another veggie patch

In the back corner garden there is a raised bed. Originally this bed housed two sorry camellias. Then I took out the camellias to put in some gardenias transplanted from another bed. They died too. So after ripping out the gardenias, I tried to think of what else to plant there, what shrub I actually cared enough to plant and water until it grew.

By then I had the habit. The addiction. I wanted to grow more food.

I thought, what's the harm? If I get bored, in the autumn when the veggies finish I can take them out and put in a shrub. It's the sunniest spot in the corner garden, I might as well take advantage of it.

And so, a bag of manure later, I had another veggie patch.

To the left is a tiny pea just sprouting. It was actually too late to plant peas, they like the late winter and finish in spring, and by then it was late spring. But I wanted to try them anyway, and as a legume they draw nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil with their roots. That meant that even if they only made 2 pods of peas, the roots were still improving the soil for later veggies.

In the middle is a capsicum (bell pepper). I don't like them, but Tom does so I thought I'd try growing some.

To the right, not yet sprouted, are two pumpkin seeds.

Down the front of the bed I even squeezed in a row of carrots. It's great, they came on "carrot tape", a strip of paper with the seeds implanted in them, so you don't have to worry about planting them all evenly and at the right depth ... you just plant the tape!

Now, what's that funny black trellis for, you ask? And how can I possibly fit all of those veggies in one narrow bed? Why, I'm glad you asked.

Here's the bed a few weeks later. As you can see, the peas have shot up and are just wrapping their little tendrils around that lattice.

As to the pumpkin, I planted two seeds and both came up, so I thought I'd let them both grow. How can they possibly fit, you ask? Why, I'm glad you asked.

Did you know that pumpkin is a vine ... and in fact it loves to climb? I didn't either until I did a bit of research. It's latched onto that lattice and it isn't looking back!

In fact they've grown so much I added some more trellis at the top. One or two vines look like they're going to grow over the front of the bed, and that's OK too, there's plenty of room for them to spread out there.

The carrots are doing OK too, you can see them at the left side of the bed, they're that fuzzy green stuff. The ones on the right got shaded out by the pumpkin, and in fact the capsicum is quite shaded too. Today I trimmed a few pumpkin leaves to give the capsicum a bit more light.

Meanwhile, a little about the type of pumpkin. I love pumpkin, Tom hates it, so I wanted to grow a small variety that would store for a long time, but when I wanted to eat it I could eat one by myself. So after lots of searching, I found a variety called a Potimarron, which literally means pumpkin-chestnut (supposedly from its flavour).

This is what a Potimarron embryo looks like. Pumpkins make both male and female flowers, and the female flowers are easily recognized because they have a tiny baby pumpkin at the base.

And this is what the flower looks like, big and beautiful like a showy yellow summer dress. And there's that baby pumpkin again, just aching to grow!

a growing habit

It didn't take long before I realized I had a budding habit ... addiction, almost. I love growing things you can eat. It's one thing to have a pretty garden, but I find it absolutely alluring to have a garden you can harvest and put on a plate. And it plays to my eco-friendly streak, to eat something I grew myself that wasn't shipped, trucked, or flown to my plate.

It started with the things I already had in the garden. I already had a miniature lemon tree in a pot, one of my only potted plants from apartment life. Then there are the two kumquat bushes, some of which I've put in a jar with vodka and sugar to make a liqueur. A young lemon tree out the front. A row of neglected pear trees. A grape vine growing over the fence from the neighbours (turns out it's just ornamental, no fruit, how tragic). And of course, my massive big fig tree.

Next I wanted to grow herbs. Then vegetables. There isn't much space in the yard that gets enough sun ... but lucky for me, the front porch gets hours and hours of northern exposure (remember my American friends, north is toward the sun down here!).

And so here we have my front porch, several months and several shopping trips later. From left to right, we have:

Mint in a pot, though I finally found a place in the ground for it where I know it'll be happier.

My pride and joy, two big tomato plants. One is a small, yellow, pear-shaped tomato called "yellow pear." I didn't know when I bought it that apparently it's one of the least-tasty home-grown tomatoes ... oh well, at least the fruit are pretty. The other tomato is a mid-sized, normal round red variety called "better boy."

Below the tomatoes, in the square planter, is the next round of lettuce. There's some rocket (arugula to you Americans, yes it's Obama's favourite food) and a variety of lettuce called Red Flame that's meant to take the heat pretty well as the summer heats up.

Next to that is a jalapeno pepper, it didn't like the cool spring but it's got flowers now.

Below that is a set of two different basil, one normal Sweet Basil and one Thai Basil.

To the right we have a strawberry plant up the top. I ended up putting it in the compost, it was rubbish. For the record: strawberry plants put out runners, but the runners never produce as well as the parent plant. This one I bought from a lovely lady who sells herbs and veggie seedlings, and she did tell me it was from runners but at the time I didn't know any better. The thing only made 3 strawberries, one of which got eaten by a slug whilst still unripe. So no more strawbs for me.

Below that is a pot with a thyme and oregano sharing real estate, then a rosemary plant. I just gave the rosemary away, they don't really like pots and I don't have anywhere to plant it (and I now have prostrate rosemary in front of the mosaic).

Below that is some flat-leaf parsley, just the thing for finishing off dishes and you hardly need any for one meal.

Then my pride and joy, two kinds of lettuce. One is a bit dull, it's called Salad Bowl Green and I wouldn't recommend it. It's not crisp enough for my taste and its leaves are so deeply serrated and wrinkly that it's hard to wash. The other is called Frilly Pink and I like it a lot - ruffly but flat leaves that are easy to inspect and wash, nice crisp texture, just a bit bitter.

For the record, I tried growing strawberries in the side pockets of that big pot. You can see how well that turned out. Turns out the lip of the pot forms a rain shadow so when you water from above, it doesn't get into the little pockets, so all three strawberries died from lack of water. Live and learn ... and never buy one of these "herb pots", they're rubbish. Good thing I got it in a mixed lot on eBay!

So yeah, I've been keeping busy. And of course behind all that are two Christmas poinsettias, my wreath of red berries, and Percival watching me from inside.

the mosaic

So we have this mosaic. To be honest, it's not my favourite thing in the world, but it does give the garden character. A woggy character, but character nonetheless. For my American friends, "wog" generally refers to a Greek, Italian, or Lebanese Australian. It's actually a bit of a bad word, depending on the context. But it's pretty safe to say my garden is woggy, between the fig tree, cumquats, and giant mosaic. All it needs is a statue and an olive tree to complete the picture.

On either side of the mosaic are little pencil pines, and at the front they'd planted some daffodils but they didn't do so well - not sunny enough early in the spring. So I decided to take advantage of the strip to plant some meditteranean herbs: sage and prostrate rosemary. Something low-growing enough that it wouldn't block the mosaic.

I had actually planted the sage in the middle and was digging a hole for the rosemary when I discovered it ... the Dreaded Black Plastic. It's all over the place in this garden.

Now there's a difference between black plastic and weed mat. Weed mat is generally made from water-permeable fabric and is meant to keep weeds from growing through your mulch. But that means it also keeps your mulch from decomposing into the soil. A lot of people still use it for the convenience factor, though a lot of passionate gardeners hate the stuff, especially if you're trying to be eco-friendly.

But it's still not as bad as black plastic, which not only keeps the mulch from biodegrading, it also stops most of the water from seeping through and tends to "kill" the soil beneath it. A lot of people used it in their gardens, meaning well, but what tends to happen is that over the years the mulch and dirt and things breaks down ABOVE the plastic, weeds grow in that new soil, and the soil below the plastic is still fairly dead ... which was the case here.

So instead of quickly planting a few herbs, I spent almost an hour digging black plastic out from under 6 inches of soil and mulch, covering myself with dirt. Eventually I had to cut it, leaving a fair bit behind the mosaic (but heck, nothing's growing there anyway). Lucky for me the sage didn't mind being pulled up and re-planted!

And here at last is the fruit of my labour. They've both taken to their new home and are growing well, they're about twice the size of this photo and I've used both in cooking.






In fact, they even stood up to a pretty terrible hail storm a few weeks ago, where they were buried under hail for a few hours! I leave you with a photo from that hail storm.

the back corner

One of my first adventures was to sort out the back garden. First I slaved over the over-grown beds, tirelessly trying to prune the shrubs and maybe save one. I actually transplanted the gardenias to save them (they didn't survive). In the end I pulled them all out, including the rock mulch.

I mulled over what to replace them with for weeks, before finally settling on rhododendrons. That's not actually a smart choice in Melbourne - it's too dry to grow them without watering them. But at the time I was feeling homesick for plants I knew from Oregon and made the commitment. The soil's good for it - free-draining and acidic. And they have a thick layer of bark mulch to keep the roots cool. Several months later and they're putting out their second spate of new growth for the year. So far, so good.

And the dead cherry tree? It was so far gone you could pull it would just by rocking it in the dirt and hacking at the tap root with a shovel. I went on a field trip to the Dandenongs to a nursery that specializes in Japanese maples and found this little darling.

Unfortunately I have a strange problem - the tree is getting too much water. Can you believe it? Who would have thought anything in Melbourne was getting too much water. But when you look at it, that corner is the lowest point in the garden, so it must be getting run-off from the areas around it, and the roots are getting water-logged. I think its only hope is to dig it up again and raise a mound of soil to give it better drainage. But I haven't been able to do that because it's been raining all weekend. Oh the irony. So at the moment it has garbage bags around the roots to try to keep them a tiny bit dry until I can get into it with a shovel.

welcome to my little garden

In July my husband and I moved into our first home. This home had a very little garden. We wanted something small and low-maitenance - my husband certainly wasn't interested in doing yard work, and I didn't want to take care of a large garden by myself.

I quickly surprised myself with how much I took to my garden. I had never particularly enjoyed my parents' gardens growing up, though I did spend one summer during uni as a junior groundskeeper. But there's something about it being MY garden - I love it to pieces.

Here are some photos of what we had when we moved in.
This is the view from inside the house into the front garden. A patio, a mosaic, established kumquats, ficus trees pruned into cute little lollipops. This area hasn't changed much since we moved in.

The back corner of the garden, however, has seen some major changes in the last few months. The previous owner planted a lot of beautiful plants to pretty-up the property before they sold it. Sadly, they neglected most of it afterward, or planted things in bad places. To the left are dead camellias (I think it's too sunny there). Then we have a dead cherry tree - it's meant to "weep" but they never cut off the branches growing up from below the graft. The crown was almost completely dead. Then there's that over-grown bed next to the pond - there are two gardenias, two roses, and a lilly-pilly in that bed. That bed could maybe fit ONE of those shrubs, not all 5!

This is the other half of that corner - a scummy goldfish pond and another over-grown bed. You'll also notice the white pebbles. They used them as mulch in the raised bed. Sure it's pretty, but it's not very good for the plants. Instead of barkdust that breaks down and adds organic richness to the soil, rocks ... well, they just make the soil rocky. It took me weeks and weeks with a bucket and a spade, but I eventually dug out every single pebble and replaced it with wood-chip mulch.

I did have a lot to work with though. Look at this fig tree - it's almost three meters tall! It must be over twenty years old and beautifully pruned into a strange and lovely shape.






And here's a young lemon tree at our front gate.




















This is a row of birch and plum trees. They didn't get the water they needed, so the crowns of the old plum trees are dead. They should survive with a good hard prune. They were so stressed they didn't make any flowers this year so I don't know what kind of plum they are. With a bit of pampering and a bit of luck, maybe I'll get plums next year.








But probably my greatest assets I had to make myself ... using lots, and lots, and lots, of pots. This was just the beginning of the collection. But more about that later.