Tag Archives: vegetable garden

The Gorgeous Garden

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This weekend GMan and I have had 3 days at home so finally managed to catch up on some much needed work in the garden.  We have had a combination of plenty of rain plus some hot, sunny days over the past few weeks which has been a recipe for everything to grow crazily – especially the weeds.

Thankfully, the weather was not too hot and mostly fine this weekend.  GMan ploughed through everything on the mower and now I can actually see the vegetable garden area again.

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We also had a blitz in this area in front of the verandah.  The hibiscus we planted last year are doing really well and I think we need about 3 more.

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The weeds were going mad and there were piles of branches waiting to be mulched.  The mulching has been done and weeds mostly pulled up and discarded in the compost heap up the back.  The thickly mulched area in the background of the photo with cardboard/newspaper underneath has very little weed so we definitely need to get more mulch and finish the whole area.

This afternoon GMan planted the capsicum plants we bought last weekend and the 4 shrubs we bought at a new native plant nursery in Maleny.

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The plant in the foreground was a Christmas gift and has more than doubled in size in the 6 weeks since we planted it.  The one up closer to the road was also planted towards the end of last year.  The new plants are barely visible in the photo but can be identified by the areas were the lawn has been dug up.

Although it is not clear in the photo, this is quite a steep embankment and difficult to mow.  So, we have decided to cover the entire area with native shrubs and groundcovers.  Nothing will be more than a couple of metres high and we hope to have it densely covered and eliminate the lawn in this area entirely.  It may seem like a vain hope when you look at it now but here is a reminder of what can be achieved.

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This planting is along the front boundary a provides privacy from the road.  The whole area was just a wide expanse of lawn when we came here 10 years ago.  It took about 4 – 5 years to get this level of screening.

We have many grand ideas for the garden and look forward to getting more done but in the meantime it is gratifying to see how much we have achieved.  The chicken run, vegetable gardens and fencing in the first photo have all been established since we came here, the area in front of the verandah has been completely revamped and the native screening grown.  Many other areas of the garden tell a similar story.

I hope you enjoy seeing some snippets of our garden.

The Garden Grows

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After being away for six weeks, the vegetable garden was in need of some attention.

I cleared out the remains of the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower which had been harvested while we were away.  There are now corn, lettuce, radish and cucumber seeds planted in the spaces available.

The area inside the fence that I had earmarked for a herb garden is now sporting a couple of very healthy  parsley plants as well as several basil seedlings.  I planted these on the weekend as they were kindly left for us by the house sitters.  They commented that it was cheaper to buy a pot of seedlings than a bunch of parsley or basil.

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I have previously shown you here the netting that we bought at the Garden Show and we intended to ask the house sitters to put it on the peach tree as I felt it would need to be done while we were away.  That did not happen so now all of our small, green peaches are enclosed.  If this is successful, in a few months we will be harvesting luscious peaches that have not been stung by fruit fly. I can only hope!

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Before we went away we planted the asparagus and rhubarb in styrofoam boxes until I could prepare the areas where we wanted to plant them.  On the weekend we dug a trench and set the concrete blocks into the ground to form a border for the rhubarb.  I hope to plant some flowers in the small soil-filled pockets of the blocks.

I hope to prepare the bed for the asparagus in the coming weeks.

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We have a long weekend coming up and I am hoping to get some more done in the garden.

Weekend Work & Chicken Wings

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It is Wednesday already and it is nearly a week since my last post.  I have been busy doing things instead of writing and unfortunately have not always had the camera handy.  However, here are a few photos of some of the things we did on the weekend.

Bluberries
The existing blueberry bushes have been pruned, enclosed with wire surrounds and mulched thoroughly.  These bushes have been in for several years but are now in the wrong place as they are located within the new chicken run.  I previously had the entire area enclosed to prevent the chickens from digging around them and exposing the roots but I decided that individual enclosures were a better idea.

New garden
The fencing around the perimeter of the vegetable gardens is almost complete.  I the meantime I have temporarily closed off the last bit to exclude the chickens.  This meant that I was able to prepare a new garden bed and be safe in the knowledge that it would not be dug up immediately by the marauding feathered army.  The rock edging is made from some of the hundreds of rocks that litter our property.  The bed is inside the fence nearest to the house so I plan to make this into a herb garden.

Chickens
Finally, I clipped the wings of the chickens in order to make sure that they could not fly over the 1200mm fence into the vegie garden.  I had wanted to do this for ages but never felt quite brave enough.  With some advice from an online forum, a Youtube video and The Duke to hold the chicken I was able to clip the flight feathers on one wing of each chicken.  The exercise seems to have been successful as there has been no more instances of flying over fences.

Finally – A Fence

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We have been living here for over 8 years now and when we moved in there were no vegetable gardens and only 3 fruit trees – avocado, orange and lemon in rather odd spots in the yard.  We built some vegetable gardens which have evolved over time and the chicken run has been moved and is now next to the vegetable gardens.  Since free-ranging chickens and vegetable gardens do not go terribly well together we decided to fence the entire area containing the garden beds.  This has been a very long-winded process but we can finally see the end in sight.

Today we actually did one run on fencing and here is the result.

Fencing
We hope to finish the fencing which will enclose the vegetable garden area next weekend.  It should mean an end to the various bits of wire contraptions that I create to keep the chickens away from the seedlings.

Seedlins
These are peas and pak choy seedlings that we bought at the Yandina markets on Saturday.  We also bought lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower which are in the other beds.

Beans and radishes
Here are the purple beans and radishes which have come up from seed I planted a couple of weeks ago.

What are you growing in your garden at the moment?

Who Needs Meat?

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Although we are not vegetarian we do eat a range of non-meat meals and when we do have meat it is quite a small portion.

Why do we do this?  It is partly driven by cost because I would much rather have a small portion of locally-produced, grass-fed or free range meat occasionally than the cheapest I can find just to serve meat every day.  However, more and more it is because we have access to a range of home-grown vegetables.  These are grown without the use of pesticides or chemical fertiliser.  I know how they have been produced, there is no transport involved and they are picked at their peak.

Here is some of what I picked today.

2011-08-28 01I had already given 1 head of broccoli and half of the snow peas to a neighbour before I took the photo.  The broccoli weighed just over 3kg and that is only about half of the plants.  There will also be all of the side shoots for a couple more months at least.  I expect that based on today’s harvest that I will probably reap about 8kg in total.  That is not a bad return for a $2.50 punnet of seedlings.  I should be more accurate in my calculations of the value of what I plant.  Jennifer Lorenzetti from Fast, Cheap and Good has the right idea when it comes to calculating the value of what she grows and other things such as jam-making and preserving.  As well as the broccoli and snow peas there is another cabbage and some spinach.

With all of that fresh broccoli it had to be incorporated into the meal.  Tonight we had Mexican Bean Pie with broccoli, carrots and mushrooms.  The mushrooms are still growing prolifically from the bags of mushroom compost we got a couple of months ago.  The cool, damp weather of the past couple of days means that there is yet another crop that have popped up in the last 24 hours.

2011-08-28 02Mexican Bean Pie is a really fancy name for something I whipped up one night and it has now become a favourite of ours.  I use the Crockpot Refried Beans and mix about a cup of bean mixture with cooked rice until it is a fairly stiff consistency.  Spread into a pie plate, top with a little grated cheese and heat through until cheese is melted.  This can be done in microwave, oven or under the grill.