Veggie garden update

Hello to whoever is looking at this blog. I hope you enjoy it. Now I am putting on a collection of photos of my veggie garden as it is now. It is 4 months old.

This is a patch of 4 bean mix. I bought the seed from the supermarket. You know dried seed for making your own 4 bean mix. Well it germinates. We have had the best beans from them, very sweet and juicy and crunchy. Behind them are some lentils, also from the supermarket. I put them in as a green manure crop really to cover the soil before the weeds did. Worked well.

Here are 2 beds with my transplanted asparagus crowns in them. Also a couple of self seeded tomatoes and some iceberg lettuce and lots of weeds unfortunately.

Capsicum on the left and silver beet on the right with spring onions and strawberries in the back ground. The capsicums were in the bed when we arrived, still alive in spite of the cold. I put bricks around them and my cloche on top (Aframe with glass panels like a mini glasshouse) This kept them alive and I pruned them and fed them and now they are forming fruits. Apparently they can grow for 3 years if protected from the cold.

I planted comphrey along the fence to act as a barrier to the weeds, it works well. I added more lentils and chick peas from the supermarket) and now have an edible weed barrier. On the side of the aviaries are a vegetable spaghetti, a jarradale pumpkin and a butternut pumpkin. Doing well.

This is the most recent bed to be planted up. it has eggplants, celery, capsicum and basil. Some beetroot and potatoes. Next to it is a bed filled with broad beans and parsnips. I thru all this old seed in here as a green manure crop, but we will eat the parsnips and as many beans as we can wrestle from the rats that have taken a liking to them. I am sad about this as I have been keeping the broad bean seeds for over a decade now and have none in reserve. The rats are decimating the crop.

Figs forming on our little tree. We have 3 such trees of different types we brought with us from Croydon. We planted 2 in their large pots, that's pots and all and the other in the ground as it was too big for the pot.
Why did we do this?
Because I have read that if figs get their roots into lots of good soil and water they will grow huge and make lots of leaves and no fruit. The one planted out of its pot already looks fabulously green and lush. The other 2 have figs on them.

Golden zucchini and gross lisse toms behind. They are growing so fast from all the smelly water I put on them. I keep a large bin filled with weeds and water till it stinks, then I ladle it out onto the plants, about 2 litres per week. Undiluted, unless it is very dark then I will dilute it a bit. It is magic!

Green Zuccs

This is a netted area the other side of the polyhouse from the veg garden proper. I put our thornless blackberries in here, with a few tomatoes ( I am glad I did this because the locals told me the blower birds pinch all your unprotected tomatoes). Green squash on the right. Globe artichokes I grew from seed, so still babies. A couple of rockmelons, veg spaghetti and 2 blue berries in wicking bed boxes.

I have never grown onions so big, some are as big as newborn babies heads! And very nice to eat too. But we have had a lot of rain so they may not store well. We'll just have to eat them, oh dear!

Peach tree with nets over the fruit but the rats are climbing up the trunk and eating the fruit from the inside. I have destroyed a few nests and will keep looking for more.
Rhubarb is loving the stinky water too and we have had plenty of feeds of it. M likes it very much.

This is along the back showing the unfinished paving. Above the retaining wall I have sown the rest of the 4 bean mix and lentils plus all the remaining rainbow chard weeds I had saved in an effort to beat the weeds and provide greenery for the chooks. Poor chookies, I can't let them out into the paddock as the fox is waiting for them. So I have to grow their greenery and take it to them. A new fence is planned in a few weeks though.

Well I hope you enjoyed the garden tour. This afternoon our son J, is coming to dig some holes for some posts so we can plant our raspberries and loganberries. This will make girlfriend C, very happy, she loves raspberries.
Thanks Linda and David for the plants.
Dayla