Kids gardening - Vegepod

I haven't had much luck growing good vegies. This year has been particularly pathetic, and I could even get my basil to grow (though a lack of watering and late planting into the ground may have had a lot to do with that).  Last year's poor beans had been plagued by bugs, my snow peas this year met an early demise from the extreme temperatures, and I only ever got one okra from my plants.  The cucumbers from a few years ago were the best crop I had.  and a colleague of mine suggested a Vegepod.

From the website:

...they provide superior growth-rates due to the complete growing system. Unlike traditional raised garden beds the Vegepods give you complete control over the soil which means any nutrients you add are utilised by your plants only. The self-watering reservoir holds up to 64 litres providing all the moisture your plants require – from below!

The unique greenhouse cover provides a micro-climate that promotes rapid growth. The cover has a mist-spray watering system and the hinged cover provides effortless access to all plants – even mature ones. Tired of the possums and wildlife eating your crops before you do? The covers protect your plants from animals, pests and bugs and damaging weather.

I was skeptical, it sounded too good to be true. Was it really that easy?  I read a couple of reviews - one on Vegie Smugglers and another on Going Grey and Slightly Green - and both said great things. Here is a pic of what Vegie Smugglers grew in 5 weeks.

Inspiring right? So I went and bought a small one from the local pet and garden store, and put it together.  The cover is actually quite hard to assemble and trying to get the plastic on made me crack the connecting joins so I hope they don't fall apart after lots of exposure to the sun. My set was also missing the clips to connect the cover into a flip top, so I emailed Vegepod and Matt said he would send me out some clips.

I set it up in the backyard on the grass, and I put some Bok Choy on the right and planted some carrots on the left and here they are.

A few weeks later they were looking nice and fat but unfortunately caterpillars and slugs were attacking them!  There is enough gap underneath the cover to allow the ratbag slugs in, so they have been climbing up my container in droves.

The carrots were coming up, and were so far safe from the slugs, but the slugs were coming in force to the bok choy side and so I had to put baits out to get rid of them. I also did a beer trap which wasn't very effective because I put it on the wrong side but I moved it and caught 2 slugs as well as 6 others that were crawling all over the place.  I had also put baits out so perhaps the slugs were disoriented because of the bait.

Here they are at about 2 weeks.  You can see my little beer trap on the right there.

After a month they were getting nice and almost ready to eat! And 2 weeks after that I decided to plant some spinach and lettuces between the carrots and the bok choy.  I had picked a couple of the outer leaves for the kids to eat and they seemed to be excited to be eating home grown vegies. I planted a few seeds of coriander next to the carrots for fun.

The lettuce was quite slow to germinate (about 2 weeks) but the spinach popped up within a week. The lettuce is next to the carrots and the spinach next to the Bok Choy. By now there were plenty of leaves to harvest and we were having a regular meal at least once a week, sometimes twice.

And this is them last week (first week of August) .  I had put some Blood and Bone Fertilizer to try and boost my lettuces and it seemed to do the trick.  Unfortunately the carrots also seem to have taken to sprouting more leaves because of the fertilizer which is not ideal because I want them to grow more root (carrot).

This week I noticed that the Bok Choy is starting to flower. I was going to let one of them seed and cut the rest of the flowers back so I can keep harvesting leaves.  Maybe I can plant some more Bok Choy to keep the supply going!

The best thing is that the kids love to come outside to water the plants and pick the vegies, and they are also very keen to eat them. They are so enthusiastic about eating the vegetables that are grown at home and cared for by them that I would highly recommend vegie growing as an incentive for kids to eat their vegetables!

Carrots aren't ready to harvest yet - and it was hard for me to figure out when they would be ready, but apparently they are ready when you see the orange tops pushing out of the ground.  Should take 90 days or so, I've heard. I had a little dig to see if any root was forming but nothing yet....

Ghan Holiday Day 9-11 - Adelaide

We arrived in Adelaide and wandered down Rundle street in the afternoon, and ending up eating a noodle place which was quite decent.

I also wonder, why there are coins embedded in the footpath...

Adelaide zoo sounded like a fun family place to visit and we walked there - phew, it seemed likea longer walk then we thought! There was bird life aplenty, as we saw Hyacinth macaws, Orange Bellied Parakeets and the pandas. Adelaide zoo is nice, but it seems like the population of the animals is aging.

That's not a tawny Frogmouth!

THIS is a tawny Frogmouth!

I also got to  meet up with my World of Warcraft friends.  Crooked I met up with for dinner at Adelaide Central Market, which was full of cool gourmet food things.  There was a food hall which was a rather ordinary one, but it was cheap and at least had somewhere we could sit down and chat.

Jazz and Nath I caught up with the next day and ate at Grill'd.  There are few burger places in Adelaide, and this one is a chain that is also in many other places, including Sydney.

We also visited the Botanical gardens.  Adelaide is lovely how they have gardens and parks surrounding the city.

A trip to Haighs was in order too and we got to eat lots of chocolate on the tour and see how labour intensive it was to make chocolate.  I couldn't help myself, I spent lots of money on chocolate when we visitedthere.

Glenelg was at the end of a tramline and the kids had fun playing at the beach and we took a ferris wheel ride to get a higher view of the beach.  We ate dinner at a Teppanyaki restaurant there, and my son was so amazed at watching the food being cooked he ate every single scrap that was given to him. Very impressive!

We had a bit of time in the morning of our last day so we decided to go to the Japanese Gardens, which was towards the south-east end of the city parklands.

Having walked that direction previously we knew that it wasn't overly strenuous.  Getting INTO the gardens proved to be a bit of a challenge as we approached it from the wrong direction, but once inside, it was almost like a secret garden.

Outside the garden there were a lot of parrots in a large tree outside and at first we thought they were rainbow lorikeets but on closer inspection they were musk lorikeets!  Good spotting by hubby!

The Japanese gardens had a pond with koi and turtles in it and that kept the kids entertained as we walked around it.  There was also a Zen garden as well, and the entire place was rather tranquil and beautiful - a lovely place to read a book.

Then it was back to Sydney.  It was a very memorable trip and the kids talked about it constantly for the next week.

Ghan Holiday Day 7-8 - The Ghan

After we checked out of our hotel we went to the Olive Pink Botanic Garden and some more cool birdlife and even some kangaroos.

A Western Bowerbird with the distinctive purple tuft on the back of his head was on the road and his bower was not far away.

Australian Ringneck

Kangaroo and joey

Black Kite

Then it was time to make our way to the legendary Ghan!

The Ghan we were riding was 758m long with 32 carriages.  The kids and I walked from one end to the other taking pictures of the train, but none could capture the sheer length of the beast.

We stayed in Platinum rooms which were the largest rooms and had a double bed.  It was like a tiny little hotel room and the service we had was excellent.

At night they even folded down the sheets for us and the kids each got a Ghan teddy as a free gift!

The meals were good on the train - not excellent, but the portions seemed right for breakfast and lunch.  The dinner portions were way too big, I thought.  We ordered one of each thing and the kids ate the adults meals where they could.  There are no children specific meals if your kids are fussy eaters in the platinum dining car.

Dinner

Lunch

Breakfast

At night we hopped off the train for a bonfire and some stargazing. We had to wake the kids for that one but they took it all in stride.  Not a bad stopoff really - but in the future it would be better if we could have some light alcohol outside to enjoy by the fire.  Licensing issues, I heard.

We got into Adelaide after almost 24 hours on the train.  The trip was an experience, a rather expensive one but I'm glad we had done it.  The sleep on the train wasn't a great one if you're a light sleeper because of the rocking the train cha-chunk noises, but if that doesn't bother you then it's a rather pleasant trip.  Bring a book to read though or some board/card games.  No phone or internet reception on the train!