Vegetable Growing: A guide for home gardeners

Your fig is probably a little immature to be setting fruit-it needs to develop a strong root system. Also they don't like wet feet-in fact they live in quite inhospitable conditions in the wild!

The citrus also don't appreciate wet feet-what is your soil like? Are there aphids on the new growth?

Where do you live? A little more information may have with your questions....

Have a google and see if it's considered advisable to allow it time fruit for the first few years. I know many fruit trees where it is suggested to remove fruit buds for the first few years

2

we live in Perth, Have well drained soil (used all puipose garden mix), but was told my soil was alkaline due to limestone borders. so did add lil bit of peat moss.

aphids...havent seen, but the caterpillars are a prob. the moths somehow find there way in. keep removing the caterpillars soon as i spot them on my mint n other leaves.

I was thinking of removin the fruit buds, but did harvest full sized ones , so was tempted to leave them on. have roughly 30 buds on the tree now.

since my bk yard is quet small & is close to hte bedrooms, am concerned the root system may invade the foundation ;( ???

To add to this massive thread.

Get this book:
http://littleveggiepatchco.com.au/the-book/
Feel it. Touch it. Smell it's knowledge ooze from its hilarious pages.
It is your new garden bible.
Throw away your other books into the compost.
Your life will be complete

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!

Where you been?

My little raised veggie patch is under attack from little veggie Weevils (i think that's what they are). There are hundreds of them and the are eating my tomatoes and chilli seedlings but not the adult chilli. The tomatoes are still fruiting but the stems seem to have some kind of rot. All beds have been treated with molasses and seasol in recent weeks.

Any ideas on how to get rid of these buggers?

A bible. The insecticides some would advise will make the food inedible. Well I sure as hell would not eat it, with holding period or not.
The yuck in the centre of the stems might be a disease with a fancy name but overall the old tomatoes planted back in September and October are getting tired now so hardly a wonder they are looking a bit average. As long as you have had a decent crop from them, well there's your money back in spades.

West Aussies and Queenslanders might sneak another crop of Cherry Tomatoes in before the winter rains arrive if you are lucky. Territorians and Far North Queenslanders will be planting theirs in a few months when the dry arrives.


I can't recommend marvellous Neem Oil to control the problem because a heap of money has not been spent on trials to prove that it is safe to put on food crops in Australia (even though it has been used for thousands of years for that purpose). I just can't do that. Nope, not at all.

Ohh thanks for the book rec. Sounds like it could be my next fave read.

Hi folks, two questions

1. raised vegie garden beds, what sleepers to use? We've heard treated pine will contaminate food.

2. Drip irrigation. We want to set up a drip irrigation system subsoil during building process. We want to be able to feed it off both a rain water tank gravity feed (yes tank is higher) and when that is dry normal mains water. Any suggestions?

Hi animal,

Just reading through your blog and noting where you have made some big cost savings during the house design stage. Good reading!

There are threads about sub soil irrigation and drip hoses. Fu is the expert here but for gardens, I always use gravity fed drip hoses laid under the mulch rather than standard drip hoses when feeding from a water tank. The gravity fed hoses have larger emitters whereas the standard drip hoses should have an inline filter on the supply line and need more pressure.

Gravity fed drip hoses are best supplied by a larger poly main line and drip hose branches are best plumbed as a loop back to the main line. Main line inline taps will also isolate sections of drip hose when needed.

You have a regular and high rainfall pattern in your area and with an annual rainfall of around 1,500 mm, your tank should be constantly replenished. Even the driest months of August & September deliver on average 80 mm of rain each month!

You can easily reduce the rainwater harvesting costs. If you are also supplying sanitary flushing, have a look at the linked thread below.

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=61491

If you are connecting the water tank pump to an outside garden tap, also read the next linked thread.

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=61588

You can also save money by ditching the 5,000 litre colorbond slimline tank and getting two narrow base taller poly tanks. The slimline tank shown on the plans (off your blog) appears to be about 2.7 m long x 1.4 m wide. I am in Victoria but I have linked two tanks (below) that will give an indication of alternate size and price. The first ($495) is 2100 L, 2 m tall with a 1.2 m diameter. The second ($440) is 2250 L, 2.1 m tall with a 1.25 m diameter.

http://www.asctanks.com.au/urban-poly-b ... ound-tank/
http://www.asctanks.com.au/pro-plastics-2100lt-round/

A problem I see with the slimline as per your plans is that it covers the downpipe's flow path. While you may have intended to option the tank with an inlet so that the downpipe will divert to a top meshed inlet, have you thought about how the tank's overflow is going to reconnect back to the stormwater? There appears to be little room between the end of the tank and the external shower structure.

Having two tall tanks with narrow bases in lieu of the slimline will overcome the return to stormwater issue plus other issues with (some) slimlines - internal cleaning for one. If regulations deem that you need more capacity, simply site another tall round away from the first two and link them. You can also height adjust the third tank to eliminate the need for an overflow pipe if it serves as a buffer tank.

Thanks heaps H20 saver

I'll have to come back to your post mid week more thoroughly.

Why is a slimline tank harder to clean?

animal-re: the treated pine edging for your vegies..there are two different treatments-one of which uses arsenic and I believe gives that blue/green tinge and is the one to avoid. When you are ordering make sure that you tell them that it's for vegetable gardening.

There are different designs of slimline tank. The difficult ones to clean are the poly 'honeycomb' type I have linked below as you can only access the area directly underneath the top inlet.
http://www.precisionpoly.com.au/Slimlin ... Tanks.html

The colorbond type should also have an access inlet at both ends on the top so that it is easy to hose out the bottom every few years.

Tank overflow pipes are fitted with mosquito proof mesh and this mesh can gum up. The mesh needs to be accessible from above but many slimlines are wrongly optioned with the top meshed inlet at one end or in the middle but the overflow at the other.

The inlet should also not be directly directly above the bottom outlet that supplies the pump for obvious reasons.

Corrugated metal tanks are often optioned with the pump draw outlet fitted to the bottom corrugation. This means that the bottom of the outlet is very close to the bottom of the tank. Once the tank has been harvesting water for a while and builds up a sediment layer, the low inlet will cause the pump to ingest sediment. The pump draw outlet should never be optioned close to the bottom of the tank (as most are).

It is always handy to have a dedicated flush/drain valve fitted to the bottom of the tank.

thanks, I took a photo of where the tank is going, the foundation is poured. The pipe right next to the tank slab I assume is for tank overflow. the far side pipe a little away is shower drain. (I don't know how to load the picture here, but it's on tipypic


http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=34oojt5&s=5

I will try and find out what they've arranged.

THIS FORUM IS THE SCHNITZEL! Thanks heaps folks, you're amazing.

They must be planning to dog leg the overflow pipe unless they plan to plumb the outlet to the corner of the tank.

[quote="animal"]Hi folks, two questions

1. raised vegie garden beds, what sleepers to use? We've heard treated pine will contaminate food.



We lined non-toxic HDPE liner in our garden bed, not only to isolate soil from treated pine, but also avoid loss of water , search
"HDPE liner" on gumtree or ebay, you will find plenty

arrggggh what was the book? The link doesn't work!

Great info guys, lots for a keen new gardener to learn! Will be back with plenty of discussion/questions I've just started a container veggie garden.

Question, how many fruit trees do you think we need to sustain our family. I will be looking to plant Mandarin, Orange and Apple Trees. We have purchased an acre so I can finally put in plants that will produce fruit for us. Not to mention the veggie patch.

Strawberries and blueberries are on the list. I have grown both before but with the strawberries we never got to enjoy them as the slugs and birds got to them first. Any hints and tips for the strawberries....