Harvest in the Garden! November Garden Share Collective

Once again it’s time for the garden share collective. I’m without a computer so this post is from my tablet, so please forgive any typos or formating issues. I also haven’t gottem copying and pasting down yet either.

The garden has been growing and it’s exciting too look back and see how far it has come in the past month.

 

Garden Overview

 

Here’s the garden a month ago.

 

Just look at it now!

 

Root Bed

There’s a lot of growth here compared to last month:

Here the carrots are growing well.

I planted half a row more of each variety this month.

 

The beetroots and silverbeet are growing very well, and I harvested some for dinner on monday night, Our first harvest from the garden excluding herbs

Legume Bed

Here things are growing. Nothing new planted or harvested.

last month:

 

 

and this month. You can see I’ve built a frame for the peas and beans to grow up.

 

Brassica Bed

Last month it looked like this.

You can see things are growing. I’ve harvested some of the salad leaves and planted some more out.

After this photo was taken I moved a few of the lettuces that were a bit squished together.

 

 

 

 

 

Fruit Bed

there’s been some exciting growth here! First lets take a look at last month:

 

And now:

The cucumber has grown! We errected a frame for it to grow over out of some scrap and I’m glad we did.

The capsicums are growing slowly but doing much better after I transplanted them.

The marigolds have started to flower.

 

The best of the tomatoes that I grew from seed have been potted on and the vest of those planted out, but only two were destined for this bed, one of the Hierloom mis and one of the artisan mix.

There’s still some really strong looking ones that I’d love to find a place for if I can. I only hope that it’s not too late to plant them out as all my tomatoes bought as seedlings are fruiting!

 

 

Pumpkin Patch

There sur

e has been growth here!!! Compare last month

to this

The pumpkin patch has gone nuts! We have been polinating flowers by hand.

Melon Patch

Here there has been growth from this

to this

 

 

 

The Ditch by the Fence

Nothing much was happening here last month, except the corn was growing and we planted a loganberry.

The corn is growing and the logan berry is fine.

I’ve planted some of the tomato seedlings in the left over space.

 

 

 

 

On the to do list is mukching and continuing to plant more salads. I also will be planting out more beetroots. The fence needs to be finished still and the chicken coop still needs to be done.

Weekend update

This weekend’s update will be late as I’m not spending the weekend in my future home. Instead I’m spending it packing up the last of my things to move in for good! I’ll soon be living in sin, or, as my great aunt puts it ‘trying before I buy.’ I start a new job on the 10th so want to be all set up by then.

I went over Wednesday with some things and spent Thursday unpacking and organising. I got to spend a little time in the garden watering but didn’t get any photos. The pumpkins are looking good and while she was there my young man’s mother showed him how to fertilise the flowers with a paintbrush so we shall hopefully get some pumpkins.  Actually, looking at the photos from last weekend, everything had grown a LOT by Thursday and I expect that by Monday when I will get out into the garden to water and (hopefully) take some photos it will have grown some more.

Pen Pals!

Does anyone write good-honest-old-fashioned letters any more? I’ve had various pen-pals on and off over the years but it’s been a good two or three years since I’ve had a regular pen pal (except for my young man with whom I’ll soon be sharing a home with so I won’t be expecting his love letters through the postal service any more.)

I was packing up all my stationery today and I sure have a lot of it!  It would be nice to get using it again.

So I was thinking it would be nice to have another pen pal, I don’t mind if they’re from Australia or overseas. Is anyone interested?

 

A Quick Update

Well as I said last week I didn’t get much time in the garden this weekend. But I managed to snap some quick photos and plant some more tomatoes.

Garden Overview

The photos this week aren’t the best as I took them in a hurry while it was very sunny outside. It’s starting to really heat up an we’re investigating shade cloth for the vegies.

Root Bed

Root bed growing well. Wondering when silverbeet and beetroot will be ready to harvest!

 

Legume Bed

Brassica Bed

Fruit Bed

Things are growing nicely in here. I have my first marigold flower:

 

And the cucumbers are growing up the trellis well. I actually had to rescue a nearby tomato seedling that had a tendril growing around it.

I also planted one of my tomato seedlings in this bed. With my other tomatoes already bearing fruit I hope it’s not too late for my ones grown from seeds to grow and bear fruit!

And talking of fruit…

How good do these tigerella tomatoes look?

I also have a few fruits appearing on one of my other tomatoes too.

Pumpkin Patch

The pumpkin patch has exploded and we’re letting the vines grow over the ground around the bed. But when I got out into the garden on Saturday I found the pumpkin leaves all droopy.

So I googled it and just like always got results ranging from “they have some disease and they’re all going to die and you won’t be able to grow pumpkins there for 50-billion years” to “They need more water”, “they’ve had too much water”, and “it’s just getting too hot for them, put up a shade cloth.” I wasn’t able to do anything about them on Saturday so I’ll see how they look next time. It’s starting to warm up so it looks like it might be time for shade clothes etc.

 

Melon Patch

Plants are growing, and not much to say here!

The Ditch by the Fence

As well as planting the tomato in the fruit bed I got four planted in the ditch.

It’s a Jungle Out There!

Here I am again with another update from the garden this weekend. I’ve still been a bit sick all week but was feeling better by the weekend. Sadly my boyfriend is now getting sick as I am getting over it. So We took it relatively easy this weekend.

Garden Overview

The garden, however, hasn’t been taking it easy. It’s been growing.

 

It’s much greener than it was last week.

Look at how much the herbs ha herbs have grown!

Root Bed

Things are growing well here.

I Thinned out my carrots a little and planted another two half rows of each variety (those following this blog might remember my young man telling me he could eat a carrot a day without even trying)

My silverbeet and beetroot are growing well.

And for those who missed last week’s bug’s eye view of my silverbeet, here it is.

That’s a lot of growth in a week!

Legume Bed

I finally got in the frame for everything to climb up.

This frame is actually built out of kits for tomato cages. We bought tomato cages to make wigwams for the tomatoes as I’ve heard they’re more stable than the cages, which left us with a lot of spare connectors. I made two walls of stakes, leaned them in and tied them at the top then used the spare connectors to build rungs up the side. I’ve given it a good shake and it feels pretty stable. It’s also dismantable and moveable for crop rotation. What is an unknown is how long the plastic connectors will last outside in the sun.

Brassica Bed

Things are growing here too!

Many of the plants are still little but it’s nice not to have this bed so bare in the middle.

From left to right in the bed we have…

Baby Broccoli was planted directly into the bed and is growing strong

Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Mini Cauliflower and Sicily Purple cauliflower all of which I started out in punnets and have grown well since I transplanted them.

Baby cos, great lakes and crispmint lettuces, only the latter of which really grew at all well in the punnets (and has transplanted well). The other’s I’ve planted directly into the bed when I transplanted everything else out. You can see the great lakes lettuce at the back was planted  the seed raising trays on the 13th of September and transplanted out into the garden on the 5th of October, the same date the lettuces at the front were planted as seed. They are about the same size.

Finally the rocket. We should have eaten this last week but we left it too late and it was very bitter when we tried it this week. I’ve planted some more seeds and we’ll try eating it sooner.

Fruit Bed

There’s been changes here too. My boyfriend had some scrap metal lying around. Actually, he’s got a lot of scrap metal lying around but this bit was something he wanted to use in the garden somehow and it was up to me to figure out a way to use it. I decided we could train the cucumbers and capsicums to grow up it, as I’ve read you can do this. I also potted on some more tomato seedlings into bigger pots to add to those I did last week.

Here it is just after I finished, looking a little messy as I haven’t cleaned up yet.

Here is a closer view of the frame and the tomatoes I potted on.

Here are the tomatoes I moved into larger pots last week. They seem to be doing well so far.

Here are my first tomatoes!

Pumpkin Patch

My poor pumpkin patch. This is where the real jungle is. It’s grown so much since last week!

My main concern here is I’m growing too much inn the bed. I really do want a variety of pumpkins and don’t mind if I get fewer per vine than I should but I don’t want none because they’re overcrowded.

Here is how the bed looks. There is space around the bed fro them to sprawl over if that works!

Melon Patch

My melons are growing well.

I have my rockmelon.

And my watermelon.

The Ditch by the Fence

A lot of progress was made here but I forgot to photograph it! We finally finished getting the rest of the edging in and filled it up with soil.

That’s all for this week! I’m not sure how much, if anything, we’ll get to do next week as my boyfriend’s mother is visiting from out of town.

In leaps and Bounds

The garden that is, not me I’ve been sick for over a week now, but at least my garden is looking great!

Garden Overview

Despite me being sick a lot has happened in the garden

Here’s how it’s looking as of yesterday. The fence is multi coloured. My young man decided to prime it with primer he already had to same money. He ran out. Fortunatly he had another primer, the same thing just in a different colour to finish it. This weekend our friend came round and painted the side of the fence we can’t see with the finished colour. He is actually a interior painter by trade but can’t work because he is disabled and can’t reach above his shoulders any more, but he’s not disabled enough to receive disability as he can still paint skirting boards and the bottom half of walls. Strangely enough no one will hire him to paint the bits of their walls below his shoulders so he appreciated a day’s work at our place. Once he leftmy young man started painting this side of the fence and you can see the finished colour on the far left.

Root Bed

My root bed is going well

From left to right we have beetroot, silverbeet, purple carrots and red carrots. I was told today by a certain dashing young man that “I can eat at least two carrots a day without even trying” so I think that’s a hint to plant more carrots. I’m going to order some orange ones and a heirloom mix that was out of stock when we did our big seed order

Here is a bug’s view of my silverbeet because why not?

Legume Bed

The beans and peas are continuing to grow. The baby sun beans I planted weren’t growing, only one had shown and didn’t look like I expected so last weekend I planted some more. Well, this weekend the ones I planted last weekend were all showing and they looked how I expected so the other one must have been a weed or something.

The peas were really needing some support so I popped a few stakes in for now and next weekend we’ll have to get the pea and bean frame up.

I also transplanted a few more russle lupins into this bed

Brassica Bed

There’s been some action in this bed. Last week I transplanted some of the seedlings into the bed and this weekend I noticed the transplants were much larger than the ones I left in the seed trays so I transplanted a lot more. I also did some direct sewing last week to compare if I really need o start them in seed tray next time.

You can see from all the plant markers that this bed will start looking exciting soon1

You can see my baby broccoli is not so baby anymore!

And my rocket is looking good enough to eat, I’m not the only one who thought so but I haven’t seen anymore nibbles since I put eggshells around it.

Fruit Bed

There’s been some changes here!

My capsicums are huge!

The seeds were planted less than a month ago.

The tomatoes seedlings are growing well too.

Last week I put some capsicum seeds direct into this bed, but after seeing the success of transplanting small seedlings that didn’t look big enough I transplanted some of the little seedlings this week. I also took the biggest of my tomato seedlings and put them in bigger pots. I only had 12 pots so that’s how many I moved. I want to move some of my second planting of tomatoes as they were different types, but that will have to wait until I get some more pots! The ditch by the fence will be full of tomatoes! I was going to toss the rest because we don’t need 50-billion tomatoes, but my boyfriend suggested we plant them in the seedling trays the herbs came in and give them to people to plant in their garden. I like this idea!

Pumpkin Patch

Even our painter friend commented on the pumpkin patch.

I really do want a variety of different pumpkins but would rather fewer types than none at all because they are overcrowded. If they can sprawl on the ground around this bed, is it still too crowded? They’re monsters already! I’m wondering also if I should move the little one in the middle to the near right hand corner where there’s more space.

I can’t believe these things were seeds less than a month ago!

Melon Patch

My melons are growing well!

I was worried last week when I saw the spots on my watermelon leaves but apparently they’re meant to look like that.

My rock melon, like many things in the past two weeks, has grown a lot as well.

That’s all for now. Next week there’s more transplanting to do we’re thinking of mulching some of the garden beds.  There’s more work on the fence to do, not to mention the chicken coop and the compost bays to build.

 

October Garden Share Collective

Hello, this is my first post for the Garden Share Collective. I’ve already found so many fantastic blogs through this and I’m excited to be a part of it. This post was meant to be posted a week ago, but for various reason’s that hasn’t happened so here it is now. For those new to my blog, I’m from Brisbane, Australia and beginning to set up my first ever garden. September has been a very busy month for us. We just managed to get the garden beds in place for planting, and boy, have I planted LOTS! We have a four raised bed crop rotation system with our brassicas and salads, legumes, roots and fruiting veges. We also have a pumpkin bed and a melon bed. We also have a strip near the fence which we’ve dug into the ground and are still in the process of edging. The first lot of planting I did was on the 7th of this month, where I planted out some tomato seeds in some seed trays on our made-from-scrap seed table. The next weekend we finished off the garden beds and planted a whole heap of things. In the seed raising trays we planted capsicums, russle lupins, more tomatoes, lettuces, broccolis and cauliflowers. Here is our seed raising table on the 13th   You can see in the background the raised beds and the fence which isn’t finished. The plants on the table are herbs we bought (and some dying tree seedlings, but that’s a story for a whole nother time) By the 20th some of the seeds were starting to show! There was more growth the next week. The broccoli was starting to grow and a few capsicums were starting to show. A few of the second lot of tomatoes I planted were showing and some of the russel lupins And the tomatoes grew taller. This weekend I started transplanting a few and have moved the seed raising trays into the beds. I think all the other seeds are growing fantastically there, these might too! Most of our initial planting was done direct into the garden beds. I spent quite some time getting all my labels together.   In the legume bed I planted some beans and peas. I planted a blue lake climbing bean, a baby sun dwarf bean, climbing snow peas and chickpeas. By the next weekend one of the beans was beginning to show and grew two leaves in a day. The garden had erupted but the 27th and all the beans were growing well except the baby sun beans. By this weekend only one of the three baby sun beans was showing so I planted some more. I also moved the russle lupins into the front of this bed. In the fruiting vegetable bed I planted three tomato seedlings, a grosse lisse, a tommy toe and a tigerella. These were from diggers advertised as a ‘long harvest’ collection. Around these I planted marigold seeds and three cucumber seeds. Two of my cucumber seeds sprouted and one of them was the first and biggest seed to show in the main beds. I have been tracking its growth with much excitement. I was a bit worried about one of my tomato plants (the one on the far right) but it looks like it is coming right. I have been giving my tomato plants crushed eggshells.   Here is the bed as of this weekend. The cucumbers are to the left. I planted another cucumber seed and some capsicum seeds to see how they compare to the ones I started off in the seed trays, which aren’t looking very exciting yet. My brassica bed was looking sad for a long while. One row of rocket at one end and one row of baby broccoli at the other, and nothing really much to see. This week both has grown considerably and I transplanted half of the brassicas I’d started off in seed trays (I’ve left the others to try next week or the week after as I think I might have moved them too early. I also sewed some seeds directly into the beds to see how they went. In this bed now I’ve got a whole rage of lettuces, cauliflowers and broccoli. In my root bed I planted two rows of carrots (a purple one ad a red one), a row of silverbeet and a row of beetroot. The plants are coming up nicely! In the melon patch I planted two rockmelons and two watermelons, planning on plucking out the weaker if two of each came up. Only one of each came up so that was perfect. Finally I planted some pumpkins. I had a pumpkin seed mix and two other types of pumpkins. I planted eight seeds and seven cam up! I’ve cut down to five but think it might still be too crowded, especially when I see how fast they are growing. From planted on the 13 of September, look how but they are by the 5th of October! The final thing we planted were herbs, these were all put in as seedlings  except we also started of some Basil and parsley seed in trays because they were free! Here’s how the herbs look just a few weeks later   Finally we planted some corn in the ditch I dug by the fence. We’ve also transplanted a logan berry there from my mum. It didn’t look too happy after the 45 minute car ride but we gave it some fertiliser and good soil and plenty of water. As you can see, it’s been a busy month! We haven’t harvested anything yet (except for a few leaves of herbs) but boy do we have a lot of plans! We’ve been working on building the fence and ran out of palings to finish it, so getting more wood and finishing it is on the to-do list. You can see it is multi coloured in the photo. My young man decided to use a primer he already had to save buying more, and ran out, so used another primer. He didn’t seem too worried about the finished paint looking two toned so we’ll see! The fence isn’t exactly straight so at worst it will just really look home-made by loving hands. If you look to the white part of the fence you can see the green garden edging by the corn. About 1/3 of the ditch has this, so doing the other 2/3ds is on the to-do list. We dumped half the soil from the ditch elsewhere on the property so once the edging is in we can replace it with the good soil. It will be a slightly raised bed. Then we have to continue to plant out seedlings and think about planting more of things we wish to succession plant. My young man has informed me that he could eat two carrots a day without even trying, so I think that is a hint to plant more. Outside of the garden we’ve got the chicken coop to build and fencing to improve.

Well, that’s enough from me I’ve got to write up this weekend down and find time to read everyone else’s garden shares!

Preserving the Harvest

One thing that’s been on my mind as I plant all my seeds and watch them grow is what to do with the food once it’s grown. Obviously, eat it. But I also know that many things can ripen at once and we may have more fresh food than two people can get through. Which leads me to… preserving.

I’ve had even less experience with preserving than I have with gardening,. I remember when I was young my mother bottled some fruit. I don’t remember the making of the jars of fruit, but I do remember the breakfast where the jars came out for us to eat. For some reason I decided I didn’t like it. Whatever the fruit it was a stone fruit, jarred whole with the skin on (or possibly there was just a bit left on accidently) and I remember finding it hard to cut into with my spoon and the skin got stuck in my throat and an argument erupted with me and my mother over if I would or would not eat the fruit. If I remember correctly, after many tears, it was an argument she won and the incident never repeated itself. She did used to (and still does) make jam from time to time and I always loved that, until illness left me unable to tolerate refined sugar or strawberries.

In America there’s a big culture of preserving. They have different names for things. They call putting food into jars “canning”. We  refer to food in cans as canned food, I think Americans call them “tins” and “tinned food”  (any American please feel free to correct me here!). They are also big on “pressure canning” which means you can preserve all sorts of vegetables and other foods that I have never seen preserved at home before. The sort of preserving I knew about from my childhood was mainly “bottled” or “jarred” fruit, things which can be made with what American’s call “water bath canning”. There was also a bit of preserving things in oil and pickling. It was usually (in my neighbourhood at least) something your mum did while you were off climbing trees and nicking old for sale signs to slide down hills on, rather than something your mum did with you to pass on the knowledge and skills. Which is why I’m researching online and learning all the American terms.

I think to start off with I’m going to look into “water bath canning”, it’s what the people around me are familiar with so asking for advice is easier, as is buying supplies. I will also look into freezing and dehydrating. Until I get some produce I won’t have much to preserve, but I don’t want to get caught short with a basket of tomatoes and not know what to do with them before they go soft. So I’m going to research methods and recipes and post my results here so when the time comes, I may not be ready but I’ll have something to fall back on other than a hurried phone call to my mother!

 

A Lot Can Happen in a Week!

My goodness! So much CAN happen in a week. My young man sent me a message at work mid week to tell me that seeds were sprouting up all over the place but I was still surprised when I got into the garden on Saturday and found how much everything had grown.   Lets start with our seed raising table. There’s been a bit of growth here. The first tomatoes have grown taller and some are showing the first of their true leaves.     Because we got a much higher strike rate than we expected (and we didn’t have a decent watering can when we first planted them, which meant a lot of the seeds were washed into one lump in their pot) we have a lot of seedlings forming really close together. I pulled some of the smaller ones in an effort to thin them out a bit.   It feels like the seeds we’ve planted in my mother’s seed raising box (which has a cover on) haven’t done as well as the ones we left out in the open. I have to remember they are a week behind the other’s though…   Here we have some tomatoes showing. A couple of grosse lisse seeds on the far left have sprouted. These were free seeds from my young man’s mother and aren’t new. Next we have the artisan tomato mix, also free seeds, and just over half of these have sprouted. You might be able to see one lone wild sweetie has also just sprouted.  On the far right is the russel lupin. I planted six seeds and four have sprouted so far.   I planted a few lettuce seeds of different types, hoping to be able to plant a few seeds every few weeks and have a succession of lettuces to harvest. A few have sprouted but not as many as I expected. Three of the capsicum seeds I have planted have come up but none of the mini ones. If I have time next weekend (I have a lot planned) I will plant some more capsicum and lettuce seeds if they haven’t shown themselves yet. I didn’t plant so many because I planted these the week after the tomatoes and I saw how many of them grew. There’s only so many capsicum plants one can have room for! The broccoli seems to be doing very well, quite a few seeds got planted as they were so small and the little punnets are already looking crowded. I might need to split these up, if that’s a good thing to do, before transplanting them into the beds. The cauliflowers are starting to sprout too.   Yesterday we had a busy day. We did some more work on the fence and were only halted after running out of palings. We were so close to the end too! Fortunately the gap is small so we can always block it up until we get more, which should make our little vegie garden deer proof. You can probably also see in this photo that there is a lot more green in the beds than there was last week! Lets start with my cucumber. Last week the biggest one was just showing it’s two first leaves. Now it is three times the size and showing it’s first true leaf. The smaller one behind it is still bigger than the biggest one was last week.   The only other things I have in this bed so far are the tomatoes we planted as seedlings, two of which are doing very well and one of which is doing ok, I think I should have buried it deeper. Not sure if digging it up and putting it in deeper is a good idea or not!   It is the tomato on the back right I am not sure about. I also planted some marigold seeds in this bed but they are too small to photograph well even through they are coming up. Once the capsicums are big enough they will go in here too. I forgot to take a photo of my rocket that I took a photo of last week, but it is growing. Here is the baby broccoli from the brassicas and salad bed. It was too small for a photo last week but this week you can see it! The root bed is also doing well. The silverbeet is growing well, though a little unevenly. The beetroot is also coming along nicely! I also planted two rows of carrot seeds. Monty Don says that carrot seeds are very slow to germinate and you can sew radishes on top. The radishes will grow more quickly, showing you where you sewed the carrots, and you can harvest them quickly before the carrots need the space. Well, either Monto Don has a different idea of what ‘slow to germinate’ means or they just grow faster in Australia or there was something other than carrots in my seed packets, but in two weeks I have a pretty clear idea of where I planted my carrot seeds! I sewed my carrot as thinly as I could in the hope of preventing having to thin them. The look a lot closer than I though I had them! The Melon patch is also showing activity. I planted two seeds each of watermelon and rockmelon in the hopes that at least one of each would grow and if they all grew I could thin out the weaker of each.   As you might be able to see one of each has grown which is perfect.   I took the same approach with the pumpkins, I planted one of each of the known varieties and for my ‘pumpkin heirloom mix’ I took out what looked to be one of each type of seeds and planted them, knowing it was probably too much for my 2.4 by 1.2 metre patch. I figured it was easier to sew too many and pull out what I didn’t want. I planted eight in all, four I knew what they were and four I didn’t. Well, boy have the pumpkins grown! They’ve gone from “I think a few of these might sprout” to “gee, I just don’t know what to do with all of these!” And look how big they’ve grown in just one week! Seven pumpkins sprouted. Two of these were doubles of known varieties so I pulled them out. This leaves two that I know what they are and three that I don’t know what they are I think five is too much for this bed size, but it’s hard to know what ones I should loose and how many. I want all my pumpkins that grow to be different so we can see which grow the best and we like most. Here is the biggest one so far.   The legume bed is the other one that’s doing very well. I should have remembered growing beans in yoghurt pots in primary school, but I must have forgotten because the growth in one week has surprised me.  Last week one of the beans was starting to grow. This week… Beans and peas everywhere! This is the bean that was growing last week. One week ago this snow pea wasn’t even showing! Look at all those leaves! Same for the chickpea, no sign of it last week. No sign of the baby sun beans yet. It’s very exciting seeing my little seeds grow from week to week. My young man I being a good boy an watering them every day. I’m not sure how much I will have to update on next week as I am working on Saturday and have a picnic on Sunday so I’m not sure how much time, if any, I will get to spend in the garden of my future home. No doubt the garden will be far more productive than I will!

Growing Begins!

There’s been some action in the garden since last weekend.

The tomato seeds I planted two weeks ago are beginning to turn into little seedlings.

Of the seeds I planted last weekend under cover a few are starting to show, such as the broccoli and cauliflower.

Hopefully more will be showing by next weekend. I didn’t expect any action in the main beds yet, but I was surprised! On Saturday morning one of the beans I planted in the legume bed was just starting to show. By Saturday afternoon it had its first two leaves and three other beans were starting to show. While there was no sign of any of the pumpkins or melons on Saturday, one appeared to be sending up something green this morning when I gave them a quick check.

Here you can see one of my cucumbers! Of the three I planted a week ago two are showing.

It’s hard to see In photos yet, but the two rows of salad and row of beetroot and silverbeet I planted are already showing too!

We still had a lot to do this weekend. I (with my young man’s help) finally finished digging out the ditch beside the fence. He was impressed when he realised how dense the clay I’d been hacking through was! We started edging this section with a cheap plastic garden edging that looked not so bad when we dug it into the ground rather than sitting it on top. We stoped because we ran out of pegs to pin the edging down. We also finished building the herb bed and planted the herbs in. This was a bit haphazard as we both had differing ideas of planting herbs in clumps v’s planting them in rows so each did our own thing, moving each other plants etc. as we went, but it was quite fun.

The big space in the middle is for the rosemary.

 

Finally, before the sun went, we managed to put up a little bit more of the fence. If you see the metal rod leaning against the fence post, we put up the palings to the left of that. Not much, bit it’s good to have a bit more of it up.

This photo I took this morning. You can just see the ditch by the fence where it has the edging. My young man planted some corn in there (after telling me he didn’t want to use that ditch for corn or grapes!) and you might just be able to see the corn planted in the ground. I think he must have had a moment of weakness when he walked past the corn seedlings while buying a new hose so I’ll forgive him.

We’ve come a long way in the past few weeks and now it will be exciting to see how the plants come along in the next few weeks! I’ve learnt a lot can grow in a week!