LittleMsGreenies is now GentleSoulGnome

Hello everyone,
After very careful consideration and reflection, I decided it was time to update my old blog name LittleMsBusy to GentleSoulCraft. Following that change, I also updated LittleMsGreenies to GentleSoulGnome to make things consistent between the 2 aliases.

This 2019 Spring is my 3rd spring season I live in Melbourne and marked 3 years of my backyard garden. Whenever I see my garden, I always see some things to improve, to fix, to add, and so on. A few days ago, I was scrolling through old photos and realised that things actually had grown and changed significantly.

This was how the original garden looked like in 2016:

And now the backyard has a 4 beds crop rotation going, a very tall bay tree (that I brought along with me from Sydney), an overgrown Marshmallow trees and Dahlia:

The outdoor sitting area is surrounded by lush green grass, instead of the original crushed rocks:

So, this weekend, I'm going to appreciate my surroundings more and consciously remember that the perennials around me are doing well, growing stronger and taller, instead of focusing on what needs to be fixed and tidied up. I will of course do some weeding tomorrow morning, but I will definitely look at my plants with a different view and appreciation of them.

Let me know below if you have experienced this in the past and I welcome you to share your stories.

LittleMsGreenies Return with Garden Update 2019

LittleMsGreenies had returned with Spring 2019 garden update after a long break. The garden had grown and changed a bit. I figured out the sun pattern and the best spots for certain plants.

The front garden has new brick edging which I recently installed. 

This year, the half circle section has a pair of tower of nasturtium and snow peas, a few bunches of kale, sprouting brocolli and hopefully cauliflower. Also in this section, I'm hoping the geranium and borage will become a permanent fixture to maintain the bees visitors around the garden.

The bees absolutely love the borage flowers.

We've been harvesting snow peas and kale consistently in the last few weeks.

Also at the front garden, I planted Asahi tulip bulbs which had flowered in the last few weeks.

The Tete-a-tete daffodils had not flowered yet. I hope they will come out.

I planted Californian poppies underneath the olive tree and they have finally flowered this year. This had been a long wait for me as they were planted from seeds around 2 years ago.

Some of the calendula flowers had popped out as well. This empty patch is ready for pumpkin seedlings to be planted in the next few weeks.

 

The Lavender plants had grown significantly and produced lots and lots of flowers. I have been harvesting and drying them for tea and homemade shampoo. The bees are also loving them so much and I can sometimes see 6-8 bees hovering around.

In this section, I planted a few kale and lettuce. They grew slower than their fellow plants in the half circle section (a sunnier spot). 

And finally, the giant jade plants at the front door had grown enormously. They had red flowers which attracted the little nectar sucking birds. The pair of planters had filled up and had the spilling over effect that I hoped for.

Stay tuned for more updates on the fruit trees and the four beds crop rotation.

LittleMsGreenies Garden Update February 2018

Summer is well underway here in Melbourne, the weather is warm (sometimes even hot), with cool mornings and nights.
The fruits are finally starting to ripen up and harvest had even started already, especially the tomatoes. Lots of activities going on in my garden in the last few weeks. Lots of harvesting, tidying up, and replanting flower seeds.
It's definitely a nice feeling seeing the garden beds looking lush and green.
All photos were taken on 2nd and 5th February 2018.

On the Garden Bed 0, the bay tree keeps on growing new leaves, I'm confident that it had survived the winter. It looks like I will have a good supply of bay leaves as well in the coming months. Lots of herbs on this garden bed, we have tarragon, oregano (not visible on the photo), sage (not visible on the photo), and stevia. The dahlia is finally flowering, we've already seen light orange, purple and dark purple coloured flowers. I'm still waiting for the sign of seeds from these flowers. The random apple trees seedlings (from last winter's compost) still survive. I didn't have the heart to pull them out, so, you'll see lots of apple seedlings throughout the photos today.

On Garden Bed 1, things are well underway, the cabbage and brocolli are growing significantly and I'm checking every few days for signs of florets. We have had a good harvest of spinach, lettuce, and the herbs from this bed. Definitely excellent types of leafy vegetables that I will plant again next spring. The nasturtium plant is growing up steadily and it is an excellent companion planting as they attracted the caterpillar, so the other plants don't get attacked too much.

The look in Garden Bed 2 was not very pretty at the end of January. Melbourne's windy weather had proven challenging for the tomatoes to grow neatly on the allocated sticks. So, after a few hours of hard work, I managed to untangle the vines and run them properly up the sticks.

We have had ongoing harvest of tomatoes, left right and center.

Also on the Garden Bed 2, the corn and chilies are growing, I even saw capsicum flowers started to bloom this morning. It's going to be exciting time ahead.

The corn plants are showing the corn. It's my first time planting corn, so, I can't wait to see how this will turn out.

On Garden Bed 3, the radishes that I planted earlier had bolted. We collected the seeds and replanted them. It looks like they have started sprouting. I'm giving them another chance, not giving up on them yet. We shall see how this batch turns out. 

The carrots are slow growing on this bed for some reason, we haven't had any good harvest yet.

But, I planted some more seeds in there, hoping they will turn out successful.

The Kipfler potatoes were a good harvest, it was a bit challenging to dig them out without bruising them, but we tried to be as gentle as we can (as gentle as a 3 year old boy can be, that is).

Some of the smaller potatoes were planted back.

On Garden Bed 4, the beans are so glorious, indeed they enjoy the sun. They grow bushier when there was a hot day. 

We have had a few harvest of the green and purple beans. And now starting to see the snake beans and adzuki beans being ready for harvest.

The large photo on the top left corner is one of the many surprised tomato plants that grew in the garden. They grew from the tomato kitchen scrap that I planted as compost material around the garden last winter. Look at the size of it. Not bad for a freebie!

The pomegranate has 4 fruits, that are still green.

Bell Chilies are gigantic, I bet they really love heat, these 2 are positioned on the west side of the garden.

The photo on the bottom right hand side is the mandarin pipsqueak with a surprised tomato plants (again), apple tree seedling (also from kitchen scrap, apple core), and spinach cutting.

I have some excess pumpkin seedlings this spring, so, on top of the climbing pumpkin on Garden Bed 2, I planted the extra seedlings on the unused part of the garden. The soil on that area is not good, but, it looks like they are thriving in there. Lots of male flowers already appearing. I keep on checking every morning to see if there is any female flower.

The flowers on the front garden is in full bloom now. We have lots of solitary bees fluttering about from flower to flower, mostly the lavender, sunflower and zinnia. I hope there will be more bees here, but I've only seen one or two at the same time in the garden.

A few days after these photos were taken, I planted some borage seeds on this section, hoping to attract more bees.