Our Garden

Thur 14th Oct


So, I wanted to post the progress of our garden. 
With all the rain we have had, some of my plants are 'stagnate' and some are coming along leaps and bounds. Lets hope that the sun will shine and my little treasures will grow big and strong.

We have had the pleasure of babysitting this beautiful girl named Zoe for the last month, and as a direct result, the possums have kept away and our flat leaf parsley grew heaps. This success was short lived though, I have walked outside this morning to find 3/4 of it gone (bloody fat cheeky possums). Hopefully soon we will get some chicken wire to stop these naughty critters. Anyone else have any tips for fat greedy possums?

Three weeks ago, I gave the gardens a good slow release fertilize then lay down sugar cane mulch. My bean plants have stagnated a little, but have produced a few
small beans.

My Zucchini seem to be loving the water and have slowly started to produce flowers! Yeah! Just watching and waiting now







My tomato plants (now that there are only a few and not 20!) are coming along with mixed results. The seedlings in the beds seem to have stayed the same, healthy but haven't grown much. We did transplant a few though into pots and they have been coming along great. 


Everything else in the garden is pretty much where it was a month ago. The broccoli seedling have grown a little but are really missing the sunlight. The carrots I lost due to a certain girl having a dig one day, but I do plan on planting some more in a week or so. The leeks also suffered the same fate as the carrots. I do plan this time though on planting the seeds into seedling dishes so that I can regulate the water a little better so that they don't drown in this rain that does not seem to stop.

Anyway....would love to hear from you if you have any tips for me. God knows I need them.

Happy cooking & gardening

Bree xx


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Hey...so was wanting to show everyone how our garden beds are growing & share with you all our trials and success.
Our Garden Bed 1
About three weeks ago we made and filled this bed near our balcony, and during a party some friends of ours helped out and filled it with herbs and veggies. After some thinning out of the seedlings (some of my friends thought it was fine to pop the whole packet of tomato & carrot seeds into one hole!) the garden is coming along well. The garden gets more sun than shade, beautiful warm summer sun after midday, and is filled with organic garden soil from our local garden supplier. In the past, we have had issues with possums eating our potted plants, but we have just recently acquired a beautiful three year old border collie who seems to be deterring the possums from entering the yard (YEAH!)


Garden Bed 2


We constructed our second garden bed just over a week ago and transplanted a lot of stuff from the first. The soil is a mixture of our own and the organic compost mix. The bed is on a slope, so I tried planted the plants requiring the least watering at the top right hand corner. This bed gets similar sun conditions to the first because of several trees we have around the yard, but we soon hope to get rid of these and have it as a full sun bed.


Our Beans are doing great! I planted these as seeds about three weeks before the garden bed was made and they are benefiting from being a little stronger. We are finding something eating the leaves though, thinking this may have been the possums. The three on the left of the bed are eaten, but the one on the right is fine. No beans are being eaten yet either. Anyone have any suggestions as to what pest this could be?




Our Zucchini is also going great guns. We planted as seeds into the new garden and they are happy and strong. I do know though that they are vines and can and will take over the whole bed...so I plan to keep a really close eye on it. There is only one in this bed and two in the second bed.


Our Tomatoes are slowly recovering from the huge thin out I gave them a week or so ago. Their growth seems to have stunted a little since then, but I have been feeding them and crossing my fingers they will pick back up. In our garden at present, we have three in this bed, four in the second bed and then also a potted one. We have also potted up plenty for our friends and family to have once they get a little stronger and perk up again.


Next is our broccoli, which suffered a similar fate to that of the tomato. We had approx 15 plants in one space, so I translated some and got rid of the rest. Currently there are two in the first bed, and two in the second. The ones in the second bed seem to be starting to grow again.






Our thyme is doing great in our second bed. We did buy this from seedling as my wife loves thyme in her weekend breakfast cooking so we use quite a bit of it. Going just as good is our rosemary which is in the top right of our second bed. Again we bought this at approximately this size. We haven't had a lot of luck growing rosemary into the bush we would love it to be, so if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate.




Our parsley and mint are doing great in pots as well. Lets just hope this crop of parsley avoids the eyes of the possums. Last crop we came outside one day and seriously considered that someone had come in the a pair of scissors and had themselves a nice Italian feast. 

Finally there is our chives and a new addition to our growing list...lettuce. The chives are so hardy and are loving the separation we have them a few weeks ago. And this little guy is the first lettuce I've grown from seed. I will keep you posted as it grows!

So that's our garden at present. Thank you to anyone that has helped us put it together...and hopefully your tomato plants will be ready for adoption in the next few weeks. I am very new to this but love it so if you have any feedback, advise or comments....please leave it.

Happy cooking & gardening
Bree xx