Soil
The vege garden is chocka again
13 January 2008 13:55 Filed in: Planting
Once again my weekend vege gardening effort has been
finishing a harvest and squeezing something else in.
I don't know how people manage proper crop rotation, I'm forever squeezing something into the gap left when I harvest something else, so big planning just doesn't seem to happen. I do try to rotate in a general way, so the dwarf beans went where there had been brassicas, the potatoes went where the broad beans were, the next crop of broad beans will go where there are currently alliums.
I have given up on the original place I put the sweetcorn, so I've moved it into the main vege garden, half replaces the end of the last crop of silver beet, half is in the next section squeezed in between lettuces than only have a fortnight or so to live. The new crop of silverbeet is now harvestable, although the ones the chooks got at are probably a week away, so the very end of the previous crop is in the kitchen waiting to be made into quiche.
I also harvested the garlic, washed it (using the washing water on the pear tree) and started it drying. It's been replaced with four more lots of florence fennel seeds (the previous planting is doing well).
The plantings of bush beans are now flowering, so beans shouldn't be far away either.
I'm still not sure how heavily I should be fertilising the vege garden. As the soil is new and good I didn't fertilise the first crops, and now I'm just adding a couple of centimetres of compost each time I replant. I use a seaweed foliar feed once a fortnight or so, but nothing else. I don't know if I should be adding something like blood-and-bone, but at the moment everything's doing ok.
I don't know how people manage proper crop rotation, I'm forever squeezing something into the gap left when I harvest something else, so big planning just doesn't seem to happen. I do try to rotate in a general way, so the dwarf beans went where there had been brassicas, the potatoes went where the broad beans were, the next crop of broad beans will go where there are currently alliums.
I have given up on the original place I put the sweetcorn, so I've moved it into the main vege garden, half replaces the end of the last crop of silver beet, half is in the next section squeezed in between lettuces than only have a fortnight or so to live. The new crop of silverbeet is now harvestable, although the ones the chooks got at are probably a week away, so the very end of the previous crop is in the kitchen waiting to be made into quiche.
I also harvested the garlic, washed it (using the washing water on the pear tree) and started it drying. It's been replaced with four more lots of florence fennel seeds (the previous planting is doing well).
The plantings of bush beans are now flowering, so beans shouldn't be far away either.
I'm still not sure how heavily I should be fertilising the vege garden. As the soil is new and good I didn't fertilise the first crops, and now I'm just adding a couple of centimetres of compost each time I replant. I use a seaweed foliar feed once a fortnight or so, but nothing else. I don't know if I should be adding something like blood-and-bone, but at the moment everything's doing ok.
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