Some garden shots

The back yard with George's bouncy thing - retrieved from someone's hard rubbish.

Mow the grass last weekend - you'd never know.

Thornless blackberries.

A Hubbard's Squash is rather vigourous.

(Yes, I have chopped off some of the leaders)

Vegetables fight for light.

Serrano Chilli, grown from seed.

Hubbard's Squash

Herbs and things.

4pm, 38degC and windy...

A hot windy day - put shade cloth up over the vegetables.

And mulch and water soaking bottles around the plants.

No sign of wilting at all.

A couple of garden bits...

A poetry site had the prompt "What do you see out your window?"  

I took a photo but never wrote the poem.

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With a week of 30-40 degree days, possibly more, 

I have opted to turn the vegetable garden into a tent.

Garden shots

The front yard, near the gazebo.

A gift from a neighbour, moving to a flat; Ceres, maybe.

The wisteria on the back trellis, after one year.  

The vegetable garden - nursery section.

Broad beans, garlic, leeks, shallots.

Meanwhile, below the tamarillo...

Garlic, leeks & shallots in the front block.  Remnants of  parsley & silver beet in the back.  Broad beans earmarked for the back block.  The last of the basil in the tin pot, a bath of mint in the distance.

 Turnips, swedes, beetroots in the back block.  Salad bits in the front.  Tubs have rhubarb, garlic, cabbages, garlic chives, herbs.

Back block has salad things (will have sapphire potatoes once seed potatoes are available), front block getting its turn with green manure.  Sage in the front pot.  Snow peas in the bin closest to the wall.

A few more garden photos

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In the 'Aztec' bed, the beans find the corn to be a supportive friend...

...while, down below, the pumpkins (Anna Swartz) enjoy the mottled light.

I was a little underwhelmed by the insipid colour of the rhubarb (although it is a vigorous grower), so what to do with a lime green stewed fruit?

Add elderberries.  That worked.
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Some vegetables...

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Second crop of the purple broccoli.


Broadbeans in full flower, if not quite with pod yet. (Well, it's Melbourne...)


The last of the Tamarillos (could be a movie title.) lurks in the leaves.
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If it's not one thing...

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I had seen that something was eating my quinces.

Went out tonight fully expecting to shoo away a possum.

Uh-uh. Rattus rattus was eating my quinces.

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It's a jungle out there...

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Climbing beans and sweet corn vie for the sky!
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Broad Beans, for Celia.

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Lush & happy. Pods still small - abt 5cm - but warmth and water should do the trick.
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Vegetable garden takes shape.

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The main winter vegetables in full flight. Silverbeet, parsley, various onions, Chinese greens, turnips, cabbages, coriander, broadbeans, garlic and a few stray bits and pieces.

Apologies of those of you whose winter garden is somewhere under a few feet of snow.


Asparagus grows behind the compost bin. Red fleshed potatoes in teh old rubbish bin.

Strawberries on the post. And the last of the limes. Potatoes and snow peas in the foreground. Green manure in the back. Raspberries on the fence. Lemon grass in the silver tub. It doesn't like winter.

The cold area of the garden in winter.
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A foodie weekend.

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It has been a food weekend.

A chicken and corn soup with crusty bread for Saturday lunch.

A three course candle lit dinner on Saturday - mushroom soup, Portuguese Chicken with herb rice, pear & cumquat tart (can you believe that one of the finalists in Masterchef didn't know what a cumquat was?), a stir-fry with veg from our garden tonight, a big plastic container of muesli and a Moroccan casserole for sometime during the week. Oh, and a few coffees.

And I kicked off a homebrew kit - Dark Ale. Making buloop-buloop-buloop sounds in the garden shed.

In between times I was working on the veggie garden. The Tamarillo is wishing that I had never visited the site and read up on how to prune the thing. I told it that it was all for the best.

That's it.
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Growth!

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The winter vegetables seem to have survived happily without me.

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Vegetable garden

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My vegetable garden has never looked better. Ironic considering the water shortages.

My 'edible list' is :

Vegetables: lettuce (various), pak choi, chinese greens (don't know what they are - mystery plant from a previous year went to seed and I keep growing it from saved seed and using it in stir frys - peppery), radish, tomatoes, chillies, silver beet (swiss chard), spinach, green beans, climbing beans, zucchini, pumpkin, broad beans, garlic, spring onions, rocket, cucumber.

Herbs: Italian parsley, curly parsley, basil, mint, coriander, chives, oregano, French tarragon, savoury, bay leaves, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, sage.

Fruit: raspberries, tamarillo, crab apples, cooking apples (Stewart Seedling), lime, rhubarb

Fruit not in the veg garden: lemon, grapefruit, nectarine, elderberry, cumquat, apricot, blood plum, quince, mulberry, grapes & peacharine.



Our old bath tub; full of mint.


Some coriander (cilantro) left to go to seed for next year.


Part of the secret of success: rain water collection off the shed and carport.



My prickly brained mascot, on the wall going into the vegetable garden. I tried growing thyme in it to give 'falling locks' but it kept drying out. Plan B = cactus.
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First of the season.

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It is spring in Melbourne. The vegetable garden is growing apace.

My Granny used to plant and tend her tomatoes, shading them from frosts, early in the season and considered it some achievement if she managed to get tomatoes before Christmas.

I picked my first tomato yesterday.

November 27th.

Four weeks before Christmas.

Just another pointer at the 'non-existent' climate change.
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November 1st falls on October 18th this year.

Basil seedlings are in the nurseries from early August but past experience has shown me that planting them in my garden before November 1st is a waste of time. The cold nights and frosts get them.

Consequently my computer calendar springs to life every November 1st and says "Plant Basil!"

This year I have decided that frosts are just not about to happen. Cool nights perhaps but nowhere near frosty and have planted some basil.

That means pesto sauce is two weeks closer too!
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Hidden treasure

Hidden away in the back yard, where the blackbirds haven't seen them*, the raspberries are giving about 10-20 berries a day. Not a big crop but consistent. They got knocked around last year by the drought. This year I have my watering sorted out a bit better.

I probably should try to accumulate enough for a pie or jam or something but they are so yummy fresh...

*Probably too full of mulberries to fly.

Forlorn hope?

I enjoy growing my own vegetables. It is not enough to be self-sufficient but there is a lot of satisfaction in it. To be cooking dinner and go out to the garden and grab a handful of fresh herbs gives me some sort of sense of participation in the world.

Of course there is the small matter of planting and weeding but weeding has diminished since I took mulching to heart. Mind you, since mulching became serious (due to a general lack of water and water restrictions that say you can only hand water and only between 6am and 8am Wednesdays and Sundays) there have not been as many return plant visits - the annual reappearance of parsley and silverbeet from previous years dropped seeds has pretty much stopped.

Over recent years I have tried growing cabbage, with mixed success. They are prone to mildew, aphids and cabbage moth grubs. Last week, full of hope, I planted some cabbage seedlings. Savoys, those nice crinkly ones, and some red cabbage.

Before I had finished planting in the first punnet of seedlings, there were cabbage moths fluttering around the already planted ones. How do the know? Where do they come from? The neighbours don't grow vegetables. Do the moths hang out in the crab apple tree just waiting for me to plant cabbages? Grrr. Maybe I'll buy me a butterfly net. OK, moth net.

On to the internet: GOOGLE: "how to handle cabbage moths". Found a warm and fuzzy 'organic' site that suggested that the environmentally responsible way to handle cabbage moths is to spread broken egg shells around the cabbage seedlings and the short sighted and seriously territorial moths will say "Uh-oh, this is someone else's plot, better move on. Sorry to bother you ladies!"

I think the organic folk have been smoking their cabbage leaves.

My moths would look at the eggshells and say "Look! An airport!"
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