Garden Share Collective – October 2013

Spring is in full swing in Sydney. The birds are chirping, butterflies flying and pollen flowing. My veggie patch is in overdrive, feeding us daily with its delights.

Onion weeds are also relishing the warmth. They’ll be the bane of me. I spent a whole Saturday morning uprooting onion weeds from my veggie patch, as carefully as I could to ensure I removed the bulb whole. The veggie patch looked wonderfully clean but my back bore the brunt of it.

weeded, and ready to replant

Gone too were the coral lettuce and rocket plants that both went to seed. Compost was added to the soil as I aerated it, ready for its new crop.

We planted eggplant, both the large variety and Lebanese eggplants. 6 of each variety from seedlings. I hope they take off, eggplant is one of our favourite vegetables and always present at the dinner table.

The eggplant plant we planted in March somehow survived the winter and kept flowering. The weather was too cold for it to form fruit until now. This little one finally made an appearance after 6 months and I feel like a proud Mumma eager to watch her baby grow.

Our Grosse Lisse tomato plants have been transplanted into larger containers, but really are ready to go into the ground. Space was an issue however a solution has been found, more on that later 😉

Along with the Grosse Lisse seeds, we’ve gone a little tomato crazy and planted the following seeds: Roma’s, Black Russian, Oxheart, tomato Apollo and low acid yellow and red cherries.

Hoot’s hair really isn’t growing at all!! She’s had this style now for 2 months and while it suits her, I’d like to give girlfriend a haircut every now and again.

As I do every Sunday, I took my daughter to our farmers markets for a morning out. I couldn’t believe the price of lettuce. $3 for a small iceberg or $24 per kg for the mixed leaf variety. I haven’t had to buy any for months now, all from a small $2.50 seedlings punnet. And nothing beats home grown. We eat so much lettuce, daily in sandwiches, a leaf ever now and then in a green smoothie and of course our daily salad side with dinner. Best of all, you don’t have to cut the whole plant, just remove however many leaves you require from the plants outer leaves and watch the plant regrow for your next meal.  No space? That’s ok, lettuce is very forgiving and will grow almost anywhere. I grow mine in a terracotta herb pot on my deck.

We have peas!! I had grand plans of serving minted peas with our meals but then never quite make it to the kitchen. The temptation to eat them straight off the plant is too strong.

We have broadbeans!! Ditto peas!! The best snack is walking outside, pinching a few broadbean pods off the plant, ripping them open and enjoying the beans as is. Bliss.

Kale, kale, kale, never ending kale..

Our Silverbeet plants are recovering well from the possum attack. Now that they’re well protected under the net, they’ve quickly rejuvenated and we’ve even been able to harvest some as a spinach substitute in gozleme.

I planted some string bean seeds and talk about Jack and the Bean Stalk, these little suckers made an appearance in just 4 days, and full seedlings in 10 days!

day 4 and day 10

I harvested our baby beetroots last week, nothing quite like home grown. A new batch of seeds were planted directly into the veggie patch as oppose to seedling trays like we did in the past. I may have to thin them out as my hand slipped and too many seeds were thrown in, too close together.

Our Kipfler and Pontiac potatoes continue to just do their thing, happy in their hessian bags.

We planted up our Blueberry shrub in a blue glazed pot, I hope we’re able to harvest many blueberries in the warmer months to come.

In the past, I’ve always bought seedlings, reliable and easy to transplant however I have to admit I’m thoroughly enjoying sowing seeds from scratch and watching them grow. Nothing quite like doing a grand tour every morning, chai in hand and seeing the growth first hand.

Buying seed packets has become somewhat of an obsession. Forget shoes and bags, this girl just wants seeds!

The Spring weather has been perfect for cucumbers and a batch of Lebanese cucumbers as well as its close cousin, green zucchini and Lebanese zucchinis were sown last week.

Thank you for joining me on another Garden Share Collective post, special thanks to Lizzy at Strayed from the Table  for hosting this brilliant series.

My veggie patch’s progress can be found here. We’ve come a long way in the short 4 Garden Share Collective posts. I hope this series has inspired you to don some gardening gloves and embrace the greenie in you.