Stephen Carlin, Author at SpadeRunner

Zucchini Ronde de Nice

April 20, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Ronde de Nice is a fine zucchini cultivar for the home garden. The seed catalogues say it is too easily damaged by handling to be a commercial crop, but for picking and using within a couple of days, it’s a winner. Picked about the size of an orange, the fruit are tender and have a beautiful flavour – think steamed and buttered, rather than chargrilled as you might with a black zucchini with its denser texture. Mine grew very well, sown direct from early Spring (we have no danger of…

Grass seed as chicken food

April 17, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

This morning I had an idea for bonus chicken feed. We have many types of grass here, but there is one that grows in shady spots on the forest edge, and lately it has been shedding a lot of seed as you pass it, so much that you can hear it scatter. I know that the chickens forage keenly for grass seeds, so thought I’d see how well collecting it for them works. Ideally they would forage themselves, but the grass is outside the chickens’ range. I took down a…

Mung bean final harvest

April 15, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

The mung bean bed at the Mid-levels got too overgrown. It was lush but crowded, and the plants were spindly and falling over each other in a tangle. What’s more, there didn’t seem an end to the flowering, with old pods spilling while new ones formed. So I figured it was time to treat it like the cover crop it was, pull it up, pick the pods, and dig the plants in. I ended up with a decent haul of beans, which the chickens loved in two feedings.

Oncidium orchids

April 14, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Oncidium orchids are great decorative plants for subtropical gardens and apartments. They flower twice in the year, Autumn and Spring, and are ideal for bringing in as a showy houseplant. I have two types; one with sweetly vanilla scented burgundy flowers on very large spikes, and a smaller one with dense spikes of yellow flowers. The yellow one is easy to divide, so I have a few pots which conveniently manage to flower a few weeks apart. The orchid world is full of complex crosses, and Oncidium is a catch-all for…

Beefsteak tomatoes

April 13, 2015 Stephen Carlin

For flavour and texture, beefsteak tomatoes are hard to beat. Their large size and fairly flat fruit make them good for sandwiches, and they have thick flesh and less seed than other tomato types, meaning the flavour is less acid.

Burnley Bounty tomatoes

April 1, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Burnley Bounty tomatoes are an Australian cultivar. They have a good classic tomato shape, about 7 cm round and slightly flattened top and bottom, with a nice orange colour ripening to red. I selected it from the catalogue expecting it to have a good chance of being suited to the climate.

Going up: vertical frames for vegetables

March 31, 2015 Stephen Carlin

A little inspiration in the garden can make a big difference. Vertical frames for vegetables, like these pyramids or teepees, can take trellising for plants beyond stakes and fences and create features to break up a flat expanse of vegetable beds.

Time to plant tomatoes

March 27, 2015 Stephen Carlin

It’s great being on the Web and seeing posts from around the world. The gardening blogs and posts from the Northern Hemisphere have swung into Spring preparation, which includes getting your tomato seeds sprouting indoors, but it turns out that for us here in northern New South Wales the garden advice is to plant tomatoes too.

When in doubt, sow asian greens.

March 25, 2015 Stephen Carlin

One of my garden mantras should be; When is doubt, sow asian greens. They seem to always reward with a quick crop and are super handy to have ready to pick. I had given up on growing them for summer, considering them a cool season crop, but after a neighbour gave me some fresh pak choi at the height of the warm weather, I reconsidered. There was a bed newly free after a sunflower crop, so I decided to try a few rows. The result has been a bed of…

Rosellas; a pretty plant that makes great cordial

March 19, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Yesterday I cut and processed my first lot of rosellas, and my attitude went from skepticism to planning how many rows I will plant next year.