Growing pumpkins

Pumpkins might just be the easiest thing to grow around here, and boy do they taste nice!

They grow really well in summer months, and you probably have some growing at your house and you didnt even plant them.

If you are buying a pumpkin from the shop, keep some seeds and let them dry for a few days, or just plant them where you want them to grow. We planted about ten seeds and pretty much all of them came up in the tyre. We then waited a few days to see which one was the biggest of the ten that sprouted. Then we pulled all the other ones out and let the biggest one have its place.

If you have ten pumkins all growing from the one tyre, it will probably result in ten not that healthy plants, and next to no fruit. Best to have one or two really good vines, and let them run rampant. Sometimes you might get 20 big pumpkins from one vine, maybe more. Once we pulled the other 9 pumkins out, the one that is left is powering! We will add a new post in a month or so, to show the progress and the yummy pumpkin soup!

Food and poo for the garden

Dynamic lifter (chicken poo) and Dolomite are about all you need to keep the soil stoked. If we have recently had one tyre that had a good crop of something, we usually turn the soil over, water it, add both of these and some compost and then water it again....then leave it for a week or so before planting.

the lazy way

I have about ten of these tractor tyres, to grow vegetables in. It works really well, as the weeds cannot get in, and when you have finished growing something in it, you can cover it up with mulch and that will starve it of sunlight and give the soil a chance to regain its nutrition.

Growing Potatoes

The spuds above are fresh out of the ground, but 6 weeks earlier they came from one mouldy old spud in the kitchen.

How to grow a potato, the lazy way.

1) dig hole approx 15cm deep and wide...to put mouldy spud in.
2) put mouldy spud in hole.
3) cover mouldy spud up with the soil you just dug out
4) water it if it doesnt rain
5) in the next few weeks, watch a plant grow, where you planted mouldy.
6) watch plant flower nice white flowers a few weeks after that.
7) after mouldy spud has spent a month or so in the ground, and the plant has flowered you should start to get potatoes in the soil at the base of the little shrub plant thing.
8) if you are very lazy and don't want to hunt around the soil hunting for the potatoes, just pull the entire plant out and most of the potatoes will come out with the plant.


if you are more serious about it all, when the plant is growing, you should put more soil around the plant and keep building it up and up....so the soil might be a foot or two higher than when you planted it.

Yes you can cut the original potato (that is mouldy) into quarters and get 4 plants from it...but i am too lazy to do that.
Yes you can grow spuds from seed too.
Yes, having good soil and sunlight make all the difference.