Spring Is Here 2008
For information on the organic gardening club please phone Shane Fuller on 3425 1553.
The days are getting longer and despite some frost last month the soil will be getting warmer.
It is time to plant out your tomato seedlings, turnips, carrots and cucurbits. Rhubarb can also be planted as seed at this time of the year if you didn’t plant crowns in Winter.
I saw a space saving idea a little while ago in an old gardening guide I stole off my grandfather. Pumpkins are always fairly easy to grow but they take up a lot of space (and you can’t see what you might be stepping on if you wander around the vine). We have had pumpkin vines grow over the chook pen by accident before but I hadn’t given any thought to how much space that saved. A pumpkin vine can be trained over a trellis just like any other vine. The trellis will need to be sturdy enough to hold the potential weight but you will have a lot more room than if you let it spread out along the ground. As most of us probably know when it comes time to pick them leave a few centimetres of the stem on the fruit and throw it on top of the chook pen and it will keep for months.
With the warmer days comes the need to water more frequently. We have hardly had to water at all this Winter with the rain that we have had. To supplement what you might use from tanks the final rinse from the washing machine can go onto the vege garden. We have been using this water for a few years and our tomatoes hardly taste like detergent at all (just joking, although you shouldn’t put this directly onto lettuce or other leafy veges).
Happy gardening.
