What We Have

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Posted on February 18, 2020

Every day there are multiple instances where we simply use what we have and think nothing of it. Tonight I want to share a few examples of how we use what is available and minimise buying new items.

About 10 years ago I scored a small rainwater tank on Freecycle. It had some rust spots and was no longer suitable for collecting rainwater but I had other plans. GMan cut it into 3 sections which we have used variously for small, raised garden beds and compost heaps. You can see them in some of the photos in this early blog post from 2011.

Over the years they have continued to rust and deteriorate a bit more and when GMan moved one recently, he declared that it was at the end of its useful life. However, on reflection, we decided that if we cut the worst of the rusted edge off it would be a bit shallower and would make a perfect herb garden.

The next trick was to find the best location for it. Ideally, it would be relatively close to the house for easy picking. After some discussion, we decided to remove the chilli bush in the corner of the vegetable garden area and place it there. We have two other very prolific chilli bushes so removing this one was not a problem. I removed all of the ripe chillies and added them to the bag of chillies in the freezer.

With the bush removed, it was time to position the cut-down tank.

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The next job will be to fill it with soil and select what to plant in it.

Barely 2 months ago we had a Himalayan ash tree beside our driveway lopped. As you will see from the hyperlink, it is regarded as environmental weed where we live in southeast Queensland. The main tree and its multiple suckers had covered quite a large area and we immediately planted a selection of native shrubs and small trees in its place. One of these is a lovely grevillea which has grown very quickly but the 3 main branches were drooping badly. So, we decided that the best course of action was to create an enclosure with stakes that would help to support it until it develops enough strength of its own.

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The straps connecting the stakes are some old webbing from the seat of an old armchair that GMan recently dismantled. I stapled them to the stakes using an upholstery staple gun that has been lurking in my craft cupboard for many years.

Here is another garden project that made the most of what we had.

I needed a table for potting and planting seeds so we created this one a couple of months ago and it has proved to be very successful.

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We used an old bed frame and the slats which had previously been removed were replaced with some wire which we attached to the frame using fencing staples. A couple of timer crossbars allowed the attachment of a pair of metal legs. These had been salvaged from a table that my father had made many years ago. The wire top allows for easy watering and drainage while the location on the southern side of the house gets plenty of light and some sun while still being reasonably sheltered.

The final photo is not something we had but something we were given.

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GMan planted these 5 new pineapple tops along the fenceline of the vegie garden. Thanks, Sandra and Glenn. We are looking forward to watching them mature and hopefully produce some delicious fruit. It will entail being patient as pineapples take about 18 months to grow.

In the Garden

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Posted on January 6, 2018

After a break of almost 3 months, I finally made it back to the garden today. I have really done nothing since before we went to the UK at the beginning of November and since we arrived home in early December my intentions have been thwarted by hot weather, Christmas preparations, another holiday and numerous social events as well as being busy at work.

However, I woke up at 5am today and decided to bite the bullet before the sun became too intense. 2.5 hours later I came in after having made a start on some weeding in the vegetable garden enclosure. In all honesty, you could barely see where I had been but I felt better knowing that at least I had made a start.

We went shopping this morning and as well as food we managed to buy more than a dozen plants. Later this afternoon GMan and I weeded the area in front of the house. This runs the full length of the house and is planted with numerous hibiscus shrubs and covered with mulch. Where the hibiscus are well established and close together there was very little weed, however, there are still some substantial gaps and some unwelcome plants had become quite well established. Of course, the area is almost overrun with cherry tomato plants but I am prepared to accept them as they are food.

The next job was to tackle the raised garden bed containing the sweet potatoes. When we planted them some months ago we placed a panel of old pool fencing over the bed to keep the scrub turkeys away from it as they just dig up the potatoes and eat them and completely destroy the plants. We had intended to remove it once the plants became established but that did not happen. The plants had grown right through the fencing and far, far away………… It was not easy to remove and in the process we discovered that there was a good crop waiting to be harvested.

Here is our haul.

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I can see sweet potato fries, sweet potato mash, vegetable curry and baked sweet potato in our future.

In a recent post I published a list of some of the projects we intend to tackle this year. One of them was to create a garden outside the vegie garden. My intention is to create a mostly native garden with a seat in the midst of it. At the moment it is just grass but that is about to change. Today we took the first step and bought a selection of plants which will form the basis of this garden.

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This is the result of our garden shopping so I am quite keen to see my planned garden come to fruition. Not of all the plants we bought will be for that area but we have plans for all of them.

Hopefully, I will have some more photos to share before too long.

We are planning to make an early start again tomorrow as it is really the best option during the summer months here.