News

August 2011

Are you interested in learning more?

Do you want to know more about how to grow your own vegetable successfully?

Would you be interested in attending a workshop exploring a variety of vegetable growing topics, all customised to suit your needs and the time you have available?

We are looking at running some workshops in either Adelaide or the Adelaide Hille, (or both), on vegetable growing, ideally groups of no more than 10 would be ideal, so if you are interested in attending a customised home veggie growing workshop in your area, register you interest with Veg2Table, and when we get enough people interested, we can run a workshop just for you!!

Suggested topics for workshops include:

• Site selection
• Soil preparation
• What to plant when and how to plant:  including how to rotate crops to avoid disease and pests, and companion planting
• How to maintain my vegetable patch
• Pest and disease identification and their management
• Organic vegetable production

So, if you are interested, contact Veg2Table to express your interest.

June 28th 2011

What kind of garden bed is best for you??

Part of planning a productive vegetable garden from scratch, involves considering the type of garden bed you need.  Garden beds either use the existing soil, or use raised beds with imported soil, there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

In-ground garden beds

In-ground beds are an affordable way of setting up a vegetable bed.  Provided your soils has good drainage, it can be manipulated to become a healthy fertile soil.  If your soils are sandy, you can start to improve it through the addition of organic matter, or through the addition of heavier soils or clay.  On the other hand; if your soils are very heavy, you can improve the soil through the addition of lighter materials such as sands.  If your soils are hard setting, gypsum can be an advantage. These techniques of soil manipulation will help to improve the soils water and nutrient holding capacity. 

In addition to this, if soils are prepared through the addition of lots of organic matter and organic fertilizers, such as blood and bone and compost, this will give your veggie garden a great start.

When digging the soil over, it is important to use a fork wherever possible to avoid damaging valuable earthworms.  A fork will also assist in the process of mixing the organic material through the soil.

After adding the organic material, and mixing it through, it pays to leave the soil for a couple of weeks.  This gives the soil microbes a chance to start working to improve the soil and mineralise the nutrients in the soil – making them more readily available for your seedlings when they get planted.  Make sure the soil at this stage, is kept moist to allow for the mineralization process to continue to take place without the interruption, which occurs when soils dry out.

If a little time is invested into preparing your soils, the chances of a successful growing season will be greatly increased once Spring finally arrives.

Raised garden beds

There are a wide range of vegetable beds available ranging from corrugated iron, timber sleepers, recycled plastic, galvanized iron, wine barrels and potato bins just to mention a few.  All these will make good raised beds, but some can be costly to set up.  The cost includes the initial purchase of the bed and then the purchase of the soil to go into the bed.  The soil then needs to be improved which will also add extra cost to the bed, but you can have more control over the soil conditions. 

On the positive side, raised garden beds look good in any garden, from a small courtyard to a large open garden.  Raised beds are a great option for people who have back problems as they come in many heights, or can be built at various heights to suit the individual.  In many cases raised beds can make managing pests a lot easier.  Pests can be managed in a bed by bed basis and raised beds make it easier to install physical barriers to manage snails, slugs and other crawling pests.  Because raised beds often use purchased soil mixes, the soils are free of disease making the chances of a successful vegetable garden more achievable.

 Summary

Raised Gardens	Inground Gardens
Advantages Control over the soil right from the start Improved drainage Better pest management Easier on your back Neater garden Many options available Soils are generally disease free Better for colder climates Disadvantages More expensive to establish Limited in size/area Will dry out quicker	Advantages Often the soil is already ‘active’, worms etc. Expansion of your garden is easier Cheaper to establish Good for ‘rambling’ vegetables Need less watering Disadvantages Beds are often weedier Digging is often harder More difficult to manipulate the soil There may be pest/diseases already in the soil Can sometimes become untidy looking