Went to the beach to collect seaweed for the veggies, never seen it this bare.It was during a storm, both Mischa and I got saturated, managed slim pickings of a half bag and lugged it the klm back to the car.Love a walk along ''my'' beach during a storm, no matter how jaded you may feel, you come home tingling.

Oop, better include the pic

Beautiful pictures.

Love those photos, Paul!!

Great beach!

Do you think someone else collected the seaweed before you got to it?

Do you have to leave the seaweed out in the rain for a week or a month to wash the salt off?

Hi Rick, nobody goes to this beach except fishermen, it's extremely dangerous and magnificent.
Sometimes I drag the seaweed well above high tide or throw it over the rocks at the left of the beach and pick it up the following day--at least its a little lighter.
It;s a lot of effort these days, I'm a forties kid you know and the walk is about a klm with a heavy wet bag of seaweed.

What seaweed I collect is used several ways.Direct as a mulch around fruit trees, thrown into the compost bin, or drowned in water to make my own seaweed tonic.We are told by our gardening gurus that there is no need to wash off any salt or sand.

A few pics.
Brassicas are coming along fine, except one.I've put a clear plastic pot over it and held it down with two bamboo stakes.Picked off a couple tiny green grubs, but we have had a few regular gales that just about blow them outa the ground.I might have to put a shelter up.Spuds are looking good, been feeding them with my ''seaweed tonic'' just in a watering can.

Root veges are very slow to make a move.Under the mesh , are 2 different carrots, turnips, parsnips and beetroot.


Broad beans are all up now

Looking good, Paul !! Those darn carrots seem to take forever to come up, don't they?!

Nice garden!

>> We are told by our gardening gurus that there is no need to wash off any salt or sand.

Wow, I always think of Oz as arid, and that salt is only cured by rain. But those who live there must know what works there!

Does your soil tend to be sandy or clayey? The friend I visited once, in Oz, had sandy soil, but he also lived close to a beach.

Pruned the grape vines last week. only have 5 and they are growing on the stock panels around the disused dairy holding area leading to the dairy.I planted them about 3 years ago and last years cuttings were bundled together and placed into a pot, each variety its own pot.Happy to report that of the 6 or so cuttings per pot, about half have buds that have "greened up".
So, encouraged by this minor triumph, about 15 or so cuttings from each variety pruned last week have been roughly put into pots, soil added, tagged and watered in.

Paul, pretty soon you will have more grapes than you know what to do with!

Good luck multiplying them!

CarolineScott said:Your posts about gardening in the Southern Hemisphere
are interesting for us in the Northern Hemisphere!
.

I am putting this thread on my watch list. Maybe when nothing is going on in our Northern veggie gardens there will be lots going on here.

vanozzi said:Oop, better include the pic

Beautiful, simply beautiful.

G'day all.We are 18 days now into spring and soon the apple orchard will be blooming.As I grow oats beneath the trees, these need to be cut down now, or the apple buds can be damaged due to strong winds blasting the oats against them.This year they did not grow as well as the two previous years (the oats).The only thing I did differently was to rotary hoe the seed in, whereas before I dug two shallow trenches on each side of each row with the Dutch hoe, sprinkled the seed along and back filled.The oats are used as a green manure crop that feeds the worms as it breaks down and insulates the top soil against the high summer heat.I pulled up the oats by hand on one side of a row to see the oats root system and check the worm activity.Easy to do sitting on a milk crate with the soil still saturated and took no time at all.I reckon you could play noughts and crosses on my bum due to the milk crate structure.
So, a few pictures, none of the latter though


A few worms breeding in one of the over wet worm bins.Sorry its a bit out of focus.

I just looked you up on the map, Paul. Were at about the same latitude, though your's is south, while mine is north. Guess that explains the same climate zone. Sure wish I had soil that looked like yours.

vanozzi said:


Broad beans are all up now

Have you ever grown Yard Long Beans? I think they are great and they are really easy to grow.

@ctcarol, G'day Carol, wouldn't be much to see at Nullawarre, just a small general store with a petrol pump, a vet, a takeaway cafe and a rural store supplier, but it's a great location! It's the best dairy country around, generally free draining, but I had minor flooding here this year.I do work the soil, not a total organic grower, but keep it fertile with crop rotation, green manure, seaweed, animal manure and anything else that was once alive.

Rita, my vegie patch is dismal this year, I'm embarrassed to say, but still plenty of time for the summer veggies to go in. I grew a green crop in that area this winter and only cut it down this week.I plan to empty one of the half rain water tank compost bins into that patch ,it's beautiful and rich with heaps of worms.There is a dead koala in there and the worms are also fed with all the spare apples from the orchard, plus what felt like 10 ton of weeds.There is a bloke who sells bags of chook poo for $4 beside the road on the honour system, so a few bags go in as well to heat it up and kill off most weed seed..
You know, my best tomato plant last autumn, was a seedling that popped up by itself.It was one of the truss varieties which spread out over two metres, rooting as it went.Never have I had so many tomatoes and the taste was out of this world.I saved some for seed so hope to never be without it.

Never grown the yard long beans, only blue lake (climbing) and butter beans (bush), plus broad beans..Oh, also a Dutch bean, a type of kidney bean for my father when he was still on the planet.Dad made ''Bruine bonensoep'' (Brown bean soup).
How tall is your trellis for the yard long ones?Are they perennial or annual?

vanozzi said:

Never grown the yard long beans, only blue lake (climbing) and butter beans (bush), plus broad beans..Oh, also a Dutch bean, a type of kidney bean for my father when he was still on the planet.Dad made ''Bruine bonensoep'' (Brown bean soup).
How tall is your trellis for the yard long ones?Are they perennial or annual?

I grow Blue Lake Pole beans but never have grown the Blue Lake Bush beans. Mostly my beans are done here (with a few stragglers) but the Blue Lakes started setting beans late so those are going strong right now.

The Yard Long Bean is a type from the Tropics of Asia. For sure an annual. Can't take even a hint of cold. However it thrives in the summer. Never bothered by summer heat no matter how much the heat and humidity climbs.

I love them, they are so easy and they taste great. My trellis for them is only 6 feet high and it seems to work well. Really I have never put up anything higher for them.

vanozzi said:

Rita, my vegie patch is dismal this year, I'm embarrassed to say, but still plenty of time for the summer veggies to go in. I grew a green crop in that area this winter and only cut it down this week.I plan to empty one of the half rain water tank compost bins into that patch ,it's beautiful and rich with heaps of worms.There is a dead koala in there and the worms are also fed with all the spare apples from the orchard, plus what felt like 10 ton of weeds.There is a bloke who sells bags of chook poo for $4 beside the road on the honour system, so a few bags go in as well to heat it up and kill off most weed seed..
You know, my best tomato plant last autumn, was a seedling that popped up by itself.It was one of the truss varieties which spread out over two metres, rooting as it went.Never have I had so many tomatoes and the taste was out of this world.I saved some for seed so hope to never be without it.
?

Well, as you say you can still put in more crops so maybe it will turn out to be a great veggie year.

Of course things are opposite here. I am slowly taking out my tomato plants. And my cucumbers and melon vines have already all been pulled out.

I didn't realize this papaya was ripening. The Black Flying-foxes sniffed it out quicker than I did. I don't mind really - I only wish they wouldn't dig their large claws into the green fruit as they hang there munching on the ripe fruit.