Comments

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  Kelly Nicolson December 7, 2009 at 2:19am

  Zucchini seedlings sound good to me, have heaps of spinach though. I have three tomato seedings left, also have some capsicans. Give me a call when you have time.
  
  Kelly
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  Kelly Nicolson December 1, 2009 at 6:36am

  Hi Cushie, good to hear there is another keen gardner in the neighbourhood. I live in the Frankton Railway Village, no. 19 Weka Street. If you want to make contact my ph. no. is 8473676. At the moment I have some seedlings that I have grown from seed that are excess to requirement if you are interested. Mostly heritage tomatoes and capsicans. I always manage to grow more than I need so I'm always keen to share the excess.
  
  Kelly :o)
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  Yvonne Nikolaison November 29, 2009 at 2:28am

  Thank you for your comments Cushie, you made me laugh about the comment of eyeing up the neighbours section as well. I keep eyeing up the lawn in front from the house to grow barley, but my partner is not that keen on the idea, nor about a keeping a milking cow, though unfortunately he is right about the cow, we don't have the room yet!
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  Caroline Wilkinson November 28, 2009 at 10:25pm

  Hi Cushie thanks for your message. Our Blueberries are planted in the ground and have taken a couple of years to establish and this year is the first year we will have berries, I think this is due to our heavy clay soil. I have found that keeping them weed free, providing compost and keeping them mulched has worked wonders with them this last year. They prefer an acidic environment and you can use a citrus fertiliser on them. I haven't read they need more than one variety, we have five plants so I'm not sure, Caroline
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  Kali November 28, 2009 at 8:49am

  Hi Cushie, welcome to oooby, I am sure you will find this a great place to natter, as we do. I like your philosophy, our lawn is now an overgrown patch of weeds and much smaller than when we moved in, just like you I think the more area for growing food the better, we don't own a noisy lawnmower, my husband keeps a little bit of recreation lawn short with a push mower and I have a sharp hand scythe to cut the grass and weeds down when they start to get bolshy and invade the food growing spaces. :) We do collect the neighbours grass clippings though, to use as mulch.
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  Lynn November 28, 2009 at 4:30am

  Oops...in addition, I forgot to mention, I put this all straight on top of the existing grass...no digging...I just laid about 5 layers of broken down cardboard boxes from the supermarket on the grass, built the boxing on top of that, and then filled with the growing medium....easy peasy.
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  Lynn November 28, 2009 at 4:29am

  Hi Cushie...I read the book Square Foot Gardening some 20 years ago and now is the first real opportunity I've had to use the priniples completely, though I have used PARTS of the principles before and loved them. This 'system' fits with my style of gardening very well...I am definitely NOT a 'regular' vegetable gardener - I've always done things by instinct and rarely with chemicals, bar the odd previous use of snail bait. When I moved into this place, there was no vegetable garden to speak of, and the landlord said I could dig up the whole back yard. Well, that was music to my ears! hehe...but I have a bad back, so wanted something less strenuous. That's when I remembered the SFG method and particularly the raised garden bed part. I designed the beds to my current financial capabilities (I'll extend it at the end of winter) so I have 4 feet x 7feet at 8 inches deep and 4ft x 7ft at 16 inches deep - yes, have kept true to the foot measurements, (30cm = 1 ft). The wood boxing is untreated macrocarpa 200mm x 50mm...should last for years! The fill isn't pure to SFG standards, as I couldn't afford it, so I almost filled it with a 50/50 top soil/fish-bark compost and added a few bags of peat. I sowed the first seeds at the end of August...and that's the result to date. The marking out of the square feet is to give planting 'blocks' one crop per block - no space wasted! This way I can interplant the blocks with vegetables and pest controlling flowers/herbs. More information on the SFG can be found here I hope this has helped some and if you want to know more, I'm happy to share. Happy gardening. PS...cheaper timber can be used, but it might need replacing earlier. And I didn't want anything treated near my edibles, so I chose to not have arsenic for dinner! lol