Preparing the Soil and Sunburnt seedlings

Day 14 Spring, Mon 14th Sept 2020

It's been raining lots in the previous week so we haven't had a chance to prepare the soil until last weekend. As we are planning to use blood and bones, we need to mix it into the top layer of the soil and wait at least 7 days before planting. We were planning to plant out on last week of September so we still have plenty of time.

Due to Covid Stage 4 restrictions, we had to order our potting mix online with click and collect at Bunnings (local hardware shop). I was impressed with how efficient it. Customers would drive up and a staff would take note of their order number and direct them to a bay. There they wait and someone will come with their items and load it up for them completely contact free! It suited me as I didn't need to move 16 bags of potting mix and chicken manure myself. Win!

Our potting mix consist of a mixture of 1 part poultry manure, 7 part Brunning Tomato and Vegetable Grow mix. We choose that mix because we had good results from it last year and it was quite ecomical ($4.20/25L bag). We also sprinkle some blood and bone in the top 10cm.

For the tomatoes, we have 3 X 45cm pots. It's currently sitting next to the windows against the north wall. It gets quite sunny there in Summer so there will be plenty of sun and will help block the light from heating up the house. I made sure to space them out a bit to ensure there's some air flow to reduce chances of disease. 

 

These are the containers that we will be using for the zucchini, it's 55cm wide. It was really difficult to find something that big that was economical. When I saw these tubs, I instantly thought they were perfect. They are food safe which is quite important for us, and only $4.49 each! We drilled holes around the side at the bottom for drainage, which was surprisingly easy. These pots are against our western fence and tend to get around 6ish hours of direct sun. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of option.

Day 18 Spring, 18th Sept 2020

It's a disaster! Because we dimmed our grow lamp, our seedings were used to dim light and did not do well when we moved them outside to start the toughening process. Some of the leafs were sunburnt and is turning white and rough. Fortunately it's only a few leafs and I really hope they will survive it. Need to take more patience and slowly introduce them to the sun next time.

Our garden is starting to bloom. My current favourite part is the cherry blossoms and the Wisteria growing. The way it droops over the garden structure is so romantic. This is the first year the Wisteria bloomed so we are very excited.

It's Spring 2020 - Summer Vege Garden

Hey there! Welcome to our family blog! Our family consist of Daddy Vegiemitey, Mummy Vegiemitey, Master Vegiemitey and Little Miss Vegiemitey. We are very excited to start a blog together to capture our journey into vegetable and suburban gardening. 

We are located in Donvale, a leafy suburb in Eastern Melbourne, Zone 3 (AU)  / 9 (USA) and we experience warm/hot summer and mild winter. We have a very small backyard but fortunately our house is south facing meaning we get a lot of sunshine along the back wall of our house. It is here where we grow most of our vegetable in containers.

Last year we were quite successful with growing some eggplants and Thai bird eye chillies but we were completely unprepared for tomatoes, and our zucchini plants were stubborn and kept spawning only female flowers. This year we are determined to make it work!

Here is our plan:

• 4 x Zucchini Plant* (more on this later)
• 4 x Tomato Plants
• 10 x Eggplants
• 2 x Chilli Plant
• Various lettuce + Carrots
• Beans
• Sugar Snap Peas
• 4 x Strawberries
• 2 X grape vines

Yes. 4 Zucchini Plants. You read that right. We know if this goes right this year, we might become buried in Zucchinis before end of Summer but we do love our zucchinis. And as I mentioned above, we were so disappointed last year with the plant throwing out only female flowers that we need to cover all our bases to make sure it was not going to be a repeat this year. We suspect this might be due to the rich soil we grew the Zucchini in and they were so happy that they forgot about the male flowers. This year we are planning to vary the amount of fertiliser we use across the 4 plants and see if we can get one to grow some male flowers. Fingers crossed. 

At the moment, we have seedlings from seeds that we planted in early August (06/08) and they are growing happily in the grow tent we purchased last year. We don't have a lot of space where there are direct sunlight that can be kept warm so this investment has been very valuable. We also hooked it up to a grow led light and a heat pad to make sure the plants are happy. 

Just a quick note about the grow LED Light, last year when we used it, the light was too strong and burnt the leafs. It's strange because we measured the lux and it was well within the expected range of 8k to 10k. All the leafs turned purple and we gave up on those seedlings. We are not sure if they didn't grow well because of the burnt leafs, or if it was because it was too cold because we only purchased the grow heat mat this year. Either way, we decided to defused the direct light with 2 layers of baking paper right under it thanks to Daddy Vegiemitey quick thinking. The lux says 5k which is a bit low but the seedlings appears to be healthy and happy.

Grow lamp with 2 layers of baking paper.

This was mid August with another 2 weeks to go before Spring. We pre-germinated the seeds in yakult bottles with cotton buds because it saves us from planting multiple seeds in each pod. The moment the little root starts showing, we pop them into its own slot in the tray. For potting mix, we just used last year compost potting mix sifted through a homemade mesh sieve to get all the big bits out. We also baked the soil at around 100 degree for 45 minutes to sterilize it. (Beware: baking soil produces a strong smell, good ventilation required.)

This was taken 2 weeks back and Day 1 of spring. Everything getting bigger now. Our Zucchini seed didn't germinate and we had similar issues with that batch last year too. Fortunately we got some new zuchinni seeds just in case and was able to quickly germinate them within 3 days on the heat pad! In this picture, they already have 4 real leafs out!

This was today, Day 11 of spring. We couldn't believe it but our zuchinni is already flowering. We'll be planting them out this weekend. We've been putting it outside on sunny days here and there so hopefully they will transplant well.

See the little flower bud? Looks like a male flower!

That tomato plant on the bottom picture is going crazy! Need to transplant to a bigger pot soon this weekend. Really looking forward to it.

In our next post, we will hopefully have our seedling planted out, and perhaps we will share some progress on our flowers and fruit trees. Until then, please take care!