VEGIE HEAVEN HAS ARRIVED ~ VISIT THE TOMATO BED. ITS SO PERRRRRDY!

You may well be aware that we have these last two months been living in our new home behind the Old School where the Sago bindery is. With newly planted orchard and raised vegie beds, it has felt like a true coming of age for our first home summer harvest to be served at the family dinner table.

This is the Solanum (Tomato family) bed. It has tomatoes along one side, underplanted with marigolds to keep nasty nematodes away (I'll chop them into the soil at the end, which keeps them away even longer), capsicums down the other, with basil in the centre. Basil and toms are great neighbours, with each benefiting from the soil residues of the other.  Perhaps thats why basil and toms taste so darn good together! 

Notice also that I remove leaf sets below and between fruiting sets. This is to concentrate growth where it matters.  I also remove all nodal shoots, as they only detract from the growth of the fruit, and leave the plant with so many side branches that it's hard to keep airflow around it and have it staked properly.  See how the plants are all different heights? That's cause we planted them out two weeks apart, so we don't end up with boom and bust harvest.  I water with the spray nozzle off, below the mulch so as not to splash the toms (mud splash equals rust), and the dark patches on the mulch is coffee grounds, which keep snails away from my basil.

 The pretties of the landscape havent been completed, nor the grassed areas leveled, nor the driveway built, but I don't care.  With hopes to become totally self-sustaining in fruit and veg, the asthaetics will surely take care of themselves over time. Hey, and that 'Giant Russian' sunflower on the left is 3m tall!

Next time, we'll check out the Cucurbits bed - Zucchinis, Cucumbers.....  Mmmmmmm