Garden update (one year on)

It’s Summer here in central west NSW. It has been over a year since I posted any garden content. A big reason for that is that we actually moved house. This time last year we had some nice tomatoes growing at our old rental. However, we moved late April and, with the cooler climate, most of the tomatoes still hadn’t ripened. We had to pull everything out and attempt to put things back the way they were and take kilos of green tomatoes with us. mrshill (with my help) made an assortment of green tomato jams, pickles and chutneys - we ate some, gave away some and some is still in the drawer.

The good news is we found a great place which was (more or less) what we were looking for. It’s on a larger block (more than double the size of most houses in Orange) and within walking distance to town. We own it too (or co-own with the bank, to be precise) so we can do what we want with it. We decided that for the first calendar year that we wouldn’t do too much and follow the observe permaculture design principle so we could figure out what gets sun and what doesn’t, where the water flows, what the soil is like, etc.

To start with we had two raised garden beds. They were already in and about a metre and a half apart. We ended up doing was extending the gap to 2.4 metres so we could slip some standard size sleepers in between to make a third bed. We’ve also tried to use some edges of the property, the highlight being our awesome little cucumber bed to the size of our massive shed.

Take a look at some of our garden highlights -

Tomato bed

We made a ‘trellis’ with two A-frames at either end of the bed and string going across.

It’s gotten pretty out of hand but that’s OK. We’ll probably try something different next summer.

Some tomato close-ups -

The smaller 'cherry' varieties are ripening up nicely.

Cucumber bed

We resurrected an old gate to use as a trellis and set it on top of a little hill, with string going down to the bottom, with the aim of training the cucumbers up the string.

This photo was taken mid-January. At the back it’s actually pumpkin growing (which we didn’t deliberately plant - it just grows as a result of stuff that comes from our worm castings).

Some cucumber close-ups -

They are prickly. mrshill says that’s standard for home-grown cucumbers and that we’ll need to peel them.

and the rest

Some other things we’ve got going on -

Mint with what looks like some curly kale coming up.

Mixed lettuce.

Spinach (chard?) - giant leaves on this one!

Basil (Thai, I believe).

A few radish like these we planted around our tomato bed.