 

With it now being Autumn the garden is starting to move from summer production mode to Winter Production. Hopefully the Greenhouse will allow us to continue to have some summer crops (especially tomatoes, peppers etc) in the colder months.

We have already (since December) been eating our homegrown potatoes and have now started harvesting pumpkins etc so are eating around 50 to 60% home grown produce reducing our shopping bill significantly.

Of course there have been some disappointing yields as well as some very satisfying yields but this is agriculture and I suspect that our ancestors understood the risks far better than we do (with us having the supermarkets just around the corner). One way of mitigating against the risk is to plant a wide range of produce. We do this in a very limited way by planting potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes (not so much this year) and pumpkins. Corn might have produced slightly disappointing results this year (I didn't plant enough) but the potatoes have done very well.

Below are a couple of photos of our home grown produce.

One of our bigger Broccolis. We produce a few Broccolis each year which we add to stir fries, soups etc.

The potatoes have done very well this year with several varieties (Ilam Hardy, Rocket, Nadine and Maris Anchor) all doing well. However the start was rocky with our early potatoes being hit by a late season frost which really knocked them back but fortunately they recovered and gave a reasonable yield. Currently we still have the Nadine potatoes in the ground so should have potatoes for a couple more months.

We produce a range of different pumpkins, (just in case one doesn't do too well) and they have to date yielded very reliably although the Delica appears to be far more vulnerable to powdery mildew than the other varieties. Perhaps unfortunately, the Delica is also our favorite pumpkin as it is very dry and great baked, so we think it is worth the risk:>)

Papaya Seedlings are Germinating!!!

 Papaya Seedlings

This is the second time that I have tried to germinate Papaya seedlings with my first attempt being a complete disaster and making me wonder if the imported Papaya plants are genetically sterile with their seeds not viable.

However on my second attempt I have gotten a really good germination rate (around 60% so far).

But before planting the papaya seeds (sourced from a shop purchased papaya) it is important to remove the seeds (no surprise there:>) and place them in a glass of water for a week or so. This is an important step to remove the gelatinous layer around the seed. The solution will actually start to ferment with the production of bubbles as the seed coat breaks down.

After seven days I removed the papaya seeds and place then in a seed tray with a fine layer of soil placed on top of them and placed the try in the greenhouse. After around seven days the seeds had started to germinate to my massive surprise and excitement!

So today (the 3rd of March 2021) I have started to prick out the largest seedling and not a moment too soon as the roots are pretty deep and they haven't yet started to produce true leaves yet!

Will be very interesting to see how they develop in the greenhouse. 

Papaya are normally either male or female, with one male plant recommended for around ten female plants however there are some that are hermaphrodite and I am hoping that this is my case otherwise will have to have a male plant in the greenhouse taking up space that could be used for a female plant!

Update:21/03/21

Disaster the papaya seedlings are really suffering with a large number succumbing to what I suspect is a fungal disease, not sure if they have been over watered but have placed the bags in different locations to see if they respond differently. I suspect that my placing them in the greenhouse immediately after transplanting them may not have helped the situation as they should have gone into a warm shaded place to allow them to develop in their new environment. Although having said this the seedlings that have been left in the seed tray are also dying! Urgh one consultation is that you always learn more from your failures than your successes:>) 

Extending the Irrigation System.

 Irrigation Extension to the Greenhouse and an Additional Tap.

It is so useful to have water readily available in the vegetable garden. I installed one tap a couple of years ago but as the vegetable garden has grown I thought that, while extending the irrigation system to the Greenhouse, I would take the opportunity of installing a second tap which would allow for a greater irrigation range and less long hosepipes dragging across the garden.

Most of the pipeline used was 3/4 inch (20mm) PVC with connectors PE (20mm). For the greenhouse I think that this is overkill as the amount of water needed in the greenhouse is a little but often however I wanted as much as possible to keep all the fittings the same size to make the installation easier (I always end up needing more fittings with an extra trip back to CWS in Mot, who are very helpful even for small orders).

The installation did require a bit of trench digging which took some time, probably not best to do this in the height of summer when the soil is pretty solid but ......... That's life.

Installing a tee (the soil is pretty dry and the trench pretty shallow). I normally leave the trench open where I have installed connectors etc until I have tested the lines to make sure that there are no leaks. 

The hardest part of the job was drilling a hole through the blocks at the back of the greenhouse. This took ages due to my drill not really being up to the job, but got there in the end.

And another tap installed in the Vegetable garden. I STRONGLY recommend using metal fittings as these last much longer and help to avoid cross threading any connectors (which drives me crazy as once a cross thread has started it is impossible to get the thread back and the connector is then useless).

I will do another blog on the irrigation inside the greenhouse next month.

HugelKultur. What the heck is it and will it work in my Greenhouse???

What is Hugelkultur?

Good question:>)

Well Hugelkultur is a German word meaning mound culture or hill culture.

But what is it actually? 

It is a horticultural technique of burying wood/twigs/decaying plant material as a raised bed with the idea being that the organic material will act a little like a sponge soaking up water and rotting to improve soil fertility, water retention and soil warming which all benefit plant growth.

After one month.

After one year.

After two years.

After twenty years.

As I had to recently fill up the raised beds in my greenhouse I did not want to fill the whole beds with compost, as this would essentially cost a fortune, so after watching a You Tube video for "Self Sufficient Me" ((948) How To Hügelkultur AMAZING Grow Method For Raised Beds Vegetable Gardens - Organic & Cheap - YouTube) I thought that I would give Hugelkultur a try and see if it would not only save me money but also help to produce a bountiful crop.

The bottom of the bed was filled with smallish would rounds taken from largely gum trees that we felled a couple of years ago and had stored for firewood.

Then I added a load of waste organic material from the compost pile to try to "fill in" the gaps between the rounds.

This was followed by a healthy dose of rotten horse manure.

With a final "topping" of mature compost and a wetting from the irrigation system.

I have no idea if this will work or how well it will work. I expect the level of the soil in the bed to drop enormously over the next few months and this will have to be topped up with the mature compost. What I have already noticed is a lot of insect life within the greenhouse and on the beds, although I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing! 

I will let you know how I get on and what my impressions are. Is it worth doing? Well at least I have saved money on compost so so far so good:>)

Update 27th of Feb.

Although only just started the experiment I am noticing that the soil is warmer and that the seeds that I recently planted are germinating very quickly, although this might be due to the Greenhouse Environment rather than the HugelKultur beds (very hard to separate the two). But my first impressions are positive (so far). Still a LOT of buds on the beds and in the Greenhouse in general.

 

Something to save time, money and your back when planting larger seeds!

Simple Device for helping plant larger seeds at regular intervals.

I love this home made device as it really does help when sowing larger seeds in a furrow. It ensures that the seeds are planted at the recommended spacing and doesn't require any bending down.

Here is a picture of me using the sowing tool last year when we were planting corn.

Very very simple. I made this from some pipe that I had left over from a different project (I think that I got the idea from Pinterest). You simply drop the seed in the longer pipe and use the horizontal piece of pipe to determine the spacing of the seeds with the shorter vertical pipe having an end cap which is placed on top of the previous seed.

What I really like is that none of the pipes are glued in place but are simply (and firmly) pushed together. This means that for different seed types the size of the horizontal pipe can be changed which changes the distance between seeds.

I have used this over several years principally for squash and corn seeds, but it could equally be used for other seeds.

Now if you know how to evenly space out much smaller seeds, such as those for carrots, onions etc please let me know as I hate destroying seedlings when I thin out these seedlings.

I have never seen such an event before in my life!

On Boxing Day 2020 (summer in the Southern Hemisphere), at around 3.40 pm, we experience the following hail storm that lasted for around five minutes. 

Initially I was in awe at the event, watching the hail stones bounce off the solar panels, but then I started to worry about the newly constructed (and not 100% completed) greenhouse and whether the roof had withstood the impact of the hundreds of little bullets that must have hit its poly-carbonate glazing! I was confident that the solar panels could withstand the battering but the greenhouse was another question! The hail was the largest that I had ever seen with it being physically painful to stand out in the open and be hit by it.

When the hail stopped and I ventured into the garden to my relief the greenhouse was fine however this was not the case for some of the vegetables! The impact of the hail on the different vegetables varied enormously with the corn having survived relatively unscathed due to its tougher leaves but the lettuce and squash had suffered the worse damage with there leaves looking as through they had passed through a shredder!

                        Lettuce                                                            Squash

The morning had been chilly but nothing exceptional and there was no warning from the meteorological office. Although it is not the first time that this has happened in our area it was the most severe Hail storm that anyone could remember. 

Three weeks Latter.

With the damage being so intensive to the squash and the lettuce it must have drastically set back their development however both had recovered well after three weeks with the squash, in particular, having grown profusely with some good sized fruit having been set.

Lettuce and Squash on the 21st of January (squash showing hail damage center bottom).

Conclusion.

Perhaps surprisingly, the lettuce and the squash (the worst affected plants) were able to weather the damage inflicted by the hail storm. Some of the lettuce have already been harvest and the squash have set some good fruit that will be harvested in a months time. 

So do not lose heart even when faced with unexpected and severe events. Keep gardening and keep learning:>)