Ms Betterhome

I’ve been traveling again for work, hence the lull in blogging. However, we have been working in the garden, and an update is long overdue.

Last month we finally bought two half wine barrels and a ute load of compost, and re-potted the dwarf macadamia and lemon myrtle. We also topped up the beds in thefront yard that had become very compacted, and planted lots of mixed greens, beetroot and lettuces.

Today we pulled out the tomatoes in the end front bed, topped it up with more compost, and planted 3 bulbs of Italian garlic. We also cut back theasparagus, and mulched it heavily. I’ll give it a good feed in late winter.

We also did a lot of pruning and feeding on all the backyard fruit trees last week, which Mr B followed up with an overly ( to me) enthusiastic prune of the passion fruit vine. We had lots of fruit, but very little ripened, due to the cool summer.

We had an incident with our seedlings a couple of weeks back – a huge gust of wind knocked the mini greenhouseobverse, and only a fewbabies were saved.

I planted them out last weekend, and will get one more beetroot and fennel seeds in this weekend, and do some general feeding and mulching.

We sat down yesterday and planned our autumn plantings. We’re going to focus on our past successes, and on things we buy a lot. That means we’ll plant A Lot of beetroot, plus some broccoli, leeks, turnips, collards, taro, silverbeet, beans, snowpeas, and lots & lots of rocket.

This weekend has seen us undertake phase one: clearing out old buggy kale plants & replenishing the beds with lovely rotted soil/compost blend. We bought some beetroot seedlings to get things going, but will start seedlings next weekend.

In the clearout we harvested a couple of leeks, some beans, a ton of kale, some chillis and a pile of green cherry tomatoes (these cooked up beautifully in a veggo shepherd’s pie).

I planted more beans and rocket, and we also pulled out the encroaching grass from under the fruittrees, and mulched them with castings from my sister’s worm farm (we have mountains of her castings, but since her worms process dog poop we’re not putting it in the veg beds).

We’ve had a cool grey summer, and the veggies have been struggling a little.

The Tuscan kale is still going nuts, and we have purple king beans just ready to pick. We’re still getting small but regular harvests of jalapenos, cos lettuce and cherry tomatoes; and we finally have flowers and fruit on the red passion fruit vine. We’ll get a few small figs but probably not many.

Last weekend we took advantage of the dark moon to pull out the rest of the broccoli ( which was getting pretty bug infested), and do some major pruning, mulching and feeding.

Today I planted beetroot, radish, baby cos lettuce & some rocket from our seed. The seed is from the astro rocket, which I think is the tastiest rocket we’ve grown. I’ll keep saving seed from it, as it’s really delicious. I also planted a few more ruby chard plants ( aka red veined silverbeet). The leaves are a bit more tender than regular silverbeet… they’re especially good in curries, I think.

A couple of weeks ago, Mr B & I got stuck into the front yard. We pulled out all the overgrown snow peas & other plants, harvested the garlic & added lots of goodness, including a topdressing of new humus (leftover from the cubic meter he bought for the new raised bed).

In the new gaps, I planted watermelon ( a compact variety),tatsoi & beetroot seeds, all of which have germinated this week. I also planted some eggplant & eggplant, which is yet to show itself.

This weekend we went to the nursery to spend a gift voucher I got for my birthday. I bought to blueberry plants, some azalea food to keep them happy, an advanced eggplant seedling ( so we get at least one plant), some basil seedlings (as above), some zucchini seedlings (since my homegrown versions were not very successful last year), and a jalapeño (ditto).

Today we cleared the no-dig bed out back where the broad beans, coriander & Chinese celery were going wild, topped it up with humus, and planted out 2 of the zucchini & the chilli ( plus some coriander seeds). I popped some of the basil around assorted beds in front & back, and added the last of the zucchini & the advanced eggplant in the raised beds in the front yard. While I was working, I harvested more cavalo nero & broccoli. After a drenching of seaweed was applied to front & back yards, my work in the garden was done for the day.

All going well, the next few months will bring us harvests of: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, basil, chilli, ruby chard, rocket, parsley, Chinese celery, coriander, zucchini, eggplant, lettuce (in the shade), beetroot, pumpkin, peaches and watermelon (& maybe even some limes).

I’m still contemplating where to plant the purple king beans. I loved them over autumn, but I’m starting to seriously run out of space.