In My Garden - Melissa April 2020

In My Garden - Melissa

Come for a wander in Melissa's new garden. She certainly has done a lot of work in only one year!

We moved into our garden in Bellerive about a year ago. It had been rented for many years and the garden was unfortunately very overgrown - mirror bushes, thorn bushes, climbing roses extending metres over lawn, and weeds....so many weeds! We've spent months removing them all, and are still trying to get on top of regrown. The nasturtiums seem to have seeded for years, so while I don't mind a nastursium or two, we have hundreds growing on a daily basis. I am not sure how long seed for these remains viable in the soil, but I'm hoping after a year or two I have them under control too. So it's a very early garden in terms of growing things, but in a year or two we might have more to show.

This is an area that had some very strange paving, knee high weeds and under the paving about 25cm of paving sand. We've removed the sand (and re-purposed it under new paving we are putting in) and are about to put bags of shredded paper, compost, bales of pea straw and some soil removed from the front garden ready for some winter vegies at the end of the month.

I took my eye off the ball and this new nashi I planted is covered in pear and cherry slug. Hopefully the tree will be strong enough to get through the winter. 

This is the new vegie patch we put in not long after we moved in. We covered the grass with cardboard, then layers of straw, compost, soil and cow manure. Unfortunately the manure arrived with a creeping grass (maybe twitch, or something similar). So I got a season of peas, lettuce, silverbeet and tomatoes and then had to cover the whole bed with black plastic to try and kill the invasive grass. This garden will be out of action until Spring, sigh, but hopefully then the grass will be killed. I've put bags of sheep poo, mushroom compost and coffee grounds on the garden before I covered it, and the little sneak peak I've had shows many worms very happy. Hopefully that means I'll have great soil when eventually the garden can be used again.

This was a really strong and prolific Broad Ripple Yellow Currant heirloom tomato. It's now hanging upside down and the remaining green tomatoes are turning yellow. Thought we also make a great Green Tomato Pickle so for any remaining green tomatoes they won't be wasted.

These are some Cascade hops we had growing up the western side of the house. We harvested them 3 weeks ago, and the hops were dried, frozen and this week put into a home brew beer. Fingers crossed it works and we plan to have more hops over more of the west side of the house next season.

These are my seeds ready to plant in the new garden bed (See first two photos). These are silverbeet, spinach, leeks, perpetual spinach and lettuce. 

I bought this Brown Turkey fig from the nursery. It's growing really well, but seems to have about 20 stems coming out. Is this normal for a fig to almost be coppiced? 

This is a lemon tree that was very yellow leaved and rangy a year ago. I drastically cut it back (following advice from Gardening Australia), surrounded it with fertilizer and watered it well - and it looked awful for a few months. Then off it went and is now large, lush and green. It doesn't have any flowers on it, but hopefully these come as it looks far more healthy now.

I planted some Chilcotin raspberry canes and some Autumn Bliss canes last winter. This summer we had about 4 raspberries from the Chilcotin canes. Then the last 3-4 weeks we've had heaps (it fruits in summer and again in Autumn), and now the Autumn Bliss has joined it with the biggest tastiest raspberries I've ever eaten. And I've eaten a lot of raspberries!! Although producing less berries than the other canes, the taste of the Autumn Bliss makes me consider pulling all the other ones out and just having less, but tastier raspberries next season. I need to learn to prune the canes first after fruiting, then I'll decide.

I run three compost bins. I've written 'No' on 2 lids, and 'Yes' on one lid. Just helps me (and my kids) remember which is the one we are currently feeding. My favourite compost helper is the compost corkscrew to help aerate it, plus my husband brings home 1-2 bags of shredded office paper a week which also goes in. If anyone ever wants shredded office paper just let me know, we seem to often have a bag or 5 to spare.

Last winter my friend pruned their Black Genoa fig and their pomegranate tree. I took about 20 cuttings of each, and have managed to grow on 2 pomegranates and 6 figs. I've planted one Black Genoa fig in the garden, and will keep growing these a little longer then they'll probably make it to the school fair in November (if school is back by then....!!).

Things I'm working on or would like to investigate over coming months: bee hives in suburban gardens in Clarence (hopefully I can have one, and have it looked after by a specialist and the bees will help me with pollination), flowering natives, growing an avocado, putting in some rhubarb crowns, growing more hops and making some IBC wicking beds down the middle of the very long driveway.  Hopefully in a year or so I'll have more of the garden growing things other than creeping twitch and weeds, and love to actually have you visit in person. Until then though, I'm taking this 'stay at home' message as a gift to my garden. It's certainly getting a lot more attention now I'm not at work every day.

Thanks for sharing a snapshot of my garden with me, Melissa