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.

Summer Garden – What can I grow when it’s too hot?

Surviving Summer in the Vegetable Garden

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

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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My onions have finished curing. They kind of look like little Christmas balls! I am not really sure how to store them in our humid climate but I’ll just pop them in the bottom of our pantry. I suspect they’ll only last us until the end of summer anyway.

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First time growing these cylindrical beets. Not bad, they probably could have grown bigger but it’s so hot so I am cutting my losses. I was going to ferment these but will probably just do these in a sugar vinegar mix as it’s what gets eaten.

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Sunshine in a bottle. The calendula flowers I had picked and popped in a bowl had finally dried so I popped them in some sunflower oil to make a calendula oil. Ill let this sit for a few weeks then strain it out. I’ll try it as a salad dressing but also will make some healing salves with it.

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Hands up who else’s feels like giving up 🙋‍♀️it is so hot here today, we just left the park and the temp in the car said 40 🥵 and even after a deep water this morning it’s looking pretty sad here. I know this is the plants way of coping in this heat and 9/10 times they bounce back in the afternoon but it’s still stress that will affect harvest in the long run. There are a lot of things I want to change about this setup. It needs living mulch on the paths (herbs + stepping stones). The fences need to be covered with green to help with the heat. And the beds have dropped far too much so need a top up. It’s a process. We’ll get there but some rain would be nice 🤞🌧

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Echinacea is one to test your patience... this flower is taking forever to unravel. And doing well to be surviving in this dry weather

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New no dig garden bed on the front ‘lawn’ settling in ready for my sweet potatoes 🍠 I’ll plant this out in a week or so with cuttings I’ve shoved in the aquaponics.

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Lunch yesterday. Isaac turned 2 and we had the family over for a BBQ. Most of the food came from the garden as we have an abundance of salad veggies at the moment which is perfect timing for this weather 🥵 we also managed to score 10ml of rain which was nice although watching bom it looks like a lot of it side stepped us again. Let’s hope we all get some more 🌧🌧🌧

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Scorching out there today 🥵 I picked my red capsicums because the plant was struggling big time! It’s like it was putting all its energy into keeping these guys going, I am not sure it will recover. I’ll give it some TLC when it cools down. It’s rare we get red capsicums. I usually pick green because I am too impatient and plus the plant really slows down once you leave them on the ripen so you get less in the long run. We eat a lot of capsicum and I really want to up my game in this department so I’ll be loading up the wicking bed when the current crops finish in it. I am determined to get better at growing these guys 🌶

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