A quick update

Just a few pics to show what's been happening:) Everything has been growing quite happily.

 Our first flowers from the old bulbs Jani planted. 

 Passionfruit growing new leaves.

 Raspberry cane healthy as can be!

 Here's those crazy womboks!

 Spinach & garlic growing like mad.

 Brussel sprouts and the mystery greens:)

 Broad beans & snow peas have all grown.

 And so have the lettuce:)

 And the kholrabi!

 Here's one of 5 tiny but healthy marjoram plants:)

And finally the bronze fennel:)

I'll start today with a harvest:) A couple of days ago I went out into the garden and grabbed what was looking good - a few radishes, some cavalo nero & some rainbow chard.

For lunch I had a radish salad.

And for dinner the greens sweated in oil, garlic & lemon juice with a few boiled potatoes.... mmmmmm

Now to the garden! Here's the first bed - I spent a lot of time weeding this today:) This end has silverbeet, brussel sprouts & cauliflower. The 2 plants on the very left are brussel sprouts that I put in today to replace the 2 that the birds annihilated.

On this side we have mini wombok's, spinach, 3 kinds of garlic and some pak choy

Here's a close up of those wombok's. They grow like crazy!

Onto garden bed number 2. Along the front there's celery, and behind that is a whole bunch of brocolli plants. We lost a few to birds and a cat (go figure!) about 2 weeks ago so I picked up 4 brocolli's at the garden centre today to replace what we lost:)

Up the other end of the bed we have cauliflower, 5 tiny marjoram plants in the bottom right corner and along the front some kholrabi I bought today to fill in the spots where those same damn birds killed some celery.

Speaking of celery - here's a close up:)

Onto the next bed and here we have spring onions, radishes, cavalo nero (the lucky last one), cos lettuce, arugula, leeks & kholrabi:) I've left some space along the front to grow more arugula:)

Here's the radishes. It's been a running battle with the caterpillars but the root doesn't seem to care much as they still grow like gangbusters!

Here's the spring onions:) yummmmm

And here's some replacement baby spring onions and also some leeks I got today.

I went a bit nuts at the garden centre - along the back are some mini cos lettuce I got there today, the other two have been there for some time^^

Finally the last bed we have. Here's rainbow chard, dwarf green peas (the 2 rows in the middle), snow peas (the small teepee) & broad beans (the big teepee).

Close up of the snow peas... oh man I can't wait to harvest these babies.

And here's the broad beans. A lot of people don't like them but I think they are one of the best vege's on the planet. All this bed except for one plant got planted today:)

Here's the raspberry cane - it's very happy and growing new leaves all the time. You can see the juniper behind it.

And here's the passionfruit. I put some worm casting on top of the soil today and will water it in over the next week or so. The soil was getting really dry in that pot for some reason so I wanted to try and give the soil some more body.

And that's it. I spent about 4 hrs in the garden today - weeding, planting, building teepees etc etc. It was great! I've not had the time lately and gardening has been sporadic, so it was nice to just go out there and cruise around getting stuff done for an afternoon:)

It's been a while

Well, after weeks of being super busy at work and letting Jani look after the garden it was my turn today! However, the rain gods thought differently and decided to send showers every 30 mins or so until mid afternoon.

I cleaned out the garage & workshop in the morning and then about 11am, since it was still raining decided to run some errands. Of course it stopped raining the minute I left the house. Sometimes it's not meant to be, but I got into it when I returned so at least the day wasn't a dead loss.

Today was a weeding day. I have a bunch of seedlings to go into the ground tomorrow (if it stays a bit dry) and so I had to weed out all the beds where they would be planted. Quite a job!

That's what it looked like when I started. Yuck!

First bed done!

Halfway through the second:)

3/4's through! 

Finally all done! That was a hell of a job. About 130 minutes of tedium.

So with that out of the way let's look at the plants:) Here's the rainbow chard. It's quite happy and will be getting some friends tomorrow:)

Here's the spring onions and the radishes. Look at those little beauties go!

And here's the last cavalo nero and the last arugula that we are collecting seeds from:)

Here's the spinach with our own home made hay as mulch.

Garlic and lots of it!

Wombok cabbages grow like crazy.

And here's the rest - brussel sprouts, rainbow chard and probably something I've forgotten:)

Small Things

Some grasshoppers like Chamomile :)

Some birds like grasshoppers!

Our Dinner

How to plant Garlic

1. Break Garlic bulb apart into individual cloves.
2. Plant cloves with the pointy end up about 8 cm deep, keeping a space of 7 cm between each clove.
3. Make sure you sow in well drained soil in a full sun position.
4. Fertilize with a well-balanced fertilizer.
5. Once foliage begins to brown off, cut back on water and fertilizer. (Australia: around Oct-Nov)
6. Harvest Garlic when there are 4-5 green leaves left, or leave it in the ground until it is all brown.
7. Hang dry in a dry place for 2 weeks to harden the skin.
8. Store in dark, dry place. Then it will keep for around six months.

Note: Garlic needs the transition between short day lengths (winter) to long day lengths (summer) in order to form bulbs.

A day of work and joy

It's been days of work - sieving, pruning trees, sieving some more, cleaning up around the garden beds - our backs hurt with pain telling of fulfilled work and many achievments! We've eaten spinach out of the garden yesterday, it was intensely flavoured, and had our first salad and rucola today - it is great to harvest the first fruits. We learned a lot during our first season, and all of this will fo into our further efforts to make us semi-self-sustainable out of the backyard at some point in the future.


The clear winners of the autumn's germination project are - who would have guessed - the radishes - who looked up into the light in just under 48 hours. They were closely followed by the rainbow chard, of which 2 of 7 plants are looking into the sun already.






Another great joy today was to see our first two chili plants which have been hidden in the soil for the past two weeks - two in one day! It is an undescribable feeling to see those things grow and wake up in the morning making a new plant-   discovery! (But then again, I get excited quickly.)

Last but not least (contrary!) my beloved Passion Fruit Plant has grown two leaves in three days after being stagnant for two months. There is hope! :)