Baking Soda in the Garden

Things are a bit slow, with lockdown and the boredom that goes with it, especially when you've caught up with garden jobs.

OK, so we're going to use some Baking Soda in the garden, you may ask where we can use it, but it is universal if you want to try it. Now remember, Baking Soda is not the same as Baking Powder, just so we are on the same track.

1. After a spell in the garden, wash your hands using Baking Soda rather than soap.

2. As a fungicide, mix equal parts of Baking Soda and Flour and dust your Brassicas for caterpillars, the Cabbage White Butterfly is active at the moment, so put this to good use.

3. Sprinkle some around your tomato plants when they're fruiting up, it will help make the fruit taste a little sweeter.

4. Where you have weeds come up in the expansion joints in concrete, dusted thick will kill the weeds.

5. Dust around on the garden soil to distract grubs, slugs and snails.

6. You can make a great Bug Spray using Baking Soda, here's what you'll need to make it. We're going to make one litre of mix, so start with one litre of water in your spray bottle, two teaspoons Baking Soda, one teaspoon of Neem Oil and ten drops of dish liquid, Shake well. Do a test spray and if leaf damage occurs, add more water. Shake well during use too.

7. If you dust it on your soil and it bubbles when wet with the hose, it indicates your soil is acidic.

Tomato Plants and Calcium Nitrate

Calcium Nitrate is one of the main ingredients of a hydroponic growers fertiliser recipe, but did you know it can also be used in the home garden, both as a diluted in water additive, or in it’s granular form. 

A lot of American tomato growers use Calcium Nitrate at an early stage,  usually around the time they stake the plants. I recently read on “Hilling” plants, as you would potatoes and they used a hand operated high arch wheel hoe, although I have seen it done behind a tractor to do several rows of tomatoes. The hand plough will do plants under 15 inches in height, with the Calcium Nitrate added beforehand in a dry form and covered under the hilling. 

For those growing at home and using the wheel hoe, extra soil is added around the base of the plant, covering the Calcium Nitrate.

Calcium helps strengthen cell walls and the nitrate nitrogen is the source preferred by fruits and vegetables, and is readily available to plants.

The idea is the same as deep planting and using the lower stem of the tomato to grow new roots, thus making for a stronger plant. I think a visit to my old work maybe in order next time I’m close so I can grab a bag if they have any left after recently stopping production.

Peas and Carrots

I must say it’s a change here to have healthy Carrots and Peas doing so well , after we’ve improved the soil after a bad start with raised beds. We had a failed crop of Parsnips, then couldn’t buy anymore seed due to a shortage everywhere. 

The Onions have been a bit slow to get going but we’re watching them everyday as being in lockdown, we’re spending more time in the garden.

Here are some photos of Peas and Carrots.

New Project Season 2020/21

Well, I’m fairly confident my cross tomato seed (Nicoleta X Sweet Ozark Orange) will be on the top of my mind as they grow this coming season. I will be doing a germination test soon to see if the seed is viable, then I’ll be growing a few as an extra early crop, so I have advanced plants ready at the end of October to go into the ground.

I must do some Roma  again this year for our friend who loves growing them for his tomato sauce.

No idea what changes will show up with this new variety as Potato Leaf was in the parentage of Sweet Ozark Orange. 

The new cross will give me three varieties I’m naming after local farming regions near us. Stratford Giant, Wandocka (photo below) and the new Nicoleta cross which I’ll give the name Riverslea, but time will tell.

Here are the seeds of the cross.

Coloured Tomato Juice - Rehashed

Think of this, you’re squeezing juice from several coloured tomatoes, but not all tomatoes give red juice, as you’ll see here. In this photo are the juice of five different coloured tomatoes, which are ready to ferment to obtain clean seeds.

An oldie, but a goodie. Can you match up what coloured tomato corresponds with what cup?

Parsnip Seeds

Just when all you want is a packet of Parsnip seeds and you can’t get any, no matter where you try. On Instagram a friend put me onto The Seed Collection, but to use their Ebay store rather than their web site. I ordered on Sunday night and got them in the mail Friday, so happy with that.

I didn’t realise I had bought Roma tomato seeds for my friend up here in July last year as he likes to make tomato sauce.

Anyway, a job for tomorrow is to sow these seeds, hopefully they’ll germinate where the others I planted rotted in the ground.

A Distant Memory

Do you remember anyone here in this photo?  This was possibly our first group meet up when there was a gardening forum that attracted gardeners that actually gardened and didn’t spin crap like what happens these days.

After lunch we headed to where the cars were parked for a good old fashioned Plant Swap.

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In this photo is Neely (Centre) between Lomatia and his wife taken at Kelly’s Hotel in Cranbourne 1/03/2008.

Fertilising Garlic

Something not many people would do in their gardens, that is to fertilise their garlic. Over the growing season, garlic actually need a nitrogen boost every now and then, especially before setting scapes, but never seem to get anything mentioned.

Today using Nitrosol, I gave them a feed to help keep them healthy.

Correa reflexa - Stockdale Form

On a bush track not too far away from here, Correa reflexa grows wild in the bush among the bracken and undergrowth. This Correa is usually spindly in its wild state, only growing a few branches, but competing as it grows. 

Petal and I were  there last year after a grader had cleaned up the tracks through the bush. On the side of this particular track, was a seedling Correa which had been uprooted, so I took it home and planted it near my magpie feeder. It eventually started to grow and over the year has formed into a nice compact shrub.

It’s currently flowering, with nice size red corollas, a typical Correa reflexa. I’m attaching some photos, as this is a nice form of this plant. You would be very lucky to find a plant with this many flowers on it in the wild.

Rainy Day Here

I got woken up at 6.00 a.m. this morning by heavy rain on the roof, something we seldom hear, but it sounded great and the garden will love it. Later when we got out of bed, Jan checked and we had 8.0mm so you’ve got to love that.

Hopefully you got some of it too.

Happy Easter 2020

Well, it’s actually Good Friday today, but I think more in name than anything else, so Happy Easter.

Today we planted a punnet of Brown Onions, to assure we get a few plants through to maturity. 

We sowed Red Onion on tape and only got a few come up, so planted some Cream Onion seed, but only got a few them up. We also planted another punnet of Silverbeet, so we will have some green manure for the Winter compost bins.

Enjoy your Easter. Stay Home & Stay Safe.

Garden Arch

I got a memory come up on Facebook to say our garden arch I made is now 12 months old. The use of sheep mesh and star pickets made this a very cheap item in our garden.

We have currently three Hardenbergia’s growing on this arch, one we bought at Bunning’s, one our friend gave us, the last was a seedling we found on a bush track that a grader had pushed up. All three are growing great, especially the latter, which sat for ages before deciding to race to the top of the arch.

One we got from a friend, is actually from seed that the late Bill Cane, local Nurseryman and Plant breeder had collected seed for. When Bill died, his seed collection was given to a friend of mine and together with the local Native Nursery, grew some seed for it. What eventuated is a narrow leaf form with pink flowers, which doesn’t have the tendrils that H. violacea has and just scraambles across the ground.

Here are two photos, one when I built the arch, the other one year on with the climbers attached.

Garlic Doing Great

After getting Garlic Seed at the Meeniyan Garlic Festival in February, sowing time came around pretty quick here on the Gippsland Plains. Something that is entirely different to what I’m familiar with is a change in growing seasons since we moved here.

I went for all Turban types this year, rather than stagger my season, so I ended up with Tasmanian Purple, Monaro Red, Wilde Pearl and one bulb of Purple Stripe. My first try was 3 rows in the big garden of Monaro Red, which were up within a week. 

Then the following week I planted everything else, it too was up quick and it’s just a matter of leaving it grow now. A shower or two of rain has it looking pretty damn good.

 

Did I mention Saffron

Petal planted 30+ Saffron Corms here last Autumn, this year most of what we planted are up, with flowering being pretty spectacular. We’ve had about fourteen flowers up until now, but today there looks to be seven flowers that may open if it gets sunny later in the day.

The flowers are being harvested as you’d expect, so these are well worth growing, even just for the flower beauty.

Here are a couple of shots of a couple to date.

***Update – We managed 25 Flowers from 35 plants, so not too bad.

Autumn Vegies 2020

Amongst the Autumn vegies that made it into the garden this year are Red Onions, Silverbeet, Peas, Carrots & Parsnips. 

The availability here was at an all time low, with restrictions of one punnet of each variety, hence I’m relying on seed for some of them.

Here are some photos of what’s growing as of today.

Red Onions

 Greenfeast Peas

Topweight Carrots

Dwarf Green Peas