Tassie Tomato ripening

I have some Tomatoes ripening. As you can see in the photo below, this is the first tomato I will be picking this year (and I will pick tomorrow morning to go on my bacon and egg muffin!!!). The variety is kotlas and this year confirmed the results of two years ago that it is a very early ripening tomato.

"kotlas" tomato ripening Jan 12th 2013

As an update on the other varieties:

• Steve Solomon's highly recommended Legend looks like it will mature around the end of Jan. His recommended Gold Nugget is also close at hand with their small yellow cherry toms.
• Riesenstraube which means bunch of grapes in German will be that. I do not think they will be ready till February, however they have a profuse amount of flowers and grapes and I am hoping for a bumper crop of red cherries off these.
• Hill Billy has a large number of good sized tomato already formed and I have been surprised by the vigorous growth of this unknown variety to me. Hard to tell how far away from ripening but I would say later this month.
• The indeterminates are a little further off still as to be expected. In the hothouse there is some roma almost ready along with tommy toe. Out in the veggie patch, the rouge de marmande are still growing and have fruit on them along with Mamma Mia. There is one of the four Rouge that seems to have been a dud seed and is small and growing too slowly for our summer. The Romas are also moving along but the fastest growing of my indeterminate vines has been Break 0'day. I reckon the majority of harvest will be mid Feb onwards from this lot.

kotlas close up

 The corn has been growing well since my inital mysterious disappearance of half the first plantings in late October. I think it was birds but never caught anything in the act. Nevermind, this just means my harvest should last longer with half the crop more advanced the the other half.

Corn

Spud harvest "Pink Eyes"

After getting home yesterday I decided as a spur of the moment thing to harvest the pink eyes potatoes. After the past month of dry weather and the recent hot weather, the spuds had almost completely died down and the spuds were perfectly dry for storage. There is something quite relaxing as you pull back the soil and hay to see what surprises await. And even better is that this area that was initially grass is now a new 4m by 1.5m garden bed.

The final result of the harvest from this bed was about 22kgs of spuds. less than pink eyes grown in soil from my data last year but a good return for a patch of grass I say. This years total pink eye spud harvest ended in 32 kgs. This is enough to supply us with spuds until the harvest of the longer keeping spuds in March and April.

This bed will be fed more manure and lime to aide in the further breakdown of the barley straw mulch that is there and will be planted to Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts in early February which is when most of my winter vegetables are planted. We are still eating stored carrots from the last winter carrot harvest (as they go to flower in spring we harvest all the remaining carrots).

Delicious Pink Eyes

Goodbye Porkers

Today I said farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry, my three pigs. This was the second time I have raised porkers from weaners and this time the effort to move them to Cradoc Hill  abattoir was simple. Thanks to a friend who has an excellent trailer set up, after a few minutes of looking at their favourite apples in the trailer, they slowly walked on in and started munching. The gate was then shut for the short drive to their destination. I still found it a little emotional this second time round as I lead them to their quarters for the night, but at least they have lived a good life. Nothing like those poor things that live their life on concrete  where they are unable to run around and frolick about.

The porkers a month ago.

Pigs bring a great deal of personality to your small holding. You do need to have some good strong fencing and if not some quality electrical fencing. When they get to 50kgs, their incessant need to rub and scratch can do some serious damage to infrastructure. I put some effort into building my fencing and have got through raising two lots without the need for electrical fencing, however next time round I will use a solar electrical system as the fencing is slowly weakening.

They say pigs have the intelligence of a 3 year old which I would agree with. For their water source, I salvaged an old laundry tub and put it into the ground. It still had the old plug which the porkers learnt to pull out. After frustration, the plug was removed and water repellent glue was put in to ensure they did not drain their water source.

A good wallow is also required. I dug some holes which the porkers widened, however I will need to widen and deepen this wallow next time round as on hot days it dried out quickly and I had to keep turning the hose on to replenish.

Whilst death is never fun, like tax it is a necessity if you want to raise your own meat source.

Farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry.

some sausages and pepperoni made from the first lots of pigs.

Hottest day in how long?

Unless I misheard, I think they said on the news tonight that Hobart had it's hottest day in over a century?? The temps soared to a max of 40.6 Celsius today with it 29.9 at 9pm. This is extraordinarily hot for Tasmania.

I had prepped this morning with a soil soaking hose in the veg patch, and everything pulled up quite well. There was heat stress on the curcubits, and the corn leaves were rolling a bit. The spuds showed the biggest sign of stress but they pulled through two high 30 degree days last year so they should be fine.

The pigs and chooks did not enjoy the heat. I kept popping out to the pig pen to add water to their wallow and to hose them down. The poor things do not take well to the heat.

As I have a weather station and the Grove BOM station is not the best for comparison I plan to give the monthly averages as time goes by. This will obviously only be of interest to locals. The December averages were as follows:

                   Dec 2012               Dec 2011
Min Avg         9.2                              8.9
Max  Avg       22.2                           22.1

Rainfall:        38.4mm

The porkers did not take well to the heat.

Heat stress on the spuds

Heat Wave and soil moisture

It is a new experience to those that move to Tasmania. Over the year, we go from low sunlight levels in winter with waterlogged soils. Then when summer arrives, just as quickly as we are waiting for the soil temperatures to rise and we leave the soil open to the elements to assist for tomato/pumpkin/corn germination, the soil does a 180 and is dry and parched and mulching becomes important. Today is forecast to reach into the high 30's. Maybe even nudge 40. It is under these temps I find mulching of serious benefit to the vegetables and fruit tress.

One of Tasmania's gardening gurus (Steve Solomon) is an advocate for no mulching to prevent the dreaded slug and snail wars. Last year I adopted his philosophy however it was a constant battle to keep the soil moist to not stress the vegetables. This year I have returned to mulching. So far the soil beneath the mulch is retaining much more moisture which is a blessing when you live on a rural property and water is not simply turning the town water tap on.

I find sugar cane mulch is very easy to spread within the veggie patch, with it's looseness allowing water thru yet ensure an even coverage over the soil. It is surprising how far a small bale can go. Barley Straw is good however it does have a tendency to blow away if the winds pick up, and windy it has been this season in Tasmania. I do not use hay bales within the veg patch to prevent  the grass seed germination battle, but as described earlier use it for creating new garden beds due to its cost effectiveness and usefulness with potatoes.

This morning many gardeners including me where out hosing to get as much moisture to help the plants get thru the heat. One thing this heat reminds me of tho is why we moved from Queensland. It is fine to have a day or two in the mid to high 30's, but tomorrow while other towns on the mainland are sweating through more of the heat wave, we in Tasmania will return to those glorious mid 20's.

Happy heat waving!!!

mulching has made it much easier to keep the soil moist this year for the Oca (Oxalis tuberosa)

Powdery Mildew

With this warmish and dry weather we are having at the moment, is anyone noticing some powdery mildew on any of their plants?? Here is an interesting snippet I found on facebook (austraflora page).

Powdery mildew is one of the most widespread and easily recognised plant diseases. Powdery mildews are most severe when the weather is warm and dry, and they affect virtually all kinds of plants. Powdery mildews are characterized by spots or patches of white to grayish, talcum powder-like growth.

Here is a useful treatment you can make yourself:
Mix together 1 tablespoon of baking soda with 3.5L of room temp water, along with 1-2 drops of liquid soap (this adheres the solution to the plant). Add a teaspoon of vegetable oil, then shake well to create an emulsion that will help contain the spores (and limit re-infection). Spray in the evening when it's cool, and repeat as necessary.

Why does this work? The solution changes the pH balance of the surface of the plant, making it an unsuitable environment for powdery mildew to proliferate.

Powdery mildew on pumpkin leaves

Pink Eye Potato and bandicooting

Nothing matches the delight of eating home grown spuds. Last year we harvested 110 kgs (yes I weighed the many harvests on our scales) and once these ran out the kids did not seem to take to the dutch cream or kennebec purchased from the local fruit & veg store. We ended up buying a variety called kestrels which i had not heard of but did us till our new season pink eyes were ready.

This year I was in need of new beds to extend the veg patch, and the amount of grass and digging in front of me did not go down too well on the back. So I embraced the no dig method and will not go back. What I have done this year is create news beds by starting with spuds under hay. The process I follow is quite simple:

1 - Pick a day where the wind is very gentle.
2 - mow the grass short as.
3 - place manure on the surface (sheep poo is excellent for how easy it spreads and will be covered so the weeds will not germinate.
4 - Take newspaper and about ten sheets thick lie on the ground and keep a hose close by to wet it down.
5 - Continue over the area you want a future bed in.
6 - I then place spuds at about 30cm apart on top of the wet newspaper.
7 - I then put hay bales over all this and more poo and soil. The key is to ensure the top is not just hay, but soils and manure with blood and bone also. You want some fertility into the new bed as well as enough to grow the spuds well. Note: spuds help prevent much of the hay bales seeds germinate but not all. Regular pulling out of any germination helps, or you can use another source of mulch which is more expensive.
8 - water well and watch the hay reduce in height over the weeks and the spuds come up.

Eventually you get some spuds, and a new garden bed that is fertile. At the end of this the hay is still not fully composted. That is fine. I add some compost or have a bag of loose manure from Mitre 10 into a hole within this bed to plant into.

Pink Eye Potato under hey and soon to be a new garden bed.

But the best rewards we have experienced lately is the art of bandicooting into the pink eye potato for x-mas. If Bandicooting is a new concept to you, it is basically carefully pulling back the hay (or soil) and picking a few ready spuds before actually harvesting the lot. We let the spuds fully die back before harvest but have still been enjoying them for dinner since mid December. So far we have bandicooted 10kgs and I hope to get another 30 kgs of pink eyes which do not store as long as others but will carry us through to the harvests of the other spuds growing. Last season I planted Kennebecs and Uptodate and we all really enjoyed these. This year I have branched out to see if there are others we enjoy more. These are:

• King Edward
• Tasman
• Bismarck
• Bintje

I do have the King Edwards under soil as based on last years yields I did get a slightly larger harvest from the spuds in the soil. However due to the need to create a number of new beds, I opted to do the majority of spuds under hay. I have also used this method to create the herb bed from last season to good success and some normal flowering beds which are still in progress (but these beds are subject to the local wildlife so careful plantings are needed in this flowering beds)

King Edward spuds under soil

Whether I get near the 150 kgs target is too be seen. I should match last years harvest at least based on the fact I purchased more bags of certified spuds to begin with, however the reduced yields under hay may eventuate. Last year I seemed to harvest 5kgs of spuds per metre. Either way I will go hard next year. The new beds created from this season will allow me to go hard with spuds under soil and have much more space for the rest of the vegetables and free beds for future plantings.

Part of last seasons spud harvest