Love of Dirt - Growing Food in the Subtropics

Welcome!

I am Nicki, I help people learn how to grow their own healthy organic food in the subtropical climate. Join me on a quest to grow all things edible.

Growing Garlic in South East Queensland

My zucchinis aren’t growing and rotting at the ends

Dealing with Fruit Fly in the veggie patch

Why flowers are incredibly important in your Veggie Patch

Kale, swiss chard, corn, tomatoes & celery

What mulch is best for your vegetable patch?

What to grow in Spring

Growing food is fast becoming a lost art.

It's feared, it's unknown, it's challenging, it's rebellious.

But it doesn't have to be hard.

What to plant this month?

Grab my free printable list of fruits and veggies to plant this month plus you'll get weekly reminders & loads of tips and tricks for the subtropical veggie patch.

GET IT NOW

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We put up a trellis for the passionfruit and also finally planted out the dragon fruit. I need to clear out the rocket that has finally finished flowering and tidy things up in general here. The flowers are self sowing everywhere so I need to relocate from the path. This garden we setup in January - it was previously a clump of golden cane palms and a pile of power poles.

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A view from outside the chicken run... I don’t feel like I’ve got half of the things done in our garden that I wanted (and perhaps never will) but when I look back to how far we’ve come in 12 months I am pretty pleased. Hubby built this fence, in the rain, whilst having gastro - but he powered through because he had taken the time off work to build the fence to keep in the kids and the beag 🐶 (and probably to stop me loosing my mind from running away toddlers). It was a dirt patch for ages, so hot and intolerable. We repurposed the original fence for the chicken run- you’ll also see it repurposed for a lot of our trellises around our garden. That tree root was the bane of our existence for a very long time (don’t ever plant golden cane palms unless you never ever ever want to get rid of it). I slowly moved dirt to level the area out while the baby played in it 😂 (and he stayed where I put him) and the toddler watched from her bedroom while playing barbies (because dirt was all of a sudden terrifying to her 🤷‍♀️). I planted this grass with runners I got off my father in law and moved pieces of grass where garden beds were setup. Now it’s green. It’s not hot and horrible. I think the chickens are happier.

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Honey’s Avocado is now in the chicken run. Honey was Ivy’s chicken that passed away due to being egg bound. She’s been in the morgue (freezer) waiting for the tree 🙈 but she’s now finally in her resting place. This is a dwarf wurtz, we also planted our Cara Cara blood orange. So that’s the chicken run jam packed as we already have the mulberry, Tahitian lime and passionfruit. Hopefully all these trees will provide some shade for the chickens over the warmer months as they almost cooked last year when we had no grass or greenery. I’ve also popped in some old metal drawers to make a green sprouter and thrown all my stray seeds in there. Will hopefully grow some greens for them that they can pick on without scratching out.

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Onion harvest, bed prepped ready for corn 🌽

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As Ivy would say - an Ivy size beetroot, a mummy size and a BIG daddy. Hopefully the big one isn’t woody.
I always used to lay off giving beets too much love because I worried they would suffer the same fate of carrots, but these got a good dose of chicken poo at the start of spring and it made them very happy.

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Amazing what a bit of rain does 🌧 Everything is kicking into gear now 🌽🥒🍅 🌈

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I don’t remember planting a Swede here 🤔but it looks like one although I can’t be sure as it’s been a while since I’ve grown one or even eaten one and I’ve forgotten what they look like 😂

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Hooray for rain 🙌 Boo for powdery mildew 😵

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