With the shift to the new house this year, we had the opportunity to start a new vegetable garden. We have 3 sets of photos. The first ones were taken in about September, the next ones in December and the most recent just this morning. The one below is from December. You can see the progression, there has been huge growth in the last 3 weeks since we’ve finally had some summery weather!
The garden was fairly bare at the new house, so we were able to start from scratch. We brought the raised beds we had made earlier with us, and set them up against the fence in the back yard, filling them with pea straw and compost. We also bought 3 fruit trees, a cherry, apricot and nashi pear. We are hoping to espallier the apricot and nashi against the corrugated iron fence.
To our frustration, the compost we had purchased had weed seeds in it, which immediately started sprouting. In addition, the pea straw produced fresh shoots which popped up throughout the beds. We might try lucerne straw again next time, and go back to Warehouse compost.
We also brought with us raspberry canes that had been planted at the old house. We weren’t sure if they would survive, but they came back to life after spending winter in a box in the garage! Notice the old grape vine stump, we weren’t sure if that would grow as it looked very dead but it is very alive!!
Near the front door in a bare garden we planted some strawberries and a lemon tree, bay bush and rosemary bush, sage, parlsey and coriander, silverbeet and lettuce and more recently tomatoes. Some self-seeded marigolds and silver beet also appeared in that garden – as well as plenty of weeds! It is an effort keeping on top of the weeds.
In the raised beds, we planted beans, red onions, silver beet, celery, peas, carrots and later cucumber and tomatoes. We’ve got a range of tomatoes – cherry dots, roma, bloody butcher, yellow pear cherry (still small as we planted the seeds late) as well as some unknown as they were given to us.
As well as the raised beds, we planted gardens in an old broken clam shell play pool. In the clam shells we planted potatoes – half of which we harvested last week, and have now replaced with bean seeds. Behind the clam shells you can see the tiny rhubarb plants which I picked up on the side of the road advertised as free (bargain!). I wondered if they would come to much as they looked a bit unhealthy but in the last month they have grown amazingly!!! The leaves are huge now and I will harvest some soon.
We also planted courgettes) and spaghetti squash and some more cucumbers (in pots). We’re trying out the green courgettes in buckets and the yellow ones are in the garden. Last year our 8 courgette plants were very disappointing and died after they got some sort of disease (which is part of the reason why we’ve separated the yellow and green. This year we only have 3 of each yellow and green but they are doing a lot better than last years.
Everything has sprung happily to life, although the celery and silver beet went quickly to seed so most of them have been pulled out and the peas haven’t done so well. Some of the onions are growing well, but they haven’t formed particularly large bulbs yet. We have been enjoying the carrots fresh from the garden.
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