April Update

The Main Vegetable Garden Wicking Beds are powering along!

With only 13.4mm of rain this year and none at all this month (so far!) the growth in these beds is amazing...I hardly water them (about every 10 days once the seedlings are established).
With the curtains up there are no bug problems except for the occasional tiny grasshoppers that seem to find their way in.

I have never grown vegetables to compare with these with any other method or in any other garden around Australia...and I've gardened in NSW, Vic and Nth Qld!
I've never seen brassicas grow so fast and clean!

The shadecloth covers have been removed now and I was hoping to remove the curtains soon but with the news this week of a locust plague heading our way I shall be leaving them up a while longer.

The mixed Brassicas are thriving, putting on great growth for the coming cold weather.
Top Left Red Drumhead Cabbage Top Right Mini Cauliflower
Mid Left Violet Sicilian Cauliflower Mid Right Romanesco Broccoli
Bottom Sugarloaf Cabbage
Please click on the photos to see them better

The Turnip, Swede and Beetroot in Bed 2
is providing many greens for eating already
and the Peas on the edges are flowering and setting pods!

Only planted two weeks ago Bed 1
now has Broccoli, Soup Celery, a Greens Picking corner
and Broad Beans planted
with a lonely Silverbeet left from a summer planting.

Other Wicking beds around the garden are being cleared as crops finish. These are topped up with mushroom compost, soaked coir, old sheep manure and a mixture of Fecondo (crushed mineral rich rock, organic slow release fertiliser) blood and bone and dolomite (depending on the next crop). Topped off with a good layer of mulch, either chopped Lucerne or Organic Sugar Cane mulch.