:: home garden update ::

as I mentioned a post ago, what began as a soggy, grey Winter has turned into a period of golden weather with picture-perfect bright-blue skies arching over our abundant corner of the world...and, really, now it isn't even cold anymore.  Time to creep outside a little more and begin the waking up of the garden.  And that is what we did this weekend.

We worked steadily at weeding and ruthlessly removing plants that were really 'finished' and then tucking everything neatly back in place with a fresh bed of straw to encourage more worms and retain a little more moisture.  We actually need to water now - that is how dry it has become over the past several weeks!
I did discover we still have a healthy crop of small herbs including Italian Parsley, Oregano, Lemon Thyme and triple-curled parsley...the basil has finally given up and I was very disappointed to uncover the remains of the common thyme, which obviously hadn't enjoyed being overgrown and shaded out by its larger neighbours!  The chillis are delightful to spy, like Christmas ornaments and I'm leaving them there as long as possible...

And along those lines, this lovely Calendula bloom blazes with bright yellow-orange in a few places in the garden beds - I love seeing colour, as well as it being a healing plant and the possibility that a few more bees might visit our little patch of paradise...in the background are the starry-white clusters of alyssum flowers...another helpful little flower-friend in the vegetable garden.

And, we are being nourished by these tasty greens over in the next bed...Kale, Cavalo Nero, Tat-soi, mizuna, rocket, red mustard (well, red!), silverbeet and perpetual silverbeet are all pretty happy bed-fellows, now that the heat and intensity of the Summer sun has gone.  Also popping up are some lovely self-sown lettuces, which is an extra-nice bonus...I'm all for letting a few plants go to seed and then waving them 'fairy-wand' style over the beds and to see what might come of it!

Most exciting was deciding to make a new 'no-dig' garden bed, extending West of the existing raised beds.  This is significant, of course, as we are only renting!  But, growing our food is important to us and we are running out of space - especially with tomatoes, zucchinis and broccoli on the seed-sowing list!  We scavenge quite a lot for our gardening materials...so all up this bed cost a total of $10, which was for the 2 bales of straw.  Aaron and Phoebe went to the skip of the local supermarket for cardboard boxes, which we lay down first (overlapping) - this is called sheet-mulching.  Then, we've found a great source of free wood-chip mulch, which is about 10 minutes away by car - so, admittedly there were two trips of filling buckets and tubs full of this mulch.  This was laid over the cardboard to provide drainage and to begin the process of making a soil base, eventually. This mulch also is heavy enough to hold the cardboard in place itself.  On top of that is laid the straw, quite thickly. The edging material was even free - it is palm tree-trunks, which were also at the mulch-spot!
When it comes time to plant into this bed, of course we will need a mixture of compost/soil - so will outlay some money on buying the compost - as ours is still in the process of maturing.
All in all it was a happy and productive weekend, in the open air, all three of us enjoying being part of our food production and making our home that bit more lovely to 'be' in. NICE!