Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Hard graft!
We've had more plans for the veggie garden for a wee while now. Last year we got some sleepers to make beds down the middle of the garden. We wanted to get more and mark out the beds down the sides and also one at the corner so I can have the herbs in there too. (the herb garden I use now is going to become my cutting flower bed) 
Through friends we found this brilliant guy about 45 minutes away who has a portable saw mill. If he has offcuts he takes them back to his yard. He had stacks of macrocarpa sleepers so we went out to meet him and choose which ones we wanted. He sold them to us for an incredible $6 per m ( and threw in about 10m extra in small offcuts for the fire!!) This is a fraction of what we paid last year for the sleepers.
We laid them out where we wanted them to be and it was all looking better already.

We also have a gigantic pile of gravel that was moved from the area that the new deck is on. Waste not! So L and I moved about a tonne and a half of it over to the veggie patch yesterday to mark out all the paths and also hopefully keep the weeds down. We worked away and got it all done in a lot less time than I thought it would take and the results are brilliant - well we think they are! It looks so much better than it did. When I think back to what it used to be like...

The garden is well past it's summer excellence, but I've dug over a few of the beds and will get them all fertilized. I've planted out some peas and silverbeet, also more barlotti beans to see if they will still grow and brussell sprouts.

The chillis are  going incredibly well though. They have a long growing season, and this year seems to have been perfect for them. Some new flowers have appeared on the aubergines so I'll leave them to see if they set, or if it's too late in the season?

Anyway, here's finished pics.
this is the small winter veggie bed

The greenery all round the blue pot is actually self seeded rocket! I did have it in the pot, but it didn't grow well at all and all went to seed. The seeds planted themselves all round it and did amazingly!

12 comments:

  1. What a great sized garden mine is only small but I have plans one day to make it bigger

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  2. Thank you for showing the pics of your vege garden. We are in the process of planning a new vege garden here, as there has never been one planted. Last year before hubby got sick, I planted my veges into polystyrene boxes. At least I did get veges that season!
    I love your garden and now I'll be able to show him just what I want now.

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  3. Beautiful! Great job!

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  4. Very tidy! We have gravel for our paths and althought it wasn't my first choice ot does make for easy weeding with a hoe. We don't have much in there at the moment the piglets saw to that!

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  5. thanks all.
    Sue i have to admit the gravel wasn't our first choice either - we were originally looking at these wee river pebbles - beautiful colours and all water rounded. They would have looked stunning - yeh at $300 a cubic m!! We used at least 3 cubic m. It would have been mad to spend all that when we had free gravel in a pile!

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  6. Love your vegie garden, I love having a nosey at other peoples plots...yours are similar to mine, using sleepers, though I only have four, with gravel...( I LOVE gravel..) and easy to keep weeds down, salt and vinegar if you are worried about using poisons with the doggies around.
    Happy growing, oh, and keep your eyes peeled, got me the tidy pantry bug today..!!! So Ill be posting those fridge and pantry pics soon.......lol.........

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  7. What a great looking garden! Way to reuse the gravel, looks great as a pathway.

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  8. wow your patch looks fantastic, so neat and tidy it puts mine to shame.
    Sue
    www.sue-brown.blogspot.com

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  9. Lovely looking garden Laura

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  10. Your garden looks wonderful, great repuposing of the gravel. We use/reuse what we have also. I marvel at the differences, our garden is just going in as yours is finishing up!

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  11. Very organised, neat and tidy. You have both worked real hard and done a great job. Lots of yummy fruit and veg.

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  12. amazing what you have done ...really... ccongratulations, its gorgeous
    xxxxX

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x