VEGE PATCH. What's growing in yours?

:clap: :clap: :clap: Top job there Casper ! erfect:

silver said:

Well well well.... thanks to a descripive pm from you sand surfer, I hit the garden running.
Yes the stalks were hollow (sliced some open with my handy hobby scalpel)
Then in one I seen a pupae
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141521_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-43-26.jpg
little mongrels..... :argh:
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141629_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-52-42.jpg
got back to the shade of the house..... no scalpel blade.... no problem.... out with the detector and pointer.... nothing...back and forth and forth and back.... nothing(bugga).
Tried and tried..... set the Ace up on custom with a duplicate blade.... still nothing.
Old technology then.... back and forth mighty slowly though..... got it.... seen it as I found it with sunlight as well as the magnet getting it too.
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141955_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-44-10.jpg
Last thing you want out back is a lost scalpel blade somewhere.... oh just somewhere out there lol.
Any way.... bean fly it is

Click to expand...

Thats good silver found the problem in the beans,those bean fly buggars don't play by the rules any more :lol: and found the lost blade :Y:

well done casper erfect: ,what are they mate a queensland blue

sand surfer said:

well done casper erfect: ,what are they mate a queensland blue

Click to expand...

Yes, Queensland Blue..

:8 I wondered why some flowers looked different to t'others and belatedly learned about male and female flowers
At one stage I counted around a dozen developing pumpkins but we had a lot of miscarriages (sic) :/ some further reading and they discuss hand pollination

I'm nearly 70 years of age and old feelings are stirring....

That is blossom end rot casper ,that causes the pumpkins to drop off ,there is quite a few reasons for it to happen like ,too much heat and humidity ,showers of rain on a sunny day while the flower is still open(when wet the flower will close and trap the water, the flower goes rotten )in the cooler weather you can control it a bit with calcium nitrate ,put it at the base of the plant and water it in or dissolve it in a bucket water and tip it on,you want about a level teaspoon once a fortnight,or you can use thrive or which ever one takes your fancy

A couple of start up tips

Dig a fire place about half a meter wide and about 15 cm deep put twigs and other small wood in it and burn it ,use shovel or digging fork and mix the ash with with about half a cup of fertiliser and the dirt in the bottom of the hole together ,there is the perfect growing pot for all cucurbits(pumpkin,all melons cucumber,and zucchini ,just stick the plant in the middle and water ,i put a stick in the middle of the hole so you know where to direct the water when the plant gets large

You will have to get some molybdenum(it trades under a name of supa moly that is a liquid or sodium molybdate that is a powder form)it is a trace element that all cucurbits need,when growing cucurbits on a comercial bases, if we did not use it we would loose up to 40% of our crops just in lost product that did not bear

You apply it as a foliage spray or in your case, just a watering can will do, just mix at the rate the label says and tip it on the plant

You apply it first when the plant is at it's third true leaf stage (that is when you have 3 full leaves on the plant,the leaves will be the shape of a full grown leaf but smaller when the first one appears you will see what i mean) and then apply it again at 2 weeks later and that is it don't do it again

You apply it the same way for all cucurbits

I have a pumpkin plant here that has at least twenty pumpkins on it ,we lost about 20 to 30 pumpkins to blossom end rot ,some of the pumpkins are still growing and two thirds of the plnt has been eaten by bloody grass hopper, i can not keep them out so i gave up

here is a piccy of the poor pumpkin plant



cheers grumpy(aka graeme)

sand surfer said:

That is blossom end rot casper ,that causes the pumpkins to drop off ,there is quite a few reasons for it to happen like ,too much heat and humidity ,showers of rain on a sunny day while the flower is still open(when wet the flower will close and trap the water, the flower goes rotten )in the cooler weather you can control it a bit with calcium nitrate ,put it at the base of the plant and water it in or dissolve it in a bucket water and tip it on,you want about a level teaspoon once a fortnight,or you can use thrive or which ever one takes your fancy

A couple of start up tips

Dig a fire place about half a meter wide and about 15 cm deep put twigs and other small wood in it and burn it ,use shovel or digging fork and mix the ash with with about half a cup of fertiliser and the dirt in the bottom of the hole together ,there is the perfect growing pot for all cucurbits(pumpkin,all melons cucumber,and zucchini ,just stick the plant in the middle and water ,i put a stick in the middle of the hole so you know where to direct the water when the plant gets large

You will have to get some molybdenum(it trades under a name of supa moly that is a liquid or sodium molybdate that is a powder form)it is a trace element that all cucurbits need,when growing cucurbits on a comercial bases, if we did not use it we would loose up to 40% of our crops just in lost product that did not bear

You apply it as a foliage spray or in your case, just a watering can will do, just mix at the rate the label says and tip it on the plant

You apply it first when the plant is at it's third true leaf stage (that is when you have 3 full leaves on the plant,the leaves will be the shape of a full grown leaf but smaller when the first one appears you will see what i mean) and then apply it again at 2 weeks later and that is it don't do it again

You apply it the same way for all cucurbits

I have a pumpkin plant here that has at least twenty pumpkins on it ,we lost about 20 to 30 pumpkins to blossom end rot ,some of the pumpkins are still growing and two thirds of the plnt has been eaten by bloody grass hopper, i can not keep them out so i gave up

cheers grumpy(aka graeme)

Click to expand...

Wow! thanks Graeme, that advice truly is "gold" and I'm anticipating that my next harvest will be much improved over the last.

I put in 3 jap, got seeds from kitchen, each plant had 1 pumpkin read in a weekend paper not a good year for pumpkins in SA this season hardly had any female flowers
cucumber had heaps on them guess thats how it goes sometimes.
Planted around 300 garlic today can't cook properly without garlic

Was gunna plant this out the back of Mums place in the retirement village..... but she recons she doesn't want to have to water (doesn't want to have to go outside cause of Rona.).
Then a possum or some other creature of the dark bites its head off...... really.... what on earth eats the top of a pawpaw plant ?
Straight from the compost heap to its new possie.... put heaps of compost in its hole too.

topped it off with a thick layer of cane bale mulch.
Hopefully whatever it was that was chewing it will be dumbfounded as to its disappearance.

here's me zygo's..... got bits from my old friends plants nearby.... and 1 is some other similar type plant from my Mums balcony garden(about halfway along....1st one past the second green hanger ), but not a zygo at all.
Can't wait to see em all flower around September

silver said:

Well well well.... thanks to a descripive pm from you sand surfer, I hit the garden running.
Yes the stalks were hollow (sliced some open with my handy hobby scalpel)
Then in one I seen a pupae
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141521_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-43-26.jpg
little mongrels..... :argh:
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141629_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-52-42.jpg
got back to the shade of the house..... no scalpel blade.... no problem.... out with the detector and pointer.... nothing...back and forth and forth and back.... nothing(bugga).
Tried and tried..... set the Ace up on custom with a duplicate blade.... still nothing.
Old technology then.... back and forth mighty slowly though..... got it.... seen it as I found it with sunlight as well as the magnet getting it too.
https://www.prospectingaustralia.co...1586141955_screenshot_2020-04-06-12-44-10.jpg
Last thing you want out back is a lost scalpel blade somewhere.... oh just somewhere out there lol.
Any way.... bean fly it is

Click to expand...

Yoo Silver, Most detectors don't like thin Stainless Steel Ay, Not unless your right on top of it within an inch or so off the ground, :Y:

Here's a bit of colour to brighten your day.
Chillies are getting harvested now.

Shouldn't you be wearing rubber gloves in case you have to wipe your eyes or other nether regions?? :argh: :fire: ]

Jaros said:

Shouldn't you be wearing rubber gloves in case you have to wipe your eyes or other nether regions?? :argh: :fire: ]

Click to expand...

Hi Jaros. Only if you break the skin or cut them up. Having said that I had to deseed quite a few and because of lack of latex gloves I had to use bare hands paying extra attention that only my left hand touched the cut chillies.
THere are various way to remove the oils after they stick to your skin. I tried the vegetable oil with washing powder method and whilst it worked quite well there was still residue left on my fingers for the rest of the day.
Not to hot when I ate sangers, and I was extra cautious about going anywhere near my eyes.
After that I was a dirtbag and used bare hands preparing the veg patch. That got rid of the residue quite well.

Here's a few pics of some home grown tucker, no input from me I just eat it





And my favourite


God bless the gardners :beer:

I had a bit of birdseye chilli blow into my eye the other day.... was eating lunch with a very liberal sprinkling of my 20 Yr old blended dry chilli and the fan blew a CHUNK straight into my eye where of course it went straight in under the lid..... bastardo was one of the nicer words I used (talk about burn your eye out lol)
:fire: :fire: :fire:
:fire: :fire:
:fire: :fire: :fire:

Anyway... onto nicer things.
Never grown Black Russian tomatoes before.

So I went all out and got some rock dust

Some blood n bone

And dug some nice compost out of the heap

Got some holes dug and a trellis frame ready
(Was gunna put strawberries here but oh well)

here we go

rock dust

blood n bone

compost in

plant in

soil back around

all crowded around with cane mulch

So... I got a few punnets (lucky me)

And decided to put the brown minuette lettuce up the middle

Mouth watering hey !

And add some of the worms I collected from a seperate bucket of compost for a different project

Then added all my wire, ties, & etc

watered them all in with guinea pig bedding tea (they were fully hydrated so it won't burn them)
Here's hoping
X X

Beautiful work hardluck erfect:

Only 1 plant produces these colours when ripe on the plant, I let them over ripen on the plant to see if there was anymore changes to colour and there wasn't.
Knowing this I can pick them as soon as they get to this colour when they are shiny and fresh and they will stay that colour.
Definitely seed banking this one

Can't remember which is which but these are jap pumpkin, white finger pumpkin and golden zucchini.
Planted 27th March, haven't fertilized yet