Spinifex garden pictorial - regular updates

The triple sown bed a couple of weeks more advanced. Harvesting a bunch of globe radish every day or two for the past 10 days. Will have to eat a lot more of them now they have hit their prime condition.

Will have to take the bird protection off in next few days before the peas latch onto it.

Autumn crop harvest in full swing.  The Daikon are large, sweet and crisp.  The peas are Early crop Massey and have yielded 1kg of pods per square metre.  They are better than Blue Bantam for my location and so I'll only grow the Masseys next year

My snowpeas turned out to be a dwarf variety (not the kind I usually grow) and have finished producing flowers and pods already.  Got about 1/2 a bucket full of good pods from the row.  The goats enjoyed eating the vines.

I've sown a new row of Melting Mammoth and these should grow and produce pods right through to october.

Also sowed additional rows of Greenfeast and Massey peas to keep supply going through winter and into spring.

Last weekend red potatoes were planted out.  Couldn't find any of my favoured Pontiac variety so got some certified Desiree instead.  

Doing an experiment with some 'spud-lite' tubers from Coles.  We find they make exceptional roast spuds.  Have planted some in a couple of tubs away from my vegetable patch because they are not 'certified' disease free (I can't find any certified seed potatoes of this variety).  They will be closely watched for the development of viral disease and aphids that can spread viral diseases.  If they work out nice and healthy I'll keep the tubers I grow and sow an eating crop of them next year.   

Still harvesting plenty of fresh coriander and basil out of the greenhouse and picking Thai eggplant sporadically. 

Once the herbs are finished I'm doing a big clear-out of the greenhouse and will lime the soil for the first time in a few years.  The soil has acidified to the point where I'm not getting the productivity I'm used to. 

Update on the planter box spuds: The two pictured in the post above have turned out to be healthy, disease free plants. Judging by the way the soil around them is 'erupting' I should get some good potatoes from them to plant out next year in a bigger quantity.

I also had a second planter box (below) with two potato plants. They did have disease and so were pulled up, bagged and binned.  The plant on right has a virus which has stunted its growth.  The plant on left seems relatively healthier however it has blight (dark scarring) on two of its leaves.

A new concept I'm trying out: horizontal tube trellis to lift and support dwarf pea plants up off the soil. The idea is a system that is easy and works with the plants natural tendencies. The outcome is hopefully less leaf diseases and stable plants that don't get thrashed around by strong winds.

There is a row planted down each side just under the edge of the cylinder. The cylinder is squashed a little so its about 40 cm wide and 30cm high.  

I don't usually sow peas at this time of year so the whole thing is a big experiment.

Might have to try a variation of that for the fruit trees I've been planting the last few days.

forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1773375
These are my favourite variety of potato- a thread about growing them. I’d be interested in your opinion on what happened with these potatoes - the grower in this thread concluded that they just grow quickly to maturity, which is interesting.

There is a fair bit going on in the experiments in that thread.  I need to read it again in detail but my quick impression is that various tubers they used for seed had a couple of different diseases present in them.  No amount of soil sterilisation will prevent the disease present in the tubers from manifesting in the plants that grow from them.  Getting a complete crop in 8 weeks during summer (when the posts were made) from good soil and disease free tubers sounds right - and yes the plant tops expire uniformly and quickly in modern varieties to aid mechanical harvesting of entire fields in a timely manner.  I would expect the tubers could be quite watery as a result of growing so fast as well as having poor keeping qualities.  

I really liked the taste and texture of the disease free low carb tubers I grew during winter.  I have kept some to sow - next March.  Those I kept are effectively the same as certified seed now that I know they come from disease free mother plants.

Early summer update: (Sorry no pics at the moment)

Mega crops of green beans, capsicums and basil. Carrots going well. Greenhouse tomatoes have first ripe fruit and have been picking a few zuchinnis and cucumbers in the greenhouse as well.

Huge harvest of spring sown peas - a very pleasing experiment that worked out nicely.
Broad beans looked like a bust this year coming up to the normal harvest time ... then set tons of late pods.
Excellent yields of dutch cream and pontiac potatoes. Quality was also outstanding.

Got my first harvest of asian water spinach that I grew in a big rectangular tub. Delicious.

I'm going to harvest a LOT of seed for next years sowings from both kinds of beans (broad and green) as well as Daikon and coriander. I've kept a lot of small seed potatoes from both varieties as well.

Fruit crops are looking like being well below average largely thanks to the unprecedented 45 degree, 60+km/h wind days that have recurred a few times since. September. On the up-side my jujube tree seems to soak up that punishment with enthusiasm.

This year we will close out at about 260mm of rain ... well below our long term historic 450mm 'average'. That on top of a 300mm year last year.
Actually just looked up the statistics for our location ... we've had so many low rain years since 1994 that our average annual from 94 to now has fallen to 390mm.

Potatoes go into a big mesh tray, get washed clean with water spray (no scrubbing), set out to dry in the shade for a couple of days and then put into thick paper bags (like the ye-olde supermarket bags from the pre 1985 era). Same for both types - seed and eating. I put them in a cool, dark place inside.

Unfortunately we have no idea what variety of Jujube we have. All we know is it produces lots of great fruit. It's one of the Chinese ones not an Indian one.

We're lucky that the parent tree isn't grafted otherwise the root sucker propagation wouldn't work.