Garden Bed 1 Update - Snow Peas and Shelling Peas

The pretty pea flowers are finally here. They are looking so gorgeous and they greet me cheerfully every morning. Now the next exciting thing will be when we actually harvest some peas. 

These were planted in April in hope i can harvest some peas in winter. They are taking their time and we haven't got a single pea as yet.

This is how they were looking back on 18th April 2020. The shoots just started to appear:

On 1st July 2020, they grew significantly but still there was no flower:

And today (31st July 2020), we have flowers!!

There are also a few pea pods starting to form. Fingers crossed we'll have some peas soon:

Collecting Broccoli Seeds

The broccoli seedpods are finally ready for harvest and their seeds collected. We're so excited!! This is the first time we collected the broccoli seeds so I hope the seeds are good for planting.

There were quite a few seedpods, so I picked the best looking ones, the chunkiest looking 🙂. As can be seen from the photos, they have the visible bumps which indicate good size seeds.

For the past few weeks I have been peeking inside a few pods to see if the seeds have turned brown in colour, so I'm happy to finally see brown coloured seeds.

There are lots of seedpods, so my 5 year old helped me to peel and collect the seeds. 

We have lots of mature brown seeds. Yay!! Fingers crossed they are good seeds and can grow into awesome Broccoli plants.

Mid Winter Leafy Green Vegetables Harvest

We are absolutely loving the various leafy vegetables in our garden. It's mid winter now in Melbourne and they keep giving us nutritious supply for our meal.

I am so happy with the amount of Cos Lettuce plants that I planted in the garden. I planted about a dozen or so all over the place and they provide continuous supply of the greens.

I also planted around 5-6 Russian Kale and Perpetual Spinach. Their leaves are getting bigger and we picked a few leaves regularly so the younger leaves have some space and sun exposure and they can grow bigger.

GentleSoulGnome July 2020 Garden Update

Our garden grew significantly over the last few months despite the lack of maintenance as I battled the all day pregnancy sickness and gardening aversion. I was so relieved when the pregnancy symptoms finally subsided and I can return to the garden. Since then I had managed to complete a few priority maintenance in smaller quantities and shorter time as tiredness seems to be the major hurdle at the moment.

My first priority was to clean up the weeds growing at the front garden because the Tulips and Daffodils had started to grow new shoots. I wanted to clear the area of weeds to give them lots of growing space and minimal nutrition competitor as possibly can. 

Asahi Tulips

Daffodils Tete-a-tete

The Cos Lettuces and Strawberries that I planted at the front garden seemed to thrive and we had since harvested a few of the lettuce leaves.

I have been waiting for the Broccoli seedpods to mature to collect their seeds, but they're taking so long. So I let them be for the time being and besides they are still sprouting, so we've been harvesting them as well. I left quite a few of the yellow flowers for the bees. They love them, I thought I share a little bit happiness with them.

As for the back garden, the Snow Peas and Shelling Peas had grew so tall and a few flowers had blossomed. So, we're hoping it won't be too much longer until we get some harvest.

The leafy vegetables are taking so long to grow from seedlings. Next year I will try continual planting as growing the plants from seedlings are too slow when the temperature dropped. Some of the Kale are looking promising though, I hope I can harvest some soon.

The root vegetables in the third garden bed seemed to be doing well as well. The White and Purple Garlic are looking good. I never successfully grew garlic before, so fingers crossed they will produce this time.

I also never managed to get a single harvest of radish and these ones are not looking promising either. The leaves are bright green and bushy, but I can't see any bulb growing underneath it.

We moved our Lemon tree from the half wine barrel to the ground a few months ago. They survive the move but only time will tell if they will produce better in the new spot. The new spot has more sun exposure which I hope will be more suitable for the tree.

Some more strawberries plants underneath the Lemon tree. They were also transplanted from half wine barrel and survived the move. Some of the plants are showing flowers, so hopefully we have lots more strawberries this year.

I absolutely love our Bay Tree. It obviously survived the big move from Sydney to Melbourne a couple years ago. The tree has reached new height and growing lots of new branches and good looking leaves.

Lastly, we planted 4 bags of potatoes in grow bags. We keep adding more soil as the plants shoot up. It's very exciting indeed, they seem to be growing taller and taller everyday.

Covid-19 Home Schooling and Our Occasional Visits to the Garden.

We are now in the month of July and I'm busy working on my super late posts from May and June. This post is dedicated to the beginning of home schooling experience that all parents and children experienced (and probably will experience again some time soon). 

Home schooling and working from home meant we got to sneaked out to the garden during the day and enjoyed whatever gifts nature gave us. For us, it was the bunch of Chrysanthemum plants that were blooming with flowers. I planted two types, one with pink and white flowers and another with the bright yellow flowers. At the time the photo was taken I had an intention to document the gradual blooms but pregnancy sickness didn't agree with my plan, so I only managed to capture these 2 shots of the very beginning of the blooming process.

Another favourite of mine is the Calendula flowers. These bright orange flowers are heavenly gift, not only because of the very much needed splash of colours during our gloomy winter months in Melbourne, but the skin calming and healing properties. 

 And the Lavender flowers are our frequent harvest to make into tea and oil infusion.

We reserved Fridays to accomplish the weekly art school projects. The topic for this particular project is collage. My son foraged the garden to collect different leaves and flowers. His work reminded me of how blessed we are with the Melbourne weather (despite the occasional freezing temperature) that we still get a lot of colours from nature from the bright green leaves to the pinks and oranges of flowers.

Super Late Post!! Red Cabbage Harvest in April 2020

Hello again everyone! I will be posting a lot of super late posts in the coming few days as I had not been very good at keeping up with the garden for a few reasons.

First of all, I had an unfortunate first trimester pregnancy aversion in gardening. Yes, the sight of soil makes me want to puke. Haha... It's probably a good thing though, as I tend to go a bit crazy with gardening and overtire myself. I also had aversion in house work, especially dish washing.

Secondly, the weather had cooled down significantly here in Melbourne and for some reason I didn't cope too well this time around. Maybe it's to do with the pregnancy too. Anyway, I spent a few weeks taking frequent nap and being super duper bloated. Very unpleasant because my brain wanted to do things but my body refused.

All of these aversions mysteriously disappeared when the pregnancy reached around 11-12 weeks. Now I'm back to my old self and back in the garden again despite the freezing weather and doing a lot of tidying up around the house.

This brilliant looking red cabbage was harvested in April and it was so satisfying to process into a few different meals. I called this one the lucky cabbage as I planted two and this particular one seemed to successfully avoid slug and caterpillar damage, unlike the other one. It's also so pretty, like a bouquet.