Spring Vegetable Garden Plans

Spring is here & it's time to plant. I'm a bit late but I have been so busy with baby girls 1st birthday & christening that I really haven't had a chance.


I know lots of people have been growing their seedlings undercover ready for planting out in spring, but not me. I just buy mine from the nursery or start from seed in the ground. It's just too much for me with two little ones & I have no real desire to do it.

What do I want to plant this spring? Here's my spring to summer garden last year.

Right at the start of spring- my first planting. I had several tomato varieties, climbing beans, cucumbers, pumpkin, basil, parsley, cucumbers & banana peppers.

All my tomatoes. I staked them with bamboo & soon learned that was a stupid idea! This year, I shall stake them properly.

Back in summer when my little baby was only 3 or 4 months old.

I successfully grew a big abundant bunch of climbing bean plants from seed last spring.

I grew so many gorgeous, perfect, mixed variety tomatoes last year, and then a big awful hailstorm hit & ruined them all. I was so sad, but this year, I shall grow them & eat them & it will be a good year!

My lovely next door neighbour shared her beautiful Passionfruit vine with me last summer (as a big part of it hangs over my side of the fence) I think I got around 80 passionfruits & they were devine. I even got to share them with my family. Hoping I might get them again this summer.

A lovely Passionfruit flower from last year

So that was last warm season, & now on to this year.

This year I plan to grow several tomato varaieties again, peppers, beet root, capsicum, climbing beans from seed, eggplant, pumpkin from seed (I have seed from my husbands uncle's plants), zucchini, cucumber & some giant & dwarf sunflowers. I'll also pull out my parsley plant & re-plant using my Nonna's seeds she shared with me.

In pots I think i'll grow some basil, coriander, lettuce, mint & some pretty little chilli's & a few strawberry plants.

I'm going to sit down & draw up a garden layout & try & follow good crop rotation practices this season. Will do that later in the week.

Hope you are all enjoying spring,

Bel

Posted with Blogsy

A Winter Spirit Lifter

I was just looking back on all the pretty pictures I've taken over spring, summer & autumn that just passed & it made me really smile.

I have been staring out at a dormant balcony for a month or two now & how quickly I've forgotten how pretty everything once was & not so long ago! So I thought I'd just post a couple of photos from the seasons gone by to lift my winter spirits, & hopefully yours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit over a month until spring! YIPPEE!

Thanks for reading,

Bel

 

Autumn/Winter Garden End of May 2012

Just got back from my veggie patch. It's is freezing out there today! I've been looking out over my patch for a few weeks but with all the rain & cold weather, today was the first time I'd been down there for a while. I trained a few pea plants up their trellis that had fallen flat on the floor & I ate my first snow pea! Yum, nothing like home grown veggies from your own plant.

Harvested some spinach to go in a salad today & some parsley to go in a bechamel sauce for a lasagna. Here are a few photos of how everything is looking now.

My parsley & spinach harvest.

Snow peas climbing slowly.

Whoever was eating the spinach seemed to have stopped, so it's growing once again. Might be too cold for spinach stealing at the moment.

Here's a nice little silver beet plant. I have no idea why this plant is green & all the other silver beet are red?? They came from the same seed packet. If you know, please let me know.

Little silver beet plants. Slow growing.

Parsley & garlic much the same.

The sugar snap peas are looking a bit sad at the bottom, but the tops are very healthy. I'm not sure if this is a problem, but they are flowering, so perhaps it's ok.

 

My Autumn/Winter patch end of May 2012. Things seem to be progressing very slowly. I wonder if it's the cold weather & winter plants grow slower than warm weather plants? If you know, please leave me a comment & let me know if I'm right.

Still haven't done anything about that poorly laid soaker hose. I blame all the rain.

My backyard is a blanket of lush, green clover at the moment & it's really very pretty.

Thanks for reading,

Bel

Autumn/Winter Garden: Spinach

A very overcast & cold day today, but no rain, so out into the garden I went. Today I planted spinach. I went down all by myself, which was nice & peaceful. Little helper came with me to buy the spinach seedlings but didn't want to garden & sometimes, that's nice too.

Firstly, I watered everything & dug up some soil to mound up for the spinach. I tried my hand at tench composting a few months ago & I tried to collect that beautiful soil for my spinach. I sadly stopped trench composting soon after I started it as I couldn't stand collecting all the scraps. After about a week the scraps were awful & the bucket they were in was so, so awful & I just couldn't bare cleaning it out all the time, so I stopped. I will be buying a proper compost bin at some stage because I really want to compost & not send all that goodness to landfill.

Next, I started to separate the seedlings. While doing this it occurred to me that this spinach plant was just one, more advanced spinach plant & I was trying to separate it!! Well, I ended up with one bunch & two sad looking smaller plants. Geez, I don't have much hope for these plants after I hacked away at them, but we'll see!

In they went, still looking sad.

Look at how gorgeous my sugar snap pea's are! So happy with them.

 

Now that they have grown to a decent height, it's mulch time. I mulched them with pea straw.

I opened the packet up side down. Hehe

Mulched around the sad spinach as well.

Spinach & sugar snap peas, all mulched well with pea mulch.

My garlic is looking great! Can't believe how fast it's sprung up.

Mulched the garlic as well.

My parsley, grown from my Nonna's seeds is growing so beautifully. I have added it to many meals over the months.

And little helpers little flower has sprouted this week as well. He'll be very happy to see this next time we are in the garden together.

Here is my veggie patch today. Snow peas, parsley, garlic, spring onions, silver beet, nasturtium, spinach & sugar snap peas. Getting full now.

 

Thanks for reading,

Bel