The Update

So, we've been without internet for a while...but that just meant more time for the Shouse & garden. In addition to the Big Bed, we have more tomatoes in those 'holes' left my my nemesis the earwigs (& milipedes, apparently). I'm going to have to pull out my old ammunition - the beer traps! Sadly, (but not really) MyMan doesn't drink so I may have to hit MyDad's fridge for a soldier to fall on that grenade. I think the native pine is poisoning or overshadowing one of my beds so I may have to rethink what goes in there...I might risk some of the random zucs, cucs and melons I've got left over. The beans have fallen victim to the creepy crawlies so I might be trying them again, perhaps I'll even just throw a few in the failed seedling pots I still have left and pray. But the corn is looking good, about 15cm high some of it. I can tell the difference now between sunflowers and beans now they're past their first few leaves and I've got a few of both surviving. The chickenwire 'trellis' is up for the random peas. One of the herb gardens is infinitely more successful than the other so we know where to plant the tomatoes in the future as my 'spares' are going wild in the Eastern bed tucked between catmint and coriander. Tomatoes in the big pots with basil are booming. Aloe Vera has had too much water, Cardamon has had too much or too little heat, but they're hanging on. MyMan has been busily painting walls and hanging up artwork as directed by me, as well as hauling in those items of furniture from my place that pass both of our approvals for the long-term cohabitation of the Shouse (be buggered if I'm hauling anything in and out of utes that I'm not going to want for the next few years). As a result he's hit himself in the hand with a sledgehammer, slammed his elbow in cramped quarters and nearly put a screw threw his hand trying to drill screws into stone without pilotholes when TheToddlerTerror ran cackling from the room and tossed his $100 drillbit into the washing pile. After folding every piece of washing, moving couches, checking in DVD players (just in case) MyMan waited till payday to replace it (and buy a spare as well) TTT was plucking at the fuzzy blanket I keep over the ugly green couch in MyMan's bedroom and smugly returned to us the bit. MyMan now has THREE expensive drillbits...as well as a drilled hand. TTT has his own playroom, the teens have their own TV & DVD and the place is starting to look like a real home (not a pretty home, but a loved one). We have a PingPong table now and some space to put it now TheOwner has moved his caravan (still waiting on mains water & the removal of 24 bales of mouldy wool though). But moving the van allowed for MyMan to arrange his fishing gear and tools in OCD-approved straight lines on the shed walls. We also have a contract, a deposit and we're waiting on bank approval. Fingers crossed...

Hands-on Honey

*sigh* It is becoming very clear, very quickly, that MyMan's patience for being the brawn to my brains is limited. I can't fault him for his enthusiasm for 'my' garden. He mows, digs, hauls and waters endlessly...but it turns out that creating a chicken wire trellis for the peas doesn't come under his jurisdiction. So at midnight I found myself still clumsily rolling out chicken wire off the reel to staple it to hardened (really hardened) pine poles around already established tomatoes and peas in the flickering light of the security spotties. How exciting to see my 'random peas' turning into plump greenfeast and stunning purple podded dutch. I thought the seedlings were my favourite part of the gardening process...but now it's this part...and the next part.

The Mushroom Monologues

I'm loving my mushrooms. I spent 2 days soaking the logs and worrying that my garden shed (MyMan put his foot down and refused to let me use the bathroom for my fungi project) and now just three days after I first saw the lumps and bumps and tentacles of fungi erupting from the wood, I have a dinner plateful of Asian and European mushrooms. The swiss and white button boxes are filled with tiny little helmet pin-points poking through the compost too, so I'm looking forward to that first flush (although they may be coming home with my to sit under my leaky bathroom sink this week).

The First Rewards

Last night was the first night I felt like I was starting to see the rewards of my garden. I pulled up spring onions and chopped fresh basil into my cheese-covered croissant 'bruscetta' mix. After just three days since sprouting I have a plate full of Asian and European mushrooms - the boxed ones are only just poking their little helmets through the compost but the logs are prickling all over which is very exciting. I'm fascinated by the purple podded dutch peas and the greenfeasts are just swelling on the vines. My 'big bed' has survived the hot winds so I better think quickly what I'm going to do to raise those plants vertically. ...so much to do, so much excitement!

No dig garden? *pshaw*

I hate to be a cliched female driver but I am.
After 11 loads of dirt I've discovered I'm an ambidextrous shoveller...but I still can't reverse a damn trailer.

With that in mind, can I just say that when you next list off the great inventors of our time - Da Vinci, Franklin, Bell and Edison - don't hesitate to include those marvellous men at John Deere who came up with the idea of a trailer for our ride-on mower.
Those guys saved my back (forgetting the shovelling), they saved my partner (surely I would have palmed the job off to him) and my temper.
Again I say...11 LOADS OF DIRT!
'No dig' garden my arse.

That's Love

Over the past week I have set MyMan to digging, building, sawing, relocating, hauling, repairing, watering and pruning.
He's had a list of jobs including hanging pictures, picking up furniture, cleaning out sheds, setting up table tennis tables and burning off rubbish.

After a week of teenless togetherness I thought he'd be happy to watch his Deadliest Catch from bed and eat meat pies for breakfast and be thankful I'd gone home for school days.
But, instead, he was up at dawn today (while I was still tucked up in my own bed one postcode over) dragging a hose up and down the yard from coriander to peas to spuds and then eggplants in order to ensure my little green babies would all survive the hot day.

Now that's love...

The Big Bed

This weekend was a good example of a little success going to my head...
After obsessively counting the tiny spearheads of corn poking up through the mulch (13) and calculating how many potential cobs that adds up to (39) and meticulously measuring every miniscule increase in the size of my earliest garden additions - herbs, lettuce, peas & tomatoes.
After stalking the spuds' progress and frantically photographing every new development - a single purple peapod, a handful of the first flowers on the tomatoes, a single burgeoning phallic mushroom on the logs.
After all those small successes I decided that I - proven gardener that I am - was ready for 'the big bed'.
It had to be big, Big, BIG because of the growing collection of squash and cucs in my seedling collection that needed rehousing.

Turns out MyMan wasn't thinking as big as me and wasn't too impressed to spend the last weekend of the holidays (and the first half of Bathurst trials) banging together reclaimed paling in 50 degree fly-ridden heat for my garden edging. All of which resulted in both a sledgehammer to the webbing between his thumb and fingers and a bruised elbow from trying to saw next to the owner's caravan up against the workbench.

The tension escalated when he realised I wouldn't want the four 1m x 1m beds he'd envisioned, but instead I was gunning for a 3m x 9m bed that stretched the width of our 'lawn'.
To punish me for my grandiose schemes he left me to fill the beds myself - 11 trailer loads of dirt, 5 sacks of poo and half a tank of water later, me and my wobbly arms were ready to put the babies to bed.
...and that's when the 90km per hour easterly winds blew up.

With a full agenda of cleaning, washing, and three hour roundtrip roadtrip to pick up children from their Dad on my schedule, I wasn't able to postpone the bedding and my poor babies now really understand the meaning of 'hardening off'. What ever survives this week out there is going to be the very definition of 'concrete'.

To recap, I had got up at 6am in 90km per hour winds and piercing (strangley unseasonal) sleet so I'd have the three hours I needed to plant, plan and mulch.
I've overplanted...but then I'm expecting a high casualty rate.
The tap was running constantly so that my peastraw was soggy enough to stay still and it'll be weeks before I find out whether I protected the seedlings or smothered them. The juries out at this stage.

And it'll be another 24 hours before I can head back to the block and survey my work in daylight.
About then I can assess any obvious disasters and, hopefully, gloat over all that delicious green potential nestled down amongst the pea straw in thein big, Big, BIG bed.

Vertical Gardening

Now that the 'big bed' is finally complete and, in true obsessive style, I've overplanted it with tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicum all in the same bed - which, some would suggest, is not ideal - I'm really having to look at vertical gardening.

This 'issue' was highlighted when MrOCD nearly had a conniption about me turning his four 1mx1m bed plan into a giant 3m x 9m bed.
I could see him experiencing actual physical pain as he surveyed my kinked rows and unlabeled cucs & zuchs tucked in between my tomatoes & eggplants.

With the new bed, quality soil, nutrients and plenty of water I'm not too worried about the plants robbing each other of nutrients yet - but I am worried about them strangling each other.
I'm not prepared to deal with mildew or blossomrot. I'm concentrating too hard right now just getting plants to grow past seedling stage.

When I started loading the plants in, I had this wonderful idea that cucumber etc would act as 'living mulch' for my tomatoes, but now I'm concerned about the need for ventilation and access...all the things I wouldn't have had to worry about if I had just adhered to the 'plant 50cm apart' instructions.
(To be fair, they are 50-70cm apart from each other .... but not from the squash and zuchs interspersed between them.)

So I've checked out a few clips for vertical gardening including some of these ones:
Tomato Clips & Cucumber Frames
Cucumbers on Trellis & Cages
15 Ways to Grow Tomatoes Up

I know at Diggers I've seen woven grids of bamboo to support vertical cucumbers etc, something similar to what they're showing at The Gardeners Supply Co.

I'm going to put my faith in Go, Grow Organic's companion planting list that suggests that, as long as you have enough nutrients and water, cucumbers and tomatoes will be fine together.
Fingers crossed!

But because next year, they tell me, is going to be dry THEN I'll be more OCD, I promise.
And if it all goes south, well that's why we're calling this year a trial year...that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.