Snow Peas Plants that Keep on Giving.

Snow Peas party in the household last week. These plants keep on giving. So grateful for them...

Finally Some Snow Peas! Spring is Here!

Finally a bowl of snow peas from the garden. The long awaited pods were very welcomed in our household. We've been enjoying the pretty white flowers for a few weeks now and they have finally turned into pods.

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.

Garden Bed Transformation

After a few years of gardening without raised garden beds, I finally decided to invest in them and bought 4 Birdies Garden Beds when they were on sale before Christmas 2019. Because my plants were already planted, I had to wait until the spring crops finished before installing them.

Garden Bed 1 was finally cleared last weekend and it was time to install the raised garden bed on Bed 1.

My favourite place to shop for soil is Soilworx, they are non branded, great quality and good value. 

This is the 2.5m long, 55cm wide, 38cm height raised garden bed from Birdies, in Slate Grey:

I felt super awesome when I found out the length of the bed fits nicely along the back fence and the original garden bed length.

Before placing the raised garden bed, I digged out as much existing garden soil as I can to use them in layering the inside of the raised garden bed.

This is what remained of the garden bed as we placed the raised bed in its position. I decided not to fully cover the bottom with cardboard as I don't want to block access of the existing worms and bugs. I just needed to block the grass roots, so I put cardboard on one side of the raised bed.

We used the box of the raised bed as the cardboard:

Now comes the layering. First is the red gum mulch:

Two layers of Garden Soil and Hay each. I used the garden soil that I digged out from the original garden.

And Aquamax Water Saving Mulch from Soilworx.

Another layer of soil, I used Veggie Mix from Soilworx. I originally wanted to use their Garden Soil mix, but they ran out of stock. The Veggie Mix is awesome too, especially because it has mushroom compost in it.

I added plant cuttings from clearing my garden beds yesterday and add in the Aquamax Water Saving Hay on top of it:

Finally, compost from our bin and final top up of the Veggie Mix:

I called back my seed planting master who went on bickie break to commence his job:

We planted Broad Beans, Snow Peas and Shelling Peas, with Rosemary, Chamomile and Parsley as companion plants.

Lastly, Pea Straw Mulch also from Soilworx:

Now, 3 more garden beds to go, just need to wait for the plants to finish producing before doing another Soilworx run to get supply.

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.