The Garden Share Collective { January }

Joining up with Lizzie from The Strayed Table for our monthly Garden Share Collective.

Well, what a month my vegetable garden has had.

We returned to civilisation (Perth) for a brief holiday. And came home to a vegetable garden in disrepair. Windswept and totally dried out. In fact completely and utterly sun kissed. The plants had obviously missed my twice daily watering by hand. And red back spiders had created lots of little webs in and underneath a lot of our outdoor belongings. A complete and total manic working bee was required. To tidy the garden and rid the yard of red backs. Insects like these, that can potentially be very dangerous, always make me worry with our two daughters running around.

And then we welcomed in the New Year with a cyclone. The cyclone changed course before reaching our small town, but we still received a lot of rain and heavy winds. Which again played complete havoc with my garden. Whiplashing my already struggling sweetcorn and sunflowers. And my tomatoes too. And the heavy rains, washing away the new seeds I'd planted the week before.

Between the excessive heat, overbearing sun, and all that rain and wind, well my garden is looking a little worse for wear. In need of some TLC. The corn is looking a little unhealthy, the sunflowers died, and the tomatoes and cucumbers all had to be tended too, tidied and broken stems removed.

But there are some positives. We've had an abundance of tomatoes, some chillies and our purple runner beans are close to ready. Spring onion, pumpkin, zucchini and sunflower seeds have been replanted. And no more red back spiders have been sighted.

And I received a new gardening set from Mum for Christmas. Which I love. Thanks Mum!

All's well again with the vegetable garden. Aside from my corn. Any ideas what is wrong with it? Is it just sun bleached? Entirely possible with our weather at the moment.

The Garden Share Collective { Our Vegetable garden at 7 weeks }

A monthly (and my first), post for the Garden Share Collective. Started by the lovely Liz from The Strayed Table to encourage more people to grow their own organic food. A blogging community, who share a garden update about their own vegetable patches, big or small. What is growing, what has been harvested and what has made it to the do-list.

Well, my garden at seven weeks young, is slowly blossoming. We created it, to both grow our own vegetables, but to also instil the joy of looking after, and watching plants grow with our two young daughters. It is our first vegetable garden. We are growing vegetables, sunflowers and marigolds from a mixture of seedlings and plants.

 

Our climate is a little on the hot side in this part of the country. Most days are in the high 30's. And, at the moment, it keeps getting gradually hotter and hotter by the week. Despite this, with twice daily watering, it still continues to thrive.

What do we have growing in our garden at the moment? Yellow and red tomatoes, cucumbers, purple runner beans, zucchini, chilli's, parsley, lettuce, coriander, and corn. We also have a potted Valencia Orange tree, lemon tree, and a New Norcia Olive tree which were relocated with the rest of our belongings from Perth. We had a limited amount of seedlings available to choose from when we first planted the vegetable garden, and as my brother was helping us with the construction of the vegetable garden, he was the one who quickly chose seeds and seedlings to plant. A lot of things that were on my shopping wish list to plant and grow, were not in stock unfortunately. The joys of living in a remote part of the country. You can read my post about the making of our vegetable garden here. As time goes on, I hope to be more organised in what we plant to eat at our table. I can already see, that we're going to have more purple runner beans than our small family could ever need. We haven't quite found a balance of planting that works for us yet. But this was a vegetable garden, planted in haste, before the temperatures became too warm. 

What do I have on my to do for next month. Some more considered planting, basil, carrots, and spring onions. All of which I use often in the kitchen. And to look into a small compost bin system for our food scraps. And, of course, a little bit of weeding. They grow as quickly as our vegetables.

'Til next month!