Dark, damp soil.

Victoria has had some rain. The farmers are happy, their crops are going well, as are ours. The inner northern suburbs of Melbourne never get the rain of the eastern suburbs, but what we have had has made a noticeable difference.

Carrots, Beetroot and Silverbeet in a raised bed.

In our time living here and growing our own food we have never had even close to average rainfall, so we didn't actully know what difference a little of the wet stuff makes. The garden has taken off giving us plenty of food (and weeds).

Golden acre mini cabbages in a raised bed.

One of my favorite additions to our back garden has been the nasturtiums, I bought an Alaska seed mix and love the way they wind around the raised beds.

The trailing habit of Nasturtiums.

producing abundant bright flowers that attract lots of bees and add a nice touch of pepper to a salad.

Nasturtium flowers.

Another delight this time of the year brings is the Globe Artichoke harvest. Globe artichokes are a member of the thistle family, the edible part is the base of the unopened flower and about 10cm of the stem just below.

Green Globe Artichokes

Every year we look forward to the first artichokes and then fifteen minutes into their fiddly preparation we start looking forward to the end of the artichoke season. It is worth it though when you get them on a plate.

The Brassicas have done well with a drop of rain and a weak Seaweed, Comfrey, Wormjuice etc. tea kicks them along nicely.

Green Calabrese forming heads with splashes of Seaweed tea.

Remember when harvesting members of the Brassica family to lift the entire root from the ground to prevent build up of soil pathogens such as the Brassica disease, Clubroot.

Cabbage root.

The summer veg seedlings are also coming along nicely. I have four different kinds of Tomato; Roma, Tommy Toe, Tigerella and Grosse Lisse. As well as Black Beauty Eggplant, California Wonder Capsicum and Jalapeno Chilli. The general rule here in Melbourne is to plant your Tomatoes out not before Melbourne cup day, so they are currently enjoying the protection of a plastic sunhouse.

Tomato seedlings.

The nicest part of this lifestyle is to feel the seasons, and to come back around to Spring after a Winter hibernation feels great. Our Summer harvest is planned and the work we put in only a few months ago is giving us a bountiful, healthy, organic Spring feast.

Basketful of Spring goodness.

Cheers.

Hell's Vegie Patch

It's not often we get temperatures like those in the chart above in Melbourne, but when it does get in to the high 30's or low 40's (c) the vegies need a little help.

To avoid the kind of damage shown at left a shade cloth cloche is ideal.

My raised beds are rectangular and have wooden stumps at the corners and along the sides, the stumps not only hold up the sides of the bed, they allow me to fix things to the top.

Drilling down into the top of the stumps allows lengths of dowel to be inserted which are capped at the top end by a length of pine which stretches across the bed to the opposite stump/dowel structure.

recessions are drilled into the pine to allow them to sit securely on the dowel. Next I cut shade cloth to incorporate the length and width of the bed as well as side and end flaps to allow for the depth (which is equal to the length of the dowel).

To secure the shade cloth simply screw cup hooks into the top of the stumps, one for each side stump, and two, at 90 degrees to each other, for the end stumps, all hooking/opening out from the bed. You can also use this structure to support bird netting.

I also fix the filter/pressure regulator unit for my drip irrigation system to the top of one of the stumps for easy access.
**BTW remember that if your Veg. require pollination open up the shade cloth cloches in the mornings before the heat of the day to let the pollinators at them or you'll be doing a lot of tomato tickling **

The dream begins...

What we do to try and provide our own requirements is to a certain degree based on the permaculture principles, however when your block is as small as ours there are certain compromises to be made. Our front garden is made up mostly of ornamentals some of which I'm proud to say are native... Pretty much what we have is inherited from the previous owners, neither myself nor Sarah Belly are very knowledgeable regarding ornamentals. There is also a miniature peach tree, a miniature nectarine, two miniature apples, a kalamata olive (a must in a very European/Mediteranean Brunswick), several artichokes and as of recently a 2.5*1.2m raised bed (owned & operated by Sarah Belly).

In the back garden we have a laundry containing the hot water service which gives us a warm microclimate for homebrewing. Besides this we have a chook run and hen house, 4 raised beds, and one standard (non-raised) bed. Initially I had to construct raised beds along one boundary to lift vegs out of the reach of the roots of a neighbours peppercorn tree. Very shortly after I had lost blood sweat and tears constructing the raised beds (an accident prone with his first angle grinder experience), they removed the tree...


Here is the first raised bed, (along with the wicking experiment), the wick was never going to work in a high raised bed built with the "no dig" method as the drainage is too good and you can't create a shallow enough sink to wick from, kids learn from my mistakes...








Then the second smaller one...
Jemima and mascara were suitably impressed..











Then there were four...

O.K. so they weren't pretty in the classical sense, but, they are very practical and extremely productive. imagine them with healthy, tasty, fresh veg pouring out of them.


Cheers Aldrum