The life of a gardener is always intense.

I was not born with a green thumb. My first foray into growing vegetables was a complete disaster. I originally believed that planting a punnet of purchased seedling lettuces during the middle of a hot summer down under, into composted woody mulch and without additional watering, would be a smart thing to do. The lettuce seedlings in question promptly died. Since then I have learned that lettuce is a winter and spring crop down here, it is required to be grown in manure, and if spring weather is at all hot, those lettuce plants require additional watering.

Way back then, I was quite surprised by the death of those seedling lettuces because people down under traditionally consume lettuce over the summer as a salad vegetable. So many unanswered questions were raised by the death of those seedling lettuces such as:

• Who is consuming all of the lettuces grown down here during winter and spring (Aliens anyone)?
• Why do we consume lettuce in summer when they grow during the winter and spring?
• Where do the lettuces that are available on shop shelves during summer come from?

But mostly, the death of those lettuce seedlings made me aware that this whole agriculture business is much more complex than I'd even begun to consider.

As an interesting and related side story, a few weeks back, I heard an amusing story on an ABC national radio youth news program (Hack on Triple J) about people who describe themselves as preppers – whatever that means. Apparently the preppers hold a rather strange belief that the end of civilised society is nigh and so they have equipped themselves with stores including plant seeds sealed in air tight nitrogen filled bags. The preppers apparently intend to feed themselves – once civilised society has crashed and burned, of course - from plants grown from those stored seeds. Needless to say, I have some very bad news for preppers, and that is that I would expect that they would share the same fate as those lettuce seedlings in about the same time frame – unless of course they are miraculously saved by aliens who may or may not be driving repossessed Chevy Malibu’s. Agriculture is a seriously complex business and requires a lot of practice, experimentation and observation.

And so it is that this week that I have to admit to a failure. I planted onions in a raised garden bed of manure. It all seemed like a good idea at the time. The various onion species initially grew very well. And then disaster slowly struck. I rarely get insect pests here, however a small black aphid seemed to flourish on the onions. The fairy wren birds which spend most of their days consuming pest insects in the garden beds could not keep up with the sheer number of aphids, and the onions slowly wilted and looked very sad as they were covered by a mass of black insects.

After a bit of research, I discovered my error and it soon became clear that growing onions in a manure rich bed was a very bad idea. The manure encourages a lot of green growth in the onions which then becomes a magnet for all sorts of insects. The lesson here is that onions are best grown in beds compromising more acidic composted woody mulch rather than manures. This also tells me more about the onion story in that they were originally a forest (or forest edge) dwelling plant, much like garlic, because those are the sort of soils that you would expect to find in those locations.

Long term readers will recall that way back in February during the late summer when the sun was shining strongly and the days were hot, the editor and I travelled to a farm expo. At the farm expo we met a guy that manufactured round steel raised garden beds. Today we ordered a number of steel raised garden beds from that guy and all being well we should have them in place for the next blog entry.

Now, the steel raised garden bed which was used for growing the aphid riddled onions was full of manure. That steel bed was also too large for its location as we were unable to walk behind the raised garden bed without falling off the edge of the flat ground. Needless to say that falling down the slope and into a mass of solid vegetation would have been an unpleasant experience. So, today, we cleared all of the remaining vegetation in that raised garden bed and either fed the plants to the chickens or the worms.

Nothing goes to waste here and the manure in that raised garden bed was spread over the flower gardens and also on the recently excavated new garden beds. Manure is very handy on slopes as it can be caked onto a slope and it will stick like a render. Observant readers will be able to spot in the photo below the many white roots which the onions had left in that manure. The soil even smelled of onions. Once the manure was removed the steel could also be repossessed(!).

For the rest of the entry click on: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/