Our Family Garden

I had my Mum over here today listening while I lamented over my dozens and dozens of unripened tomatoes. She said to try and ripen them by picking a few and leaving them on the window sill. To be painfully honest I’m a little tired of the tomatoes. It feels like I’ve been waiting and waiting; they’ve killed almost everything else in the garden through lack of sunlight and to date there has been no reward. Gardening is so up and down emotionally! She also noticed that one of the tomato trees (well they’re tall enough to be hedging for pete’s sake) has some kind of disease. The leaves are spotted and turning yellow and dying. Great. I’m about to go google before I head off for my weekend job. Honestly, I hate sundays. It feels like the day before the dentist; you can’t enjoy it for thinking of the horrors of the next day. Same for me each Sunday, thinking of the horrors before the working week. In all honesty its not that bad but every Sunday is the same!

Gloomy Gus aren’t I? Thanks to Emma for the comment on my last post. I was a little worried I sounded like an idiot, but thems the breaks I guess. Check out her blog too (link in comments section of last post) cause its a corker

Better go, I’ve work to do zoooooooooooooooom Super Sal goes off into the night to fight for cleanliness and goodness, one office at a time.

Its been raining and raining and raining again. Thank goodness today was bright and sunny! The garden had a little trim today; I got in there and cut away all the dead leaves off the tomato plants so the light could get thru. Seriously, its been so dense that absolutely no tomatoes are ripe yet! They’ve been growing and growing and there are tomatoes as far as the eye can see (if you peer between the leaves). But no ripe ones.

We’ve been picking and eating snow peas galore which is lovely. I didnt think they’d do any good after most of them turned yellow. They came back ok thou and now all the plants have shot up to the top of the wire fence and are bearing pea pods. Nothing exceptional is happening to the corn; although its gotten a little taller. We’ve lost two more zuccini plants, no sunlight equals no growing unfortunately! I just never imagined the tomatoes would grow so tall. My carrots have mostly all come up beautifully. I’m too scared to weed the garden now thou in case they accidently get pulled out. I’ll probably wait another week or two before weeding. Just an indication of how tall the tomato plants are… I’m 5 foot 5 and THEY’RE TALLER THAN ME! They’re only supposed to be cherry tomatoes; I thought the plants would be smaller?

Since beginning this little project my dreams have changed. Tis wierd to think so but its true. I always envisoned my perfect life to be building/buying a house and thats pretty much it. Now I want to live out of town a little, with a house and a small paddock. I want a sizeable veggie patch where I can grow beans, carrots, potatoes, a mandarin tree, tomatoes and other stuff. I also want the typical chook pen with 5 or 6 Bantams (beacause they’re just so adorable!), 3 or 4 ducks and 2 geese. I want the ducks and geese for meat and the Bantams for eggs. I also want a sow. Yup; you read right. 2 grown ups (sort of LOL), 4 kids, 6 chooks, 4 ducks, 2 geese and a pig. She’ll be an older english variety; havent chosen what sort yet as I will need her serviced which will be easier if there’s a local breeder around. And I’ll breed her for piglets for my supper! It wont be as bad as that because she wont be a commercial sow, I’ll only need her to have a litter once a year or so and she’ll be our pet once she’s past breeding. She’ll be a free range sow with the run of the paddock except for the very well fenced veg patch and chook pen. I can see me now calling the chooks back in at night with the help of my trusty kelpie, tending my garden in the morning with the dew still dripping of the leaves. Watching the kids run around enjoying the space and laughing at the piglets trotting after their mum. Sounds good to me! Do you think I’ll fit it all in one padock? Dreams are grand arent they?!

OK so I got tired of waiting for me to recharge the camera batteries and instead used the mobile phone camera again. Please excuse the poor quality of these pics, but here is my gorgeous garden!

Hasn’t it grown a little? Ok, so that was a litle smug, but I’ve NEVER EVER grown anything like this before! I’m just so pleased with the efforts. All I’ve done is water it once or twice and weed it when I get the chance and LOOK! There are tomatoes everywhere on these plants. And if you remember (or can scroll down) there were only 4 teensy tiny plants to begin with. Look at how much they’ve grown! And I have corn growing, and peas and capsicums too! Today I also planted heaps of baby carrot seeds in the big gap on the right between the peas and the tomatoes so we’ll see how we go. OK, so just because I can here are some more lovely pics of my garden!

and I have to say sorry about the rather sporadic updates; I’ve been having a hard time dealing with family life and work lately. Won’t get into details but it’s hard to feel green when both you and your partner are blue. Know what I mean? Not blue with each other, but blue with our separate issues; combined. Ok that was cryptic and unneccessary but there ya go. Meanwhile remember I said I was going to get rid of the shallots (spring onions); well havent needed to cause the kids keep eating them! Love it

Stay tuned because next weekend I’m planning an extension - creating a tyre garden for pumpkin growing. Should be a hoot! Pip Pip

Hi fellow bloggers - well the one blogger who reads my humble little effort! I missed you! I’ve been offline for a while thanks to the persistently crappy company T**s*ra. Formerly known as Telecom. (Isnt that a blast from the past!). Anyway I’m back for the time being to update on my garden. Now the tomato plants are as tall as my boobs; which is quite the achievement let me tell you! The peas still arent growing and some went a little yellow. I still think it was too much water? Zuchini is ok, although I think I spoke too soon in my last post about not having grasshoppers. Something thinks one particular plant is terribly delicious. The lettuce is gone too - I pulled it out as the tomato plants were shading them way too much and they just werent growing. Wasted space methinks so I up rooted the lot. The shallots are on their way out too because I keep eating them and they’re so scraggy I’m just going to cook up the lot. Instead, I’m thinking carrots or broccoli; not sure yet. The general news is everything seems pretty happy. The capsicum is also flowering as are the zuchini. I saw a brilliant recipie for Zuchini flowers stuffed with crab, lightly battered and fried. MMmmmmmm. It looked scrummmy! Hubby thinks its a waste of a good (potentially) zuchini. He loves them stir fried and cant bear the thought that we’d be less any zuchini just to eat the flowers.
Camera batteries are still dead (I’m embarrased to admit) because I havent charged them yet! Hopefully they’ll be done soon so I can brag about how big my tomato bushes are! Stay tuned!

Hey-ho neighbourinos! Well the garden is looking luscious as ever! Tomato plants are now about thigh high and I’m letting them go to flower so hopefully we’ll have some tomatoes growing sometime soon. How long does it take from flower to picking? They have flower buds now - so we’ll see how long it is before I’m picking my first crop. The only issue is that while I had stakes in ready for the plants, I hadnt tied them up and last night was WILDLY windy and one plant ended up bent over backwards and under the back fence! I’ve now put in extra stakes and tied them down with old stockings (who needed those black sexy thigh high stockings anyway? Sorry hubby!).

The zuchini plants have also got flowers on them! I’m not sure how big they’re supposed to be before they fruit so I’m just letting them go. I picked off the flower heads on the capsicum a weekend or so ago. The plant hasnt really grown much but did get many more leaves so next lot of flowers and I’ll let them go too.

I’ve been so lucky with this garden. I was talking to the lady next door, Melissa, who was at a neighbourhood BBQ last night and she said she has been trying to grow plants in her garden next door with no luck. Her lettuce and other veggies, as well as flowers have been repeatedly under the attack of grasshoppers. Luckily we seem to have escaped them over this side so far - knock wood we wont have a problem. Shes been using pesticides and other remedies to try and get rid of them too - I havent used one mili-litre of anything on ours - totally organic man - so maybe that might be the ticket? Or maybe I have something growing that they dont like? Who knows? Other things she planted have gotten root rot with all the wet weather and died. I wonder if thats why my peas havent taken off like I thought they would? Perhaps so.

We also headed over to the farmers markets again. Those baby button squash were FANTASTIC; sadly the lady wasnt there this time. The kids werent amused that the bunny lady wasnt either but a local sausage on bread with sauce did the trick and they were quite happy. They also got a kick out of “paying” the jazz buskers to play a tune.

Sadly no pics today as my camera batteries are really flat - will recharge and hopefully get a picture tomorrow

Enjoy your weekend!!!!

Well here is a picture of how the garden is growing… taken literally seconds ago

Checkout the baby lettuce, and see how big the zuchini is growing! My tomato plants are going great guns as you can see. Apologies for the bad shots taken with my phone in previous posts - hope this one is better

Darling Hubby and I have decided that while our veggie crop is growing, we will use the local farmers market to get our fresh veg. Oh My Gosh, it was fantastic! I cant believe we have missed this for so long. Everything looked so good. There weren’t many stalls but there was quite a good variety of produce and the kids absolutely loved the farmer-ess who had rabbits, puppies and chooks for sale! She was quite in love with our baby and even had a cuddle. It was lovely and community minded. Whilst we were there we spotted a neighbour, an ex co-worker, a local council woman and our local MP! The best thing was getting home and unloading the goodies into our fridge. We bought lychees, bananas, tomatoes, mangos, baby button squash, potatoes, jap pumpkin, local honey, sweet potato…. oooh so many yummy things! After packing it all away I couldnt resist and popped a tiny tomato into my mouth…. like eating sunshine!

The good thing about it is we’re eating seasonal fruits and veg, supporting local farmers, eating tasty flavourful food and getting the kids interested in healthy food. Its win win…. good for the planet and good for us!

P.S I fully blame the Lifestyle channel on Austar for my “green” tendencies. Without Rick Stein, River Cottage, Eco Eden, Carbon Cops and the plethora of other similar shows I’d never have begun thinking about getting back to basics like this. Honestly, its the best, most exciting thing I’ve done for a long time!

Well Miss Trouble strikes again. Did I mention that in the planting process my daughter destroyed one zuchini plant? Well she did, and during the week I was in the bedroom with the 3 boys when suddenly it ocurred to me that Miss R was missing. I went out the back and saw it. Oh the HORROR! She was in my veggie garden with scissors! TWO lots of scissors! Absolutely mutilating a poor baby lettuce. Now I ask you, humble blog reader, what did that baby lettuce do to her? Maybe it was the threat of Mum forcing her to eat green healthy foods? Maybe it looked at her? Maybe she thought it was cuter than her (baby lettuce is rather cute!) ? I have no idea, and frankly understanding the mind of a two year old would take someone much more learned than me (HA). I just feel sorry for the lettuce…… and for the future salad he would have made…. RIP baby green.

Morning! Its raining again, has been raining all week for the past 3-4 weeks. Luckily it only showers on the weekends so I can tend to the garden! Not that it really needs my tending, its growing really well! I’m so pleased. Usually my tomato plants die within minutes of me walking away from the nursery. Seeds? Forget it, my tomato seeds never sprout! Hopefully this time we’ll see my tomato efforts come to bear fruit!

I’m pretty annoyed too, I saw two weeds in my garden! I put down newspaper after hoeing and raking all the grass and weeds and pulling up all their roots etc to no avail! Weeds! Oh well, got to have something to do.

Yesterday Hubby and I cleared out the front garden, chopped back a large plant we have growing in there, filled the bed with good new soil and re-planted all the plant pieces. I cant remember what the plant is called…. googled it - its an agave.

Thats what it looks like - not our garden unfortunately, will have to wait until the rain clears for a picture of our garden.

I’ll be working all week, but will be back on the weekend for more garden updates, including pictures of my growing veggies!

at least it did 2 weekends ago!  

Weekend 1 -I decided that I was sick of eating lower class, high cost veggies and begged Hubby to let me have a veggie patch. He consented (YAY) so I marked out a spot using the kids cricket stumps and some blue wool (so professional, but it worked so who cares?) Unfortunately not thinking to get any pics at this stage! Hubby watched for a while while I hoed in a very amateurish way, then thankfully took over and cleared the space from grass in about 10 minutes! I then watched longingly while it rained on my cleared patch for a week!

 Weekend 2 -I grubbed in with 3 of the kids while kid 4 watched from his baby chair. We weeded and aerated the soil, then put down a thin layer of newspaper. Hubby came up with a brilliant idea of using some old stair boards as the sides of our garden and we went shopping for plants and accessories (naturally). We went down to our local BRILLIANT nursery, Youngberry’s, and got lots of veggie seedlings. We then went to Bunnings for stakes,  headaches and other paraphernalia. I’m so proud of myself too, because when we got home I took the boards and stakes and built the surrounds for our garden. On first looks it looks great - looking closer it looks rather bodge-ily put together. but it works!

We then decided we needed some soil for the garden, to build it up above the lawn and to make sure our veggies were relatively weed free. We went down and got a cubic metre of soil. Doesn’t sound like a lot does it? It weighed 3/4 of a tonne! Halfway home the trailer made a huge BAM then started squealing like a stuck pig. We pulled over and realised (after a little help from my handy brother) that we’d broken a spring in the axle of the trailer. We ended up having to get a truck with a tilt tray to haul the thing home! $66 later we had it on the front lawn.

Then we started wheel barrowing it up to the veggie patch and on my second load BAM off goes the cap on the axle! I couldn’t believe it! I’m sorry to say I got the shits and that’s where it ended!

Weekend 3 -Dear Hubby fixed the wheel barrow and we were off again. We finally got the thing filled and planted out. We’ve got sweet corn, zucchini, tomatoes, spring onions, garlic chives, snow peas, lettuce, rocket and watercress (although the latter two are in pots).

It has really paid off so far. The kids have been helping planting and the boys even ate some garlic chives and spring onions today which is incredible - they never eat anything green or remotely good for them. Hubby and I are so proud of ourselves, and we’re even planning a further garden bed for pumpkin and other stuff. It cost us a packet when you add it all up including tilt tray truck, axle(s), soil etc but once the initial outlay has paid for itself I know we’ll be saving both taste and money!