When we first moved to The Farmhouse we had limited water and no reticulation. I decided to do a basic herb and salad type garden on the front patio/verandah. It was right outside the kitchen window and being in constant sight meant I remembered to throw buckets of water at it often enough to keep it green and growing.
See.
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| Herbs and Stuff |
Then we managed to get a decent water supply and pipe it up to the area at the back of the house I planned to use for my long term vegetable garden. This is a fair sized area that has been fenced off using old jam fence posts. It has a certain rustic charm. (And can be jumped over in reptile related
emergencies if need be.)
To start with I just had a couple of beds. Nothing too extravagant but it produced a little bit and The Farmchildren and I had fun up there.
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| Beginner Vegie Garden |
This year we have finally got it together enough to do this.
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| A Vegetable Garden |
The more eagle-eyed amongst you will notice a couple of things. One is that the end of one of the zinc alum beds is squashed. This is due to a bit of a technical mishap. You know how we love heavy machinery on this blog? And how I have often commented on The Farmer's preference for doing everything with a front end loader? For those of you who have forgotten here is a quick visual reminder of what I mean.
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| How To Fill A Wheel Barrow. Or "Overkill". |
Needless to say the same method was used with the raised beds and the loader bucket suddenly dropped! And now we have some free form, organically shaped beds. I have tried to cheer The Farmer up (he was very peeved to say the least) by saying they look like those cool ceramic Danish vases that look like squashed paper bags. It didn't work. Oh well.
You will also note that I have a less than high tech watering system at the moment.
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| Washing Powder Bucket And Orange Sprinkler |
It is doing the job though. We got half way through installing the proper sprinklers on the weekend but ran out of time.
The only issue now is that there still seems to be a lot of space left where I could plant more vegetables. I have told myself to hold off and make sure I have enough time to look after what I have first!
The whole vegetable garden is looking a lot better but is definitely not looking like a designer, magazine-ready number. Hopefully we will get some decent vegies though and bit by bit we can get it looking a bit better.
The only other blog related news is that I have given in and put the word verification back on for comments. Sorry but 50 spam comments a day was too much! Apparently there are sites out there for spammers that link to blogs without word verification. Turning word verification back on is supposed to get your address off those sites. Has anyone else heard this? Or is it just a bloggy urban myth? Either way I am going to try!
Take care.
10 comments:
That is one impressive veggie garden. I remember your story about that snake - gave me shivers! The raised beds look great, we're tossing up whether to use something similar or just plant straight into the ground. Dan would love to get his hands on some heavy machinery, our ride on mower is about as high tech as we get.
Love how your garden beds have grown in numbers from the first photos.
And love the rustic fence. and its practical too,
x
I'm interested to hear if that is true about the spam as well.... I'm getting around 30 a day. You're obviously more popular! It seems too that they target certain posts (mostly older ones), and this is why the one on our trip to Florence ages ago is now my most popular blog post... it gets all the spam.
Onto the vegie garden... it's looking really good, and quite large too. Laughing at the Farmer's tools of preference for vegie gardening. That is exactly what my husband would do if he had access to a front end loader too. Total overkill. I still admire you for gardening in such adverse conditions. Seriously, if I ever were to see a snake in my vegie garden, that would be the end of it! You have commitment xx
It is looking very productive.
As well as veggies, grow some flowers to bring the bees for pollination and to confuse the bugs such as ahpids and cabbage moth, etc, maybe put in a few fruit trees, perhaps multi-grafted for greater variety and dwarf trees so they don't get too huge?
Veggie Patch is looking brilliant! Very impressive. Love the progression, it's very much how we started in pots and then onto a bigger patch. Hilarious about the front loader mishap. I'm a big fan of the raised zinc beds but in the end we opted for straight into the ground, which has it's own issues (mostly due to my dear husband not making decent sized paths between beds!). We had major kangaroo issues just after our patch started thriving so haven't done anything since as we are waiting to get some better fencing happening...
As for spam, I was also getting 30+ a day and all I did was stop the anonymous comments and it stopped all the spam immediately. Not a single one since and no need for word verification. I've never had anonymous comments though so it hasn't made a difference to people commenting.
Mel x
Thanks Edwina - just hate snakes. I have got one of those snake repellers near the vegie garden and haven't seen one since (could be coincidence...).
Thanks Zara - I love the fence too.
Heidi - Not sure about the spam either. Thought it was worth a try. So true on the old posts. Maybe they think that people who don't moderate comments won't notice on an old post? The digger and loaders get a lot of work in our garden.
River - thank you. I have got marigolds planted in amongst everything - I do that every year. Lots at our old house and just a few in the last few years but more now as a bigger garden. They make it look pretty too. We are waiting for it to cool down and then will plant a mulberry of some sort to give partial shade. Otherwise I will not keep anything alive in our summer. We had a huge gumtree in the corner but the middle had been eaten out by white ants and it was very dangerous so it was removed. This was a shame as we really liked it.
Thanks Mel - some of my family and friends occasionally comment anonymously so I want to leave that if I can. Thought I would put the words on for a fortnight or so and see how it goes. Spam is so annoying. The main culprits for eating my vegies are usually rabbits - the high sides of the vegie patch help.
Love your vege garden. I am sure you will grow it, adding more gardens eventually.I would love to but some of those planters in at our place but for now we deal with what we've got.
Aaaah , next come the chooks. We wanted 3 but ended up with 6 and they are great to have around. Don't know the fox situation round your area. Citrus would grow well.
Gorgeous!! this is such a beautiful Garden! thanks so much for sharing!
I love your veggie garden and raised beds really are the answer. I will miss picking my veg - especially the rainbow kale - have you grown them? So wonderful in salads and the different coloured stems. I am definitely the least popular blog girls!!!... dont have word verification and dont get any spam ever!!!.... ah well...it's still good fun!! xxx
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