James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

I haven't blogged in a little while, so I thought I would do a quick update on the Garden.

First up we have our Cherry Tomatos which are just about ready to pick:

Seeing as Ms 3 is our resident Tomato fiend, she'll have the honour of picking the first batch.

Next we have an update on the Sweet Potato. As you can see it seems to have been a successful planting. The greenery is running riot and there are plenty of roots coming off the old sweet potato:

And finally, it wouldn't be a garden report without YAJZ (Yet Another Jumbo Zuchinni):

Karins Grandmother gave us an old piece of sweet potato she found in the back of her cupboard. It had started to sprout so she thought we could do something with it. "Well", I thought, "Why not?"

The first thing I did was check to see if it was still viable. I used the incredibly scientific method of chucking it in the old compost heap (the one the pumpkin vine is growing out of) and then checking on it a week later to see if there was any new growth. When I checked it this morning, there were new buds, so onto the next stage.

Planting the Potato

I have a few old tyres left over from setting up the herbs, cherry tomatos and potatos so I grabbed one and set it up next to the lemon tree:

I layered old newspaper underneath to prevent any of the grass underneath from getting into the tyre. Next I needed to fill it up with soil/compost:

Next up I built a layer of mulch using week old grass clippings that had been sitting in the now fallow middle garden bed. This will not only help to retain moisture in the soil, but should help to kill off any weeds:

Now that we have the bed setup, we need the actual sweet potato. I dug a hole in the middle of the bed, down about ten centimetres and put the potato in with the new buds pointing up:

Our Zuchinni's are finally getting to the point where we can harvest them, and below is the biggest one :)

I've also started using the liquid manure I've been brewing. It's a foul smelling, dark green liquid, but it should be full of planty goodness. I would put a photo up here, but it's not exactly the most appealing sight.

As promised in the last post here are some photos of the growing green type things:

Enjoy :)

I was forking some compost onto our garden beds just now and I got a whif of that beautiful moist earthy smell that comes with well cooked compost. Some of you might remember from when you were kids and mucking around in the backyard in the morning, before the dew had burnt off the grass, it's that kind of smell.

Might take some photos for the next post, got a couple of good zuchinnis coming up.

You know, for our first effort at this vegie gardening lark we haven't done too badly. We've learnt lessons along the way and will certainly be preparing a bit more for the winter season, however given the crop we've got coming up, we can hold our heads up high. So far we've got the following coming to crop:

• Zuchinnis - Black, Golden and other
• Squash of many varieties
• Cherry Tomatos
• Stringless Beans
• Pumpkin (growing in the old compost heap of all places)
• Capsisum
• Eggplants

So really can't complain :)

As I continue on this gardening kick I've been looking at exploring the whole fertiliser concept. While I think I've got the compost concept down I haven't turned my hand to creating organic fertilisers yet.

So the other day I decided to try and make some liquid green manure. For those of you who don't know what a green manure is, essentially it's a plant that you either grow or harvest purely for the purpose of composting. It can be anything from a bed of comfrey (which I'm told makes an excellent green manure) or any non seeding weeds you find.

The idea behind the liquid green manure fertiliser is to in essence speed up the process of breaking down the green manure and getting at the nutrients contained within. The process is pretty simple. Take a bucket, fill it most of the way up with green manure and then fill it the rest of the way with water. Place a lid over the bucket and then leave it. Stir every couple of days over the next few weeks.

By the end of the process you should have a mass of vegetable matter at the bottom of the bucket and a green liquid that smells something chronic. You can then take that liquid, water it down (a ratio of 1:3 is recommended according to what I've read) and apply it to the stems and roots of your plants. Don't water it directly onto plants with edible leaves, just around the base should do just as well.

Okay it's about time for another post in the epic saga that is the Purser family garden.

First off, my god Zuchinni plants are hardy beasts. Our Zuchinni patch was getting pretty crowded, to the point of ridiculousness really. So I dug one of them out and transplanted it into the pot where we were trying to grow a few pumpkins. By that afternoon it was looking very wilted and I was sure that it was going to survive, but lo and behold, the next morning there was new growth and it's been going strong ever since.

In fact our Zuchinni crop is probably going to be slightly massive. Next time round we're not going to plant so many.

The compost heap is going strong, one of these days I'm going to grab something to check the internal temperature but after the last load of lawn clippings, it was hot enough inside to burn my hand.

Looking around the garden I've set myself a ToDo list:

- Build a worm farm

- Setup some sort of water capture facility (we can't get a tank for a couple of reasons, first can't afford it, second we rent).

- Get my hands on a 44 Gallon drum or three

- Setup a Manure Run to the local farms

So I've added a new feature to the blog, I've finally started splitting stuff up into catagories. For the moment it's going to be limited to General, Biz and Gardening but will expand.

This is my first post in the Gardening Catagory so enjoy ;)

I'm looking for some information to help what appears to be a sick Zuchinni plant. Here's a photo of one of the leaves so if anyone has an idea, could they let me know. I think it may be due to too much moisture in the soil.