Hello to all my Australian friends!
I'm still around, been busy travelling a heap with work, but changing jobs in a few weeks which means I will have more time than ever to work in the garden. For those that have followed my grows previously, I've done half garden beds and the other half pots. Well, just finished a project this weekend to move everything out of the pots into the ground.
You have no idea how much sugar cane mulch I've gone through! All I did was use a garden fork to till the first 5-10 cms of soil which majority clay, then lift the plants out of their pots and sit on top of the ground. From there, used a cement mixer to mix up batches of Zoo Gro (
http://www.growbetter.com.au/zoo-gro.php) with 2L of Rocket Fuel (
http://www.neutrog.com.au/rocket-fuel/) and 2L of blood and bone. Piled that around the soil from the pots, and then finished up with sugar cane mulch. If any of the plants don't overwinter I will simply replace them with other plants.
I also have experimented this year with growing green mulch in the garden beds, which you just chop down as they start to flower. Read up that barley is awesome for tomatoes due to their phosphorous requirements, so bought a mix that incorporated this into it. Found someone on gumtree selling sheep and cow manure, so tore everything up out of garden beds, tilled quit a bit with a garden pick because it looked like everything had become severely compacted, then worked the manure into the beds along with Rocket Fuel and the blood and bone. Sprinkled seeds in the beds about 8 weeks ago, and they started flowering this week so chopped back two of the garden beds this weekend to allow to break down in preparation for planting.
I'm going to try this year sprouting my seedlings on Sep 1, and as soon as I see a hook I will immediately put in garden beds and pop 2L bottles around the outside to create a mini greenhouse environment. Lids will come off during the day, but go back on overnight to ensure no frost hits them. The theory behind this is that having started the plants earlier each year, the tap root is obviously hitting the bottom of the pots they are growing in and I want to see what happens when this has the opportunity to go down as far as possible.
Good luck with your growing season!
nuclearDays said:
I cut the pods in half and then hung them up in front of the reverse cycle heater/aircon (see post 4965 in this thread). Since it's winter here the heater is on for about 8-10 hours a day, it took roughly 10 days to dry them.
To grind them up I used one of these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/MAXIM-260W-Electric-Grinder-Blender-Wet-and-Dry-for-Coffee-Spices-Nuts-Herbs-/301084956174?pt=AU_CoffeeGrinders&hash=item461a0fd60e
Seems to work OK, they're not the greatest quality but I think they are fine for domestic use.
Where in Melbourne are you mate? I'm looking to get some powder from something like a 7 Pot or Trinidad Scorpion to make a Caribbean type chicken wing sauce for a birthday party I'm going to in August. Happy to pay of course!