I’m loving our growing edible garden. The Elderflower tea was beautiful. Next year I’ll allow the best flowering sprigs to mature into berries.

Photo by Chrissy

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With the change of cooler weather comes the removal of almost all that remains of the Summer/Autumn crops. We have spent a busy two days in the garden planting winter seeds and seedlings. This includes – all year lettuce mix, a mixed variety of spinach, broad beans, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, carrots, leeks and onions. There’s still plenty of okra flowers growing so I left that in. There’s a corn cob or two left and a few cucumbers on their vines. They’ll be pulled out soon to make room for what we hope will be a bumper crop this year.

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Tradies came to replace our back guttering.

All our potted herbs had to be temporarily relocated.

It was a good opportunity to re-pot or top up pots with fresh soil.

Archived in: 🦋 Down on the Farm

Yesterday’s Pottering

….and the farm is thriving even though the nights are cooling.

My new work area is the perfect place to potter and plant Autumn and Winter crops from seeds and seedlings. Home grown vegetables and herbs all year round.

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Working on the farm can be a workout when I need to keep going to the other end of the farm to grab tools or trugs etc. Today I decided to tidy a messy corner and use it as my farm work place.

I’ll be able to plant seeds into pots. When the seedlings are big enough to handle the transplanting, I’ll be able to move them easily.

A place to keep the soil bin, trugs, buckets and farm tools.

In easy reach of the worm farm and compost barrel.

Archived in: 🦋 Down on the Farm

The spinach just keeps growing. Even with a daily harvest there’s plenty for everyone in the street and local friends.

Little yellow tomatoes are always plentiful. There’s often so many of them that they fall to the ground in bunches. The kitchen window is just perfect for ripening of any fallen crop.

Cucumbers just get bigger and bigger. The first cucumber of the season we needed to cut it into 3 and share with neighbours.

Herbs are always on hand for indoor and outdoor cooking.

Our second crop of lettuce love the hot days and late in the day watering. Rain over night is even better.

Our quarterly water bill was surprisingly acceptable with vegetable and herbs needing a spray when we have days without rain.

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After a chilly start to Summer the farm is looking green and healthy again. We have a variety of lettuce, small yellow tomatoes, two varieties of cucumber, spinach, blueberries, dwarf beans, capsicum, and the last of the spring onions. This summer I have planted chives, sage and thyme among the vegetables. The rest of the herbs are thriving in the outdoor kitchen area. (Not included here) and I have forgotten the two strawberry pots again that are still producing after three years. I’ll try and remember them for Down on the Farm #10.

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Our Avocado Tree has a small avo on it. I doubt it will be edible since the tree is maybe only 3 years old.

We planted a pear and apple tree today.

Top left is the Avocado tree. Top right is the Pear tree. Below is the Apple tree.

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Even after everyone in the avenue received a share in this morning’s harvest we still have more greens and herbs than we can eat. 🙂 Locals, beware you could be increasing your greens intake very soon. 🙂

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Herbs or Strawberries Anyone?

My garden makes me smile every day. Today I pruned the herbs and planted some basil seedlings. I can’t get enough basil but basil didn’t like the extra cold winter we had this year. I’m hoping to harvest basil again real soon. The strawberries are so nice and juicy this year. This is just one pot of two.

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Past and Present photos

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I’m just thankful of what can happen in a just a few years. Spring is finally here albeit it’s been a bit wet but sunny days have been just that. It looks like we’ll be eating a lot of spinach, lettuce, spring onions, cucumber, broad beans, corn and yellow cherry tomatoes for the rest of the year. There’s garlic and brown onions shooting, the avocado tree, strawberries and blueberries are is bursting with flowers. The neighbours will love them too.

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From this wheelchair, I can’t see two of our three vegetable plots so I sent Norm out with the camera again. I think sometime in the future we will need to have a wider pathway along the front of the above ground plots. We’re not getting any younger and we’ll want to be able to have access to all the garden for years to come.

WOW What a surprise. There’s an abundance of crops out there. Way to much for us. The broad beans are covered in flowers and the corn is doing well too.

I sent Norm back to do a harvest of mostly snap peas, silver-beet, perennial spinach, butter-crunch lettuce, scarole Lettuce, little gem lettuce, red sails and the loose-leaf lettuce. Everything is yummy.

The avocado tree and two blueberry bushes are also in flower. This will be the first season both blueberry bushes to fruit at the same time. We have two pots of strawberries; one flowering. The other isn’t getting enough sun yet but it’s healthy. (neither shown in photos) As for the avocado – we’ll have to just wait and see. I think it’s just three years old and fruit usually appears on an avocado in five years.

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A little bit of sunshine brings life back to the garden plots, blueberry shrubs (potted between plots) and the avocado tree. The blueberry shrubs were covered with netting after these photos were taken. This week we have harvested carrots, spring onions, perennial spinach, snow peas, leeks and herbs (herbs not in photos) but just enough for ourselves. Once Spring is here, we’ll be feeding the neighbours again. 🙂

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Winter crops of carrots, spring onions, leeks, spinach and brown onions. Not much growing this year with lower temperatures overnight. We have also planted an avocado tree in a large pot. It will be interesting how it does. A pear tree is under consideration too. 🙂

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and a new blog category.

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This week we harvested snap peas, broad beans, spinach, spring onions and 4 types of lettuce: Butter-Head, Red-Leaf, Loose-Leaf and Little Gem.

Yesterday Norm experimented with pizzas on his new outdoor cooker/BBQ. However, our new friends and alfresco dinner guests were totally surprised by the taste. Norm has always been often called “Normando” the pizza man. I was able to make up a beautiful green salad with item mostly from the garden.

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Norm’s worm farm has produced enough fertilizer to keep the garden well fed since we first planted seeds and seedlings into polystyrene banana boxes early last year. Today, after a good flush out I was able to fertilize all the vegetables and herbs in the plots and pots. Norm’s worms are thriving and so is the garden.

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Archived in: 🦋 Down on the Farm

Growing vegetables in pots and tubs is not so bad when they grow like this. To be able to move the pots around also helps to work out the best place to create the permanent vegetable garden come Spring. There’s a lot of shade in the back yard this time of year and we want to grow vegetables in all seasons.

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With ground this hard, herbs can stay in their balcony pots and everything else can grow where ever they can for now. I think we’ll invest in some large above ground vegetable boxes when the lock-down is over.

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