No garden!

Well, forget about a no-dig garden, we simply don't have a garden at the moment! Thus, it's been a loooong while since I've posted to this blog.

We have begun some renovations on our house which has, until recently, turned our productive backyard into a building site! We have built a deck that transitions out to the garden, but there's still some work to do to finish things off and re-connect to our gardening activities.

Thus, we are researching ideas and designs for our backyard, as we have an opportunity to "start from scratch".

I've been reading up on Permaculture Design (Simon gave me Bill Mollison's lovely book recently) and we are turning our thoughts to a sustainable garden that can produce things for us but also for itself to keep it self-sufficient (you know, mulches, composting, seasonal mixes, etc).


So, while we are keen to put in rainwater tanks and a grey water system, we need to also think about the layout and the slope of the property and use the best areas for the best fit to our (outdoor) activities. And of course, we need to look after our little ladies who are keeping us in a fine stock of eggs!

We also want to maintain our worm farm and also a space (or theme) in which the kids can play and explore.

Between now and then (likely about 12 months) I am gathering together plants, propagating things we like the look of, eyeing off secondhand bricks, sleepers and limestone blocks and researching ways to generally make our garden summer-proof here in Perth - and ouch, what a summer we've just had! Hot, dry and simply bears NO fruit/veg wihtout constant water and shade (two things we don't as a constant).

So, wile we will maintain a small garden bed over the coming cooler months, our focus will shift more to our bigger plans in creating a backyard garden to cherish.

Happy gardening!

Winter plantings

We planted some mini cauliflower seedlings yesterday. Clancy grew them from seed in a big pot.



More potatoes are surfacing as well which is a good sign. I dug up one that was rotten so far, hopefully that's the only one, but the bed, although no-dig, is quite water logged given the amount of rain we've had in the last week. I forgot how torrential Perth rain is!



We also picked a couple of beetroot and some baby carrots over the weekend and the carrots are really sweet - they are a baby carrot variety.

We also fed our citrus trees with the worm castings from our worm farm which needed a bit of a clean out. They've grown heaps in this past month or so and always seem to respond well after a bit of a prune.

Other vegies on the move include snow peas, pak choi, Swiss chard, variety of lettuce and rocket and the herbs too! Who says winter is for hibernating?! ;-)



Happy gardening!

How does your garden grow

We did a quick whiz around the garden in between rain showers and picked some greens for dinner: beans, snow peas and parsley and thyme. The passionfruit are dropping regularly too - yum!




Potatoes are just beginning to poke through the mulch so will keep an eye on them and make sure they have enough cover. Exciting! The mixed lettuce has been a hit too - a good idea to plant over the spuds us :-)

Love this rain but could do without the 100km/hr winds thanks!

Stay safe and happy gardening!

Autumn goodness continues

We've had close to 60mm of rain over the weekend which makes it a perfect time to plant and sow in the garden!

We picked up two olive trees at the local garden shop: a kalamata and a manzanillo.



Kalamata


Manzanillo

We had two half wine barrels from a friend down south which are a perfect size for these.

Alfie and I also planted out our Desirée potatoes on the weekend, plus some mixed lettuce and rocket.



Simon and Clancy planted some purple garlic on ANZAC day which sprung up only about 5 days later with the rain and the relative warmth!


Water (via rain) is an amazing elixir. You can just see how alive everything becomes after a decent rain! It's renewing and rejuvenating :-)

The birds obviously love it too - the Willy Wagtails are such great gardeners too!



What a special time in the year! Happy gardening!

Kids in the garden

Alfie will be one next month - who knows where the time has gone! As he engages more, especially outdoors, I'm reminded of when Clancy was a toddler and how we spent lots of time out in the garden when we lived in Canberra.

Now Alfie can spread his wings (or should that be green thumbs?) in the garden! How do you best engage the highly physical toddler without unleashing total garden destruction? My answer is pots.




And a big sister helps too! Alfie follows Clancy everywhere and no doubt is learning heaps from observing her and then copying where he can! He was stoked to "help" sow some peas in these colourful pots. If he decides they need not be in pots anymore, well, at least he hasn't destroyed the bigger garden beds! :-)

I've also noticed that Clancy can now focus on the whole process of choosing and filling pots, choosing seeds, sowing, watering - the lot, when she only need deal with one or two pots. This detailed experience combined with the bigger picture experience of exploring the garden in its entirety (we often walk a circuit in the morning to check everything out) is a good overall development process I reckon.

Little jobs, exploring and discovering, pretend plantings (planting cut flowers for example) all help to develop Clancy and no doubt Alfie into engaged and confident gardeners!

And if course it's simply gotta be good fun... Happy gardening!