Garden Update

I have somehow managed to completely fail at blogging anything so far this year, and it's already April (how did that happen?) I guess I'm just too busy living life to write about it. Or maybe I'm just too busy working... My camera has also been a bit temperamental over the last few months, so I haven't taken as many photos as I wanted - completely missed taking a photo of the tomato bed in it's prime, which was a shame, it's not much to look at now. I'm just going to do a quick overview of the last few months, as I need to go to sleep soon for work tomorrow.

November - The vegetables are growing well and I was able to eat mesclun, spinach and pak choi. I've been eating juicy strawberries since the 8th November, they have been very productive this year and I'm glad I planted them in a bed instead of a strawberry pot (as I'd done the previous year).

Above is a box with mesclun, snow peas, beans, brocolli, pakchoi, carrots and spinach growing. The mesclun is bursting out of the square!

In November I also started laying weedmat around the boxes to keep down the grass and weeds, as I was getting a bit sick of mowing and strimming it away from the boxes. Here you can see potatoes, which I am growing in left over compost bags. I built a cage from chicken wire to protect my strawberry bed. The far bed in the above picture has broccoli, peas, and onions. It did have parsnips but they never germinated :( Think I had a bad batch of seeds.

Strawberries and raspberries - yum :)

December - I continued the weedmatting endeavour, and spent a day shovelling Otatara pebbles on top, with a lot of help from mum and my boyfriend. I think it looks almost stylish now!

The centre box has peas which you can see have shot up - they are Dwarf Massey peas which supposedly means they don't need staking, although I did give them a bit of support by making a cage around the box - primarily to protect my broccoli from cabbage butterflies and their caterpillars. I had a good, if short, harvest of peas - unfortunately the bulk of them were ready whilst I was away over Christmas and New Years. The fruit picking continues, and I've harvested my garlic (the pots in front of photo above), picking carrots when I want, and giant broccoli heads too.

January - Even though Summer seemed to have deserted us for most of the month, I at least still managed some great harvests. My experiment with cucumber fell flat though, with my cucumber plants promptly dying as soon as they went outside. Nevermind I have a solution for cucumbers for next season...

Carrots, strawberries, broccoli, peas, spinach... yum yum yum!

I also seem to be growing something surprising in my raspberry bed!

February - I came into my main crop of potatoes (I was hoping they'd be a bit earlier) and have spring onions and baby turnips too. My broccoli was almost done, and I ended up freezing a lot of later use as I just couldn't eat my way through it all.

March - This month has seen the bulk of my tomato crop ripen. They are in a raised bed by the back door and have done surprisingly well for being outdoors, although ripened later than I would have liked. Having said that, I did have some ripen before the next door neighbour's tomatoes, which are in a glasshouse. I have Roma, Moneymaker, Russian Red and Sweet 100 growing. I've made some into puree and frozen it. I love tomatoes, but there are just too many for me!

I also bought some fruit trees and planted them along the new fence my kind neighbour built as our new boundary. There are 2 ballerina apple trees, a meyer lemon and a feijoa so far. I've harvested all the potatoes from the bags I planted them in, and most of my crops are coming to the end of the season. It's also bulb planting time - I noticed last spring there was a severe lack of bulbs in my garden, so now there are tulips, daffodils, anemones, ranunculus, freesia, crocus and dutch iris.

April - The biggest accomplishment of April so far - my new tunnel house that Dad built me for my birthday!! Now I can plant even more food!

There are currently some pak choi, broccoli, silverbeet and lettuce growing in there. In summer I'll try for some cucumber again, and grow tomatoes so hopefully I will get some earlier. Unbelievably, considering how cold it has been recently, I'm still harvesting tomatoes, and strawberries. In fact I've had strawberries constantly since November, and haven't had to buy a single punnet.

At some point soon I'm going to write a post examining my successes and failures for the season and looking at where to go next. Right now, though, I have to go to sleep!

Fun at the Farmers Market!

Every Saturday morning, the car park next to Dunedin Railway Station buzzes with people. It's time for the Otago Farmers Market, a year round, weekly market where vendors from all over Otago come to sell their produce.

I like to go to the Farmers Market whenever I have a Saturday morning off work, except for perhaps when it is bucketing down with rain. Sometimes it's just a quick visit to buy a few veggies, or to meet up with a friend and get a coffee and a yummy crepe from the French man at La Crepe.

In a bid to be a bit healthier and buy more local produce, I decided last Saturday I would try and buy most of my groceries for the week/fortnight. I budgeted myself $60 for the food. Normally I would go to the supermarket for a 'big shop' about once a fortnight and I would always be shocked at the amount of money I spent compared to what I had bought.

I went to the market fairly early in the morning - about 9am - when the selection is better. It usually runs from 8am until 12ish - although there isn't much left by then!

Here's what I bought:

Some of this will last me longer than a week, which is probably a good thing as I'm working night shifts next weekend, so might not quite be up for visiting the market after work!

The big plus of buying local produce is that you are buying in season. I bought carrots and parsnips, spinach (I love spinach and I definitely need the iron!), broccoli, 2kg of potatoes, and yummy Braeburn and Granny Smith apples. I rarely used to eat apples but have developed a taste for them again. I also bought a loaf of multi grain bread and a loaf of sour dough bread and half a dozen free range eggs. I bought 2 large chicken breasts for $8, which will easily last me for four meals, and some yummy bacon from Happy Hogs. That's a bit of a guilty pleasure, I love bacon!

Then I looked in my wallet and realised I still had plenty of money left, so on a whim I bought some hummus and a pot of mixed seeds to sprinkle on cereal etc. And I still hadn't broken the budget! It was time for a celebratory crepe!

I was pretty pleased with my purchases, the bread will only last a few days but the rest will easily last me a week or two. I haven't done a price comparison with the supermarket, but some things definitely seemed cheaper, and then there is the added bonus of not buying snacks and packaged food I don't really need. There are plenty of other things on offer at the Farmers Market too, from fish and venison to jam, beer, cheese and even plants and seedlings. Last year I bought my cherry tomato plants from the Farmers Market and they produced very well for me all summer.

And yes, after the shopping it was time for hummus on sour dough for lunch!

Yet another gardening post...

I figured it was time for a quick garden update again, as I think it has been making quite a bit of progress in the last few weeks. Everything seems to be developing nicely and I've even started harvesting some plants, particularly my rocket. I've made quite a few salads with my rocket leaves, and I'm starting to run out of plant! I've just sown some mesclun seeds so hopefully I'll have some more delicious salad leaves in a few weeks!

I decided to transplant my pak choi as I thought they were overcrowded in their previous container and merited a bucket each. I was wary about this as I read they don't like being transplanted, but they seem to be doing well, and aren't far off harvesting. The tomato plants are flourishing and flowering - I even found a baby tomato on the biggest plant:

My lettuces are also doing well, I've just been cutting off leaves when I want them and they just carry on growing in between my harvests! As you can imagine I've been having a lot of salads lately.

I've left the best bit until last - my strawberries! They are doing great in their planter (as is the mint I've just pruned and hung up sprigs to dry in the airing cupboard). There are quite a few strawberries developing, but these are the most advanced:

I've also sown some seeds! Some snow peas, cucumber, spring onions, spinach and mesclun. I've borrowed Daharja's idea for using egg boxes as seedling trays (though my dad also does this, and also cuts off the tops of plastic milk bottles for pots).

The mesclun was only sown a couple of days ago, and already it's beginning to sprout!

I've no idea why this picture keeps rotating when I upload it, and I can't seem to fix it sorry!

I'm thrilled at my current progress, gardening really is not as difficult as it may first seem. I'm not sure about how successful I'll be with my seeds yet, the hardest thing for me is to make sure they are kept watered, with my erratic work schedule I find it hard to remember sometimes. More updates soon!

Look how the garden grows...

It's been a few weeks since I transplanted the majority of my plants so I thought it would be time for an update. The garden is doing very well!

I've still been keeping them in the Sky Loft, although on nice days I've put the containers outside on the roof. I just have to be careful because it can get a bit windy up there.

Chives (from which I have already harvested), a Chilli plant which needs transplanting soon, and plenty of lettuce.

Another lettuce and some pak choi. I'm a little worried that the pak choi don't really have enough space, but I read that they don't like being transplanted too much, so I've decided it's probably better to leave them.

Strawberry plants and starting to flower! And some mint I stuck in the top of the container.

My sunflower, which seems to be growing visibly every day - I should start marking it on the stake. Come to think of it, if it grows much taller I'll need a taller stake!

My cherry tomato plants. The closest one I have named Alpha, because it seems to be twice as big as the others, a real super plant!

Last but not least, my rocket. I've just harvested some of this for my salad this evening, and it was scrumptious!

Well, that's it so far. I'm planning on sowing some seeds at some point. I should get onto that, but life has been pretty hectic at the moment. Suffice it to say I should be a proud (and broke) home owner in less than 2 months time!

Beginnings of the Container Garden!

For a while now I've thought about growing my own vegetables. I've always grown up with home grown vegetables, my parents and my grandparents all being keen gardeners themselves. I have great memories of picking pea pods in Granddad's veggie patch and eating the yummy raw peas inside. I also have less fond memories of my dad growing several tonnes of courgettes and declaring that he "grew them especially" for me every year, despite the fact that I absolutely hate them. So I won't be growing courgettes, and I'm aiming not to grow so much of one thing that I won't know what to do with it and it goes to waste.

At the moment I live in rental accommodation and whilst we have a lovely garden I can't exactly dig it up for a veggie patch. Our Landlady doesn't even trust us to care for the garden properly and has a professional gardener do it for her. Hopefully I will soon have my own house and garden, but in the meantime I'll have to make do with a container garden.

My little veggie collection started when I was at the Farmer's Market one saturday morning, and on impulse bought 3 cherry tomato plants. A couple of days later I headed to a local nursery, YouthGrow in North Dunedin, and picked up a few more seedlings. YouthGrow is a nursery run by Presbyterian Support, helping young people to earn skills and gain employment. I am a volunteer for another PS initiative, the Buddy Programme (which I'll blog about another time). They do a lot of charity work with families in Dunedin and so I wanted to support them by buying some plants from the YouthGrow nursery.

I've decided to start small and kick off my veggies with seedlings rather than attempting to grow from seed. Less chance of me killing them! Once I get into the swing I'll start growing a few things from seed, but I don't want to over do it and end up with too much all at once.

The plants are currently living in the skyloft, our conservatory on the roof. On calm, sunny days I'll put them out on the balcony but the weather has been so changeable lately I dare not subject them to that right now.

I've also replanted them into bigger containers, so now they've moved from the bookcase to the floor.

I'll update with more photos as they grow and I add more to the collection! Can't wait until harvest time!