Thursday, December 30, 2010

little veggie plot

Christmas is over for another year and I am amazed at how quickly the new year has arrived. The Boy and I hosted a delicious family Chrissy lunch for 8 with success (although I doubt I will ever get the timing right so vegies are served steaming HOT) and without frantic last minute cleaning or shopping. We cooked a plethora of delightful dishes ... roast pork with cinnamon apple sauce ... green beans with butter and wasabi ... honeyed carrots... garlic butter mushrooms ... asparagus ...split chicken.... and finished with two desserts, Summer berry trifle and passion fruit vanilla slice, one can never eat enough dessert I say! Yum.

The day after Boxing Day, after weeks of discussions and planning we got to work on our little veggie bed project. And now just days later - it's complete. My frontal lobe hurts from reading books, blogs and watching youtube clips about growing veggies, types of soil, which grow best in our temperate-Mediterranean Adelaide climate, to sow seeds or buy seedlings etc. I feel entirely motivated by the idea of growing and eating my own vegetables, that it's almost exhausting. I recall feeling the same way when I was learning how to crochet and knit.

 One empty boring side yard.

First layer of redgum sleepers bolted together.

Second layer and beds lined up.

The sandwich began with a layer of cardboard, which smothers and kills weeds and grass.

 Followed by a 10 cm layer of pea straw.

Lastly, filled with loam and organic compost.

I can't wait to share the progress of our our little plot and harvests (fingers crossed that my thumbs are green enough) over the coming months. If you have any suggestions for Summer sowing I would love to hear them.

7 comments:

  1. What a fantsatic job you've done! You'll be reaping the tasty rewards of your labour in no time. :)
    Can I make two book suggestions? Homegrown SA (by John Lamb, published by The Advertiser) and Kitchen Garden (published by the Adelaide Botanic Gardens people.) I have both of them and would be happy to lend them to you as I have found them invaluable in growing veg under these trying conditions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Christmas dishes sound delicious! I bet you will have plenty of tasty things growing in the veg patches soon. We have enjoyed many busy days tending to our veggie garden the last few weeks - hope they survive this current hot spell.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The garden beds look amazing ... you're going to have the best time growing and harvesting all those lovely veges ... I really need to get cracking on getting some raised garden beds of my own.

    ReplyDelete
  4. oh wow I'm so very jealous. I have little pots at my place :(

    thea.
    xx

    (spoonfulzine)

    ReplyDelete
  5. ooh they do look lovely :) cant wait to try some of thier harvest

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi, Loved your home-made vegie patch. Where did you buy the redgum sleepers? Does it have to be redgum? I live in Adelaide too. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks, Connie

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Connie,
    Great to meet another fellow Adeladian! We searched high and low for the best priced redgum sleepers, Bunnings ended up being the cheapest - they were under $30 for a 2.5m length from what I recall. Pretty pricey when compared to the cost of permapine sleepers, but the trade off is that they don't have any nasty chemicals such as CCA - copper, chromium and arsenic. It's possible that these could leech into your soil and then your veggies. We wanted to reduce this possibility. In saying that when I googled this topic, a lot of people use permapine and haven't suffered any affects. I hope this helps you :D

    Sorry you didn't leave your email address, otherwise I'd have replied personally :)

    ps: The bigger Bunnings stores have more variety - lengths and widths - to offer.

    ReplyDelete