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.

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Calendula flowers 🥰 a staple in our garden during spring. Normally I just let them be but this year I am harvesting and I am putting these aside to dry to make an oil. These are maya orange.

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Yes queen 👑 we have 3 pineapples on the way this summer. Hopefully we’ll get a few more starting to form before the end of summer. I don’t look after these as much as I could. They kind of do their own thing and are very resilient. Most of these have been grown from the two tops off some fruit we bought, we had two that were pups given to us. We now have about 20 plants, we just keep replanting the tops and letting the mother have babies.

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It is super Smokey here today, I’ve been thinking of all the people who are losing everything in these terrible fires and those volunteers out there on the front lines. Hoping rain comes soon, then no doubt it will be too much. Like I said a couple of months ago, perhaps this is the new norm for us. The front garden is in a flush of things I’ve let go to seed. I’ll be resting this area over summer and will just plant a few pumpkins to sprawl over it in between the self sown flowers. I do have a small crop of corn out here, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers. Plus carrots and beetroot that are almost ready. I am contemplating adding sweet potato 🍠 but worry it will take over 🤔 and then it will be nothing but a sweet potato garden 🙈

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Strawbales and the wicking bed with self sown flowers around the edges. This is the first time using strawbales in the hotter months. The first generation (planting directly after conditioning) don’t need as much water as I thought they would (similar to a regular raised bed). The 2nd generation is struggling to retain moisture, along with collapsing in shape so needs support which kind of nullifies the benefit of not needing infrastructure. The wicking bed is doing well considering it’s full sun and I water it twice a week (and we’ve had a week in the high 30s). It does have soil issues, needs some fresh compost to give it a boost.

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The sunflowers that I planted are still tiny but I’ve got heaps self sown everywhere bursting into life. That tells me I should plant the seeds a lot earlier next year!

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Here come the loofah! I haven’t grown them for a couple of years because the last batch we grew was so prolific (I still have a box full of them) but I wanted this guy to climb over the chicken coop to give them a bit of protection over summer. I’ve never actually tried to eat them but I might give them a go this year. It’s got a bit of a distance to travel before it gets near the coop but they love the aquaponics so I have no doubt it will make it there in no time at all. How do you use your loofah?

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That corn shot up! Still picking 4 cucumbers a day. The yellow zucchini’s mysteriously get given to the chickens 🤦‍♀️👦 capsicums are close, kale and silverbeet for days.

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