The Garden Share Collection – August 2013

Welcome to round two of the garden share collection, a lovely series of vegetable patches from all over the world, championed by Lizzie from Strayed from the table.

You’ll find a bit of a background to my vegetable patch, and round one here

So what’s new in this Wogs backyard?

Well, we’ve been attacked. By the crazy little nocturnal Possum family who love to forage around our back yard, and eat what WE should be eating.

Damn you beetroot-parsley-basil-chilli-capsicum-loving possums.

Our street comes to life after hours, with bandicoots eagerly digging holes in our lawns every night, rabbits breading and running amok and possums, who up until now were yet to discover our raised patches.  Thats what you get when you live on a street that backs onto a huge reserve.

Mr Wog brought home some bird netting that we have now covered our veggie patch with, however that was only good for 5 days. The bastards decided to chew through the plastic and still managed to make way for our parsley! Sly, sly, sly.

So out came the trusty yarn and I’ve managed to band aid the hole. I’m not sure how long it will last, but we’ll make do until we figure something out.

They are yet to discover our newly created vegetable patch with our winter veggies thank goodness.

So what’s new in the 2nd patch? Our edible purple kale has certainly taken off, and our peas have discovered the lattice, climbing north and chasing the sun. Broadbeans have also been added into the patch.

Mr Wog came home one day from work with 4 punnets of throw out Rainbow Chard. Each punnet had 6-8 seedlings. They were throw outs because in the retail garden nursery world, if a plant has signs of damage, yellow leaves, sun spots etc they are not deemed shelve quality and get thrown out. Much like the demand for supermarket ‘perfect’ fruits and vegetables. This annoys me greatly and I could write up a whole post on this subject, but for now I’ll just say I’m grateful to have a husband who works in a nursery and has a great head on his shoulders. We have put them in the bed next to the regular silverbeat and kale. I have no doubt these little beauties will survive and It infuriates me that they would have been doomed for the green bin otherwise.

Rainbow Chard throw outs

Our grape vine leaf who up until now has been dormant has come back to life with a beautiful new leaf growth. This grape vine has sentimental value to my husband, the tree belonged to his dear Grandma who had passed it onto her daughter, and now my husband. The grape vine has been uprooted from house to house through the generations and continues to live, producing masses of beautiful leaves, used to make dolmas, a hearty Armenian stuffed vine leave with rice and lamb mince.

Our chillis remain black for now, except for one ‘lady in red’. We haven’t had enough sun in Sydney over the last month for them to colour up properly, so we continue to enjoy black chillies.

Our ‘Pixie’ Lemon Tree shows little sign of disturbance since we transplanted her last month. There are a few yellow leaves, however she is producing new flowers and hopefully fruit soon.

We are experimenting with potatoes this month. I’ve planted up Kipflers and Pontiacs in sacks. Mr Wog bought the potato seeds from work as he said while potatoes you find at the shops sprout, they have more than likely been sprayed to to be safe we’ve bought special ‘seed’ potatoes.

I spent a good Saturday morning separating one old flat leaf parley pot and as a result was able to pull out almost 40 separate plants!! It’s amazing how one pot can multiply and produce so many pups! I hope these thrive and don’t immediately go to seed. Time will tell 🙂

The Compost Bin I received for Mothers Day is almost half full. We continue to throw in all our kitchen scraps and it has broken down nicely. I think the mixture is too moist though and lately I’ve noticed a trillion little flies, buzzing around inside. I’m not sure if they’re fruit or vinegar flies or how to get rid of them. Is this suppose to happen? I’ve been googling some information and it ranges from ‘spraying’ the heap which I don’t want to do, to adding more newspaper to dry them out.

Meet Hoot. Hoot had long straight shallot hair growing on top, but the black aphids destroyed the plant before we were able to reap the benefits of her hair cut. We decided to give Hoot a perm this month with curly parsley. A girl needs a new style every now and again 😉

See you in the garden again in September!

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