Late Autumn Subtropical Australia Organic Garden Tour

It's been a little while since I did a garden update on everything that is growing, so I thought I'd catch you up on everything we've been doing here in our subtropical veggie patch in late autumn. If you're new here, I'm Nikki and I'm on a mission to grow as much food as I can on a regular suburban block. We've been quite busy doing some major overhaul works of the garden. We've got some upcoming renovation works happening to our house and for that to happen we need to build a shed. To build the shed we needed to pull down the old chicken coop and build a new one. We also needed to relocate the aquaponics and redo our stormwater. We've also got to replace our front fence. I'm trusting the process as at the moment it just looks like a bunch of unfinished projects and a lot of pile of dirt. Thankfully my main garden has been unaffected by all of this and we are still getting plenty of harvest. The four beds of garlic are growing really well. I've added a bit of slow release fertilizer and topped it off with a bit more mulch. I've been alternating from seaweed extract and a fish hydrolysate liquid feeds weekly for this garlic. The wicking bed crop is probably looking the best out of all of the beds so far. In the tightly spaced bed I've had some self-sown lettuce and some dill and because I had sweet potatoes in this bed previously I'm battling the remnants of those. The potatoes that I planted aren't doing the best. The leaves look a little bit smaller than potatoes would normally look. I did find that rats were digging into the beds and actually eating the seed as it was growing. Didn't seem to affect the plants as they'd already taken root but I'm kind of wondering if that has affected their growth so we'll see how they go. The bed that I planted back in March I've harvested all the pak choi and replanted another row. We've been getting a lot of snow peas from here along with regular harvests of rocket. I did have spinach in here but when the chickens got loose they actually ripped out all of those. I've also pulled up a few carrots and beetroot too now. The bed I planted out in April I've had a lot of issues with missing seedlings due to what I suspect is some kind of cockroach or native slater. So it's going a bit slow but we have harvested some amazing cos lettuce from here and I'm letting the rest currently go to seed. One broccoli did survive the mass slaughter of seedlings which is looking like it might do something soon and the sugar snaps are starting to grow which I'm super excited about. I planted out two beds for May as I felt a little bit behind with the loss from the April bed. You can see what I planted in my last video but I've gone in and planted the last of my cauliflowers for the year. I've also planted some kohlrabi, dill, coriander, pak choi, beetroots and carrots. I did put the chickens in these beds to help with the number of those native cockroaches and so far I haven't had any fatalities. Although I didn't keep the water up to my carrot seeds so my germination on those is quite low and I might have to replant some of those. I also planted out my onions this month. I've done these in my wicking bed. These are medium short day variety called gladaline brown which is perfect for our climate here in the subtropics. I planted out a cherry tomato amongst one of my beds that has a capsicum in it. I've struggled to get it going for a little bit but now it's starting to look good. I am waiting for this rocket to go to seed so I can save it. The San Marzano tomatoes that I planted back in March as well are doing really well. I did initially plant out six but I lost four and then replanted another two. I assume it's the same bug that is eating my seedlings. We've got fruit on them now which is great and I'm letting the self-sown nasturtiums just go wild in between these. On the arch in this bed I have planted some purple potted peas. These ones are very popular in my shop so this will be more for seed saving than for my own purposes as I haven't grown them for a few years. I'll probably harvest some of the early ones though just to keep them flowering. I've been putting off restoring one of my wicking beds because I do have to pull all the soil out and check my sand levels. And we've got one other one that I want to set up here which then we'll look at covering them all just to make them look a bit nicer. We pulled down one of the last big timber beds. It was still holding strong but we are moving our aquaponics here. We've also got a nice harvest of asparagus from this fence wicking bed. It has finished up now. I'm also grabbing a few of these blue butterfly pea flowers for my tea collection. The single rosella plant that I grew in a pot, it hasn't really produced enough for us so next year I'll definitely get at least two plants in the ground. I'll let these ones finish up and then I'll pull it out. I'm not sure what I'm going to put in here yet. Technically rosellas are meant to be perennial in warmer climates but I just find if they're left in beyond June they get a really bad case of powdery mildew. Now for our fruit trees. We gave our mulberry and pomegranate trees brutal cutbacks to ensure our garden had plenty of sun over winter. The fruit salad tree which is a multi-grafted stone fruit tree of peach, plum and nectarine. It's a little bit confused. It started flowering last month and it has set fruit already. I need to mark it on my calendar to trim it back a little bit earlier as I had to chop it back to fit under my net and I've lost a lot of flowers and fruit in the process of doing that. We've had a steady supply of dragon fruit and passion fruit over the last few months which has been amazing. We've got two of our ladyfinger banana trees flowering right now and I'm not risking the one more day with these pawpaws. As soon as they show a little hint of orange they are getting picked and brought inside. I'm sure they would be sweeter if I left them on but when I do that they just get eaten by possums and bats. We're also in a bit of coffee bean harvest hell at the moment. Processing is quite painful but we still have a bunch of green beans that I need to figure out the best way to roast inside. I finally got back into compost production mode and I'm looking at emptying one of my bins soon. I've also been starting to harvest from my worm farm too which I'm really stoked about. Something has found my greenhouse and I've been losing seedlings overnight which I'm not happy about. It's likely rats as they've been pretty bad here lately but it could very well be a possum too. As for plans over the next few months it is really priority one to finish our little garden shed. Once that's done we'll move on to the aquaponics and set up the new wicking bed. We also need to set up our fire pit area and finish off the chicken area. Anyway that's a rundown of everything we've been doing here in late autumn in our subtropical vegetable garden. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys next time.