Alan's Garden Blog — My Gardens

Believe it or not, these spuds have been planted the recommended distance apart. With gardening you never stop learning. The more compost I add to the soil the better my harvests have been. I also added plenty of rock minerals before planting this year. After that they have been ignored because of the amount of work I have had on. Previous years I have trailed hilling them with different material (straw-mulch-soil), did not make any difference. This year I just used the cheap bulk commercial compost, looks like it worked a treat. 

With minimum effort I have continued to grow vegges through one of our colder winters. The frames for greenhouse covers for my extra large gardens cost $150 and the film cut to size with my remarkable clips another $190. You could use my heavy duty frost cover instead of the film which sells for $45 (2 x 18.2 metres). I will even throw in the clips for free! Either way you can get a head start this spring. This is what the finished greenhouse looks like Nice and warm inside Garlic loves the cold Beetroot and spring onions Broccoli and...

Broccoli and Cabbage doing very nicely with Garden Mate and Wormpost I have been on the lookout for a rock mineral product for a while. Some of my Watersaver Gardens are up to seven years old and I am lazy-I don't want to go to the trouble of replacing the de-mineralised soil. I came across an organic product called Garden Mate and started using it a few weeks ago. Very happy with the results so far. I combine four handfuls per square metre with my own 'wormpost', a combination of compost, worms and micro-organisms. It is not just rock minerals,...

This side of the house is all shade and no water so we put in a Watersaver Garden with some plants that don't mind that environment. Pretty impressive growth.    

You don't often see snake beans in punnets so I bought some to try out. They are prolific vines producing huge amounts of beans. I thought they might taste a bit better from the garden rather than buying them but their texture is still a bit 'glugly' for my liking. If you like snake beans they are really easy to grow so have a go.