Dan’s Garden (Year in review)
Time flies when you’re up to your armpits in tomatoes and as per usual it’s been a bit more than a year since my last garden update. (I should call it the bi-annual review)
Our Patch
Last time I wrote one of these blogs we were in the process of shifting our main plot from Yarrambat to Research. Both these sites are in Nillumbik (North East part of Melbourne) which is hilly, dry and not well known for it’s soil quality. As a result we have continued to grow our seed crops unconventionally in planter bags rather than directly in the ground.
Our new plot has three 20m x 6m greenhouses on site as well as a large flat netted area of about 400m2. In 2023/24 we had about 2000 plants split fairly evenly between 25 litre and 75 litre planter bags and this year we have the same number of plants, but we ditched the 25 litre bags and now have everything in 75 litre bags. We’re also trialling some plants in raised rows.
Tomatoes and Capsicums are what we grow and this has continued over the last couple of year’s with the addition of some cucumbers this year.
The last season and a half
I don’t want to go over last season in too much detail. In 2023/24 we grew 2000 plants and managed to get a harvest from about 1500 plants and have enough seed to offer about 50 new varieties of tomatoes and capsicums.
I lost plenty of plants to pests and I also lost a lot due to the extreme heat in one of the greenhouses. I’m not horticulturally trained and this has definitely been to the detriment of our plot. It’s been a baptism of fire and I’ve spent many a night researching how to manage different pests and how to control the heat in a greenhouse. (Still a work in progress)
My main advice would be to know your pests and plan for them. Last year we had mice and rats who showed a fondness for capsicum seeds. Unfortunately I didn’t deal with the problem over winter and this year they are back with a vengeance and I’m now double netting my plants.
In terms of managing the greenhouse heat, I tried a very expensive system that cost me over $5k and cost almost as much to run per year. Totally ridiculous considering how many plants I was growing. Not the best business decision as I ended up just putting more shade cloth over the plastic and this seems to have done the trick for about a 10th of the cost.
What are we growing?
I’m not confident that we’ll get a crop from all the varieties we planted this year. But to let you know what we may end up selling; here is a list of everything we’re growing this season.
What’s next?
I have to recognise where my strengths lie. Growing seeds and selling seeds are closely related, but in many ways different. I want to continue to grow Seeds of Plenty and unfortunately managing such a large number of plants and processing seed has taken away a lot of my time and the business has suffered. I’ve been lucky to find a few growers for tomatoes this year, and moving forward I will reduce our farm size and concentrate on capsicums/chillies in the greenhouses with less tomatoes.
All things going well Seeds of Plenty will continue to have lots of new tomatoes, capsicums and chillies each year. I will have more time to concentrate on improving our service and product quality, whilst still getting my hands dirty.
Until next year or maybe the year after.
Happy gardening everyone.
Dan
