There were a few things I didn’t want to do in establishing our vegie patch, but I’ve gone & done them anyway. Here are my confessions:
1. 1. I wanted to ‘create’ soil rather than bring anything in but we just don’t produce enough scraps to create the mountain of compost that’s needed to do this plus not having decent soil was really putting off the rest of the project. We had a load of sandy loam with mushroom mulch delivered – the new pup thought mushroom mulch was delicious (she has a strange palette, she feels the same way about rabbit and kangaroo poo, if she keeps this up, we’ll never have to feed her!)
2. 2. I wanted to start all my seeds myself and not buy seedlings. I especially didn’t want to buy crappy seedlings from a crappy place like the supermarket or a big hardware chain and I managed that part of the deal. In terms of starting the seeds myself, at this time of year it requires somewhere warm to get things going. We have sheets of polycarbonate that are the roof of the old bathroom at the shack that I want to use to build my version of a glasshouse but not having anything sorted about where I would put my ‘polycarbonate house’ was delaying things as well. So, I finally went seedling shopping at Bendigo Wholefoods. The folk there were super friendly and helpful – a great source of advice and information as well as seedlings.
3. 3. I was going to work an hour a day in the garden and not ‘wreck myself’ over it. Well, with seedlings waiting to go in… you can see where this is going, can’t you?
So, I’ve finally started the vegie gardens. So far we have planted:
Garlic (actually this was missed when digging up last year's crop so it doesn't really count!)
Carrots (orange & purple)
Onions (brown & red)
Leeks (I counted 113 - I'm assuming a high attrition rate!)
Parsnip
Cauliflower
Broccoli (two varieties)
Kale
and Kohlrabi.
So, we'll see how that goes. I'll keep you posted.
Cheers!
