The Garden : Catching Up

I’ll start off with The Garden by bringing things up to date. A bit happened over the last month and this is the shorter version. Well, here we go.

This block has more garden than house.

When we moved in there was already a few garden beds around the house.

Some of the were good and some of there were bad. And there weren’t enough of them for what I had in mind as a kitchen garden.

After getting the go-ahead by the landlord with a ‘you can dig up the whole backyard and plant vegetables if you want to’ (in a very thick Italian accent) I got to work.

First was getting a compost heap happening. There was a large pile of cut grass in the back and all I started to do was add my food waste to it. Covered with a blanket I thought it was doing okay, but after a couple of weeks we invested in a compost bin thing just to keep it all in check.

Next was the introduction of the most basic of kitchen gardens (as all those professional new-age kitchen garden chef people say, and what the old schoolers have kept saying for years and years)

The herbs went in around the front door. There a couple of raised garden beds by the front porch with the most hideous plant, and after the eradication of said plant we filled them up with thyme, sage, oregano and curry plant.

We also started out our attempt at a hedge outside the front of the house consisting of rosemary and lavender as well as a section dedicated to garlic (we use so much of it that it was decided it would be a good idea to grow loads of it)

After all of this it was onto the garden beds in the back yard. Although there already was an existing bed in the back corner, I decided to add to it by introducing three more nice rectangular beds.

With winter coming along and not having much to plant yet they were covered with damp paper and black plastic to get it ready for the warmer months. The old bed got some clover seeds put into it to git it healthy again.

About two weeks after moving in I planted my first set of seeds into the back garden. Close to the back fence I started my broad beans. It’s now been two weeks and most of them are poking their heads out now

I also stated a large number of seeds in trays. My list is simple. White carrots, lettuce, spinach, peas, brussel sprouts and a few other things that just need a bit of a boost before they hit soil outside.

 The picture only shows a small amount of what I got going. Seeing as now I have ran out of space to put them.

Over the last weekend I went out and started our collection of asian vegetables to go in by the side of the house. Some seedlings of broccoletti and seeds of chinese kale, bok choy, daikon, and mizuna went in. I just hope the spot is warm enough for them to come through.

So now things for the garden are up to date in a very rough way and I can now focus a little bit more on what really is going on.