Saturday, September 24, 2011

Gardening


This is the current state of our lovely little garden.  I love it!!!  It is somewhat overgrown with calandula, coriander, nasturtium, parsley and alyssum but it just looks so pretty and welcoming.  Through the winter there was not much action with any sort of productivity as far as the vegetables were concerned.  We harvested a few beans as well as sugarsnap peas.  There was some broccoli early on as well.  Overall our best performer was the kale.  It was an endless producer.  Looking forward to including this in the rotation for next cool season.  I think the main contiributor to the lack of productivity was because we planted too late.  Since it has began to warm a little and the days lenghthen somewhat the amount of growth has been amazing. 

Both the cabbages and the silverbeet appeared to be stunted until a couple of weeks ago and now there is plenty to go around.  Cabbages have been very low maintenence.  I have noticed a few munchers the past couple of days however I don't mind a couple of holes here and there.  I manually remove them and throw them to the hens. 



Here is some of our Spring Summer choices. 

I went a little crazy on purchasing seeds as I wanted to include varieties that I haven't grown before.  Eden Seeds have a great catalogue which included what I wanted to give a try.  I am especially interested in the Turkish Orange Eggplant as well as the Golden Beetroot oh, and the Armenian Cucumber.  Not to mention the little pumpkins!!!!  I hope we have success.


This is also something I hope we have success with.  To the left is the frame for a strawbale garden.  It has a frame as we need to stop the guinea pigs from eating our crop!!!  It will be filled with strawbales and then planted up in the coming weeks.  It's closer to the house and smaller than our other bed at the bottom of the yard.  With the impending heat, it can be shaded easily and will allow easier acces to the produce we will use often.  Also, with my size increasing it won't be such a hike to the garden.  The frame on the right is a sandpit for the girls.  Sandpits provide endless enjoyment for children.  I remember spending whole days in my sandpit that my father built when I was a child.  I am not sure what it was that I was doing but it provided me with infinite opportunities to explore my imagination and be with my siblings.  This area is shaded from 3:00p.m.ish of an afternoon.  I can see many summer evenings spent in this part of the yard...... 


Here we are in the front yard in amongst the hippeastrums, lilliums and agapanthus.  Most of the bulbs are now beginning to suface and will provide us with a spray of colour shortly.  These garden out front have been neglected.  They are just constant chores with weeding.  Cobblers pegs...I don't like you.  There is another garden which I won't be showing you as it is an absolute disgrace.  We have not found the inspiration or had the energy to clean it up.  There are just so many weeds it's overwhelming!!! It's on the to-do list though and with the evenings proving to be so inspiring at this time of year it will be seen to in the near future. 

Peace xo

1 comment:

  1. Your blog always makes me feel like getting outside and gardening!

    ReplyDelete