The Garden As It Was...

This is the garden as it was... note the extent of the shadow? All winter light is gone! It's taking ages for these beautiful nappies to dry, and certainly nothing edible wants to grow in this amount of light (except the Monstera Deliciosa!). I will post more pics when the tree is gone - you will be amazed at the difference!

Lettuce Seedlings Erupting...

This is our salad box (or bowl as the case may be) after 5 days... note the tiny flecks of green through it? That's seedlings popping up, already!!!
You should see it now! Don't worry, you will - I'll put a piccy up soon.

It's ALIVE!!!!

So you really should see this lettuce! It's HUGE! Ok, so compared to the two pin head leaves that first come up, it's huge. It just grows and grows. It's really fast, and my daughter just LOVES looking at it springing from the ground!

Strawberry seedlings purchased two weekends ago are starting to flower, and I will have finished repotting them by this weekend. :0)

I will be sowing some seeds for my garden soon. I am sure they'll keep in their original pots for 8 weeks while my garden is getting made & settling in. :0) So excited!

Happy Gardening!

Stocking Up...

I've been doing A LOT of online shopping for my garden...
I have bought -
- Gardening Gloves
- Secateurs (felco 2)
- Sharpening Stone
- Garden Hand Saw
- Watering Can (Haws Proffesional 1 gal/4.5ltr)
- Seeds
- Plants
- Bottle top waterers
- Books
- Kids gardening gloves (for Myella)
& more!

And the most of it has come... still waiting on some plants to arrive & the kids gloves. I have been giving what I do have a great work out, trimming back trees & pruning and weeding and generally getting ready for the new garden.

And the Elm goes soon... Not this weekend, but next weekend! How exciting. I will be able to see without a doubt, where I will be putting the garden beds, but I have a pretty good idea already.

I also attended another gardening class & learned more about what the plants that suit our climate are and can do. Some very easy to grow plants were showcased, and I got to take some pigeon pea seeds home with me, and I was very pleased about that. We were also encouraged to keep plants under control if we had a small premises, like I do. Perhaps the plant does grow to three metres, but there's nothing to say you cant prune it back to one and a half metres instead. That way it will be less likely to block out light from other plants, and you are more likely to be able to fit all of the plants you want into your garden. They dont have to grow wild and busy au naturel.

Ok, so we've bought some strawberry seedlings two weekends ago. I have also bought some hanging pots, and now that the Oleander is cut back, I have plenty of spots to hang some strawberries up. I only bought two hanging pots to start off with, as I want to experiment and see how they grow. I am hanging a small alpine variety, and a medium fruited pink variety, so I will have two hanging, and the other three, one sumo (extra large) and two large varieties, will be potted into some lovely pots instead.

Of course to grow potplants you need potting mix, and in anticipation of seedling growing, I also bought some seedraising mix & some coir, some vermiculite and some strange polystyrene looking stuff (but of course it isnt that!) that I can never remember the name of. :0)

Shopping spree is only halfway done, as I've not purchased anything for the chickens yet, nor have I bought my garden edging or blood and bone. These are large purchases, and I expect it will cost me 12oo all up, but my garden will be larger than the two 2x1 meter (approx 2x1yard) plots that I would have got for the same price. I will also have the pleasure (and torment) of doing it myself!!!

Last major purchase - I've been tossing up whether to get a water tank. The way we go through extended drought periods, it might be prudent to get one. Water restrictions suddenly imposed would really kill a healthy vege patch, and that just wont do!

Happy Gardening!!!

We have Solar Power!

A 2.4kw system... Just to brag a little... our meter is coursing backwards for the most of the day!
YAY!
Happy Gardening!

The Salad Box

Last Saturday I went to another of these lovely lectures put on by the Brisbane City Council. :0) It was about gardening in small spaces, including pots, containers, anything you can use, really! Getting some edible yield out of tiny corners, balconies, etc.

Being one to "give it a go" I volunteered to help plant up a salad box into a large round pot, and thoroughly enjoyed it. After adding seedraising mix, some slow release fertiliser, some organic material, some lovely lettuce, beetroot and coriander seed, I then covered the beautiful little seeds up with some soil & organic matter mixed together.

On Thursday, just five days of watering fun later, the girls & I discovered SEEDLINGS!!! Yep, tiny new shoots of you name it (no seriously, please tell me what would have shot up first) from our mix of seeds! Amazing!

This is a fast growing and high demand box of salad, that needs to be watered every second day after germination (so starting this weekend I'm cutting back on the water a little as I had been watering daily with seaweed extract), and liquid fertilising once a week (I'll be using worm wee or charlie carp)- the result? In 3 - 4 weeks, there'll be salad big enough to rip a piece or two off for our sandwiches!

Ah, amazing.

Pics to come when the camera batteries are charged!

Happy Gardening!

Permaculture Gardening

Today I went to a seminar at yet another local library to discover more about permaculture gardening. It is something I am definitely interested in. Basically it is the creation of a permanent culture, that is, a way of living on the land that is fully sustainable, because there is no use of chemicals, and the clever design gets the most out of the environment. It's all about being space savvy, time savvy, water savvy, and above all, soil savvy! You see, the soil, as with any organic garden, is the key.

healthy soil = +++ nutrient uptake = healthy plants = pest/disease resistance = higher yield

There are several ways I intend on improving my soil quality.
1) I have started a worm farm... I only have about 12 worms, some of which may well be dead by now, but hey, it's a start!
2) Getting Chookies! The ultimate nitrogen adder! They have a good scratch, remove pests, deposit nutrient rich poo, and all this action is great for healthy soil.
3) Adding organic material to the garden beds, including but not limited to- lucerne hay, sugar cane mulch, horse poo, chook poo, and some organic lifter/blood and bone.
4)I also plan on adding dolomite, which is a lime calcium and other type of soil conditioner which helps remove odors from chickens and unlock nutrients in the soil. Lime by itself will also change the pH from acidic to more alkaline. Something badly needed in my neck of the woods. Soils that vary from pH 6.5 - 7 lock nutrients away and worms wont live there either (worms are a great indicator of soil health).

All these things are in the pipeline. I am trying not to burn through too much money, as I will need some in reserve for when the chookies get here.

Ways of saving money include a simple shift in thinking.
Instead of thinking - What do I need to buy? I am now thinking along the lines of - What can I re-use to serve that function? And I keep finding ways to save more money. It's great!
The aquarium that will be used for a brooding box for chicks, will later become a mini glasshouse for seedling propagation, maximising daytime sun & keeping the possums away from delicate new shoots, perhaps I can put the garden on the bank of the hill & only put three wooden sides on it? This too would save time & money.
Keeping your garden as productive as possible saves money at the grocery store. A simple shift in thinking from :standard veges growing seasons & then a big break for the garden over summer, to :Our state has three seasons - European Summer (our late autumn early winter), Mediterranean Summer (spring before the rains get here), Asian Summer (tropical wet season - summer through to early autumn (easter). Thinking in this way, makes it easy to pick suitable crops, and easy to keep the garden productive in the middle of the hottest summer by growing stirfry asian greens and other crops resistant to high temps & brutal sun. The simple erection of a sunshade also aids this cause, as plants grow most morning and afternoon and shut down in the middle of the day in extreme temperatures.

Still, it helps that I have sold the horses, because all in all, this garden and the chooks will cost me about $1000 to set up. I am also splurging on a very good quality set of secateurs, and watering can. If I outsource labour, and buy everything new, it will cost upwards of $1500! Um, I think I'll put in the extra work & save that $$$!

Speaking of money, Next Saturday is the last lecture in this series, on low cost gardening... keeping costs down by sourcing freebies, second hand, and DIYing. I'll let you know any handy hints I pick up!

Going the organic route also saves money in the long run, because you do not need to buy pesticides, herbicides, phosphorous or nitrogen. You look for natural sources and you incorporate them into your garden routine. Things like chickens & green manure go a long way to providing all your gardens' needs. Lady birds (eat aphids & mealy bugs), hoverfly larvae (eat other pest larvae), and even the chookies go a long way to keeping pests at bay. There is enough veges to go around without having to kill every single insect that wants a piece of the garden... once the predatory insects come along things balance out eventually. :0)

That is, well, except for the possums.
So, I'll buy myself a slingshot while I'm at it... better yet, I'll make one. Back yard BBQ anyone?

Happy Gardening!

I'm feeling inspired

I'm reading Josh Byrne's "The Green Gardener" and have spent some time at Kindy looking at their garden today, and I'm feeling rather inspired! I just cant wait until June 16th, when that HUGE elm will go, to see the sunshine on our grass again. What a wonderous amount of light we will have, perfect winter light for growing veges, and keeping chookies. I'm very excited about it all. I am also considering getting a hand saw, to cut some more Oleander down. It's just so huge.

So now, next on my list to do, is to contact demolition yards to try to source cypress sleepers or large planks. If I can get some for half the price second hand, then I will buy them and build my vege beds twice the height (40cm instead of 20cm).

Second on my list is to contact the chicken breeders & find out if I can get some day old chicks, and the people at City Chicks to order a coup . The breed I am interested in is called Belgian Bantam (Barbu D'Uccle) and I have been corresponding with the Belgian Bantam Club of Australia's Secretary, who has been answering questions and has given me some contacts. However, she did mention that some breeders will not let the chickens go until 3 - 5 months of age.

Ideally we wanted to have the chickies inside from day old to watch them grow, photograph, observe their size, what they eat, and generally enjoy them from such a young age.
I had the idea of buying 10, and then hopefully between 4 and 6 will be female, and we would give the cocks back. We'll see!

Anyway, the housework calls, as the baby is asleep, so like everything else, I will have to put that bit of research off 'till later!!

What started it all...

I want a vege garden. Indeed, I've wanted one for a while. There's a patch at my daughter's Kindy, and it seems to be a fantastic project to get the kids into. And now that our neighbours are removing the massive Chinese Elm that shades our yard, it looks like I might get one. Much research is going into this. You see, I aim to make an organic vege patch, and that isn't easy. It's not a case of plonking some seeds into the ground and hoping for the best. If you want to go organic, you need to prepare the soil, choose appropriate plants, have optimal conditions so that the plants can ward off the pests themselves - or with the help of some beneficial insects.

So I have been going to seminars conducted at Brisbane City Council Libraries, been reading all I can about chicken keeping (for the fertiliser), and garden growing, and am really enjoying the process. I am impatient at times, but I can see things coming along. The more I learn, the more I think I can do it this time.

Seminars attended so far:

Jerry Coelby Williams - Organic Gardening for Beginners

Annette McFarlane - Small Scale Gardening - Small gardens & container gardening.

Both of the presenters are involved with ABC Gardening Australia in some way. Jerry is a television presenter who writes columns for the magazine, and Annette is a call in radio show host who also contributes to Gardening Australia magazine.

I got a lucky door prize of organic gardening books at the first seminar, and I demonstrated some potting and got to keep the pot fully planted with salad seed at the second seminar. We've got a start! And photos will come soon!

Welcome to my Garden

You don't see much yet, right? Well that's because it's in the planning stages now.
The thing is, I need help. (yes, we all knew that) I'm creating this blog so that anyone that wants to help, has a fair idea of what I'm up against. You see, I don't know what I'm doing. But that doesnt stop me from giving it a go.


This will be mostly a pictorial blog - scanned in sketches, photos and more - after all, who has time to write when they are reading, learning, elbow deep in dirt, and/or running around after two littlies and a husband? Other times I like to draw, paint, crotchet, sing, and scrapbook. Not that I get time for most of that either.


As for the garden planning, I will add lists of plants and veges, let you know what books I am reading, where I am getting inspiration, and also what seminars or websites I'm learning from.
I hope that this blog, my journey to a green garden, is very entertaining for you.
Lets see what we can make of this garden eh? Please leave comments.

Thanks! Jade.