The Vegetable Garden

With the seven year drought seemingly over in our region and with the extra water storage installed we decided to resurrect our vegetable garden for the summer.
We buy heaps of lettuce, tomatoes and various herbs every week so we decided that growing these would not only save a bit of money (have you seen what's happening in the stock market lately?????) but more importantly provide us with very fresh organically grown pesticide free produce.
So it was a matter of spraying off all the weeds that had taken over while the garden had been laying fallow, digging it over, adding soil conditioner to improve water holding capacity as well as lime and blood and bone fertilizer.

We also decided that pumpkin, squash, zucchini (courgettes) and cucumbers might also be a good idea seeing they are easy to grow and are relatively disease resistant.

We also selected two types of tomato, capsicums (red peppers), basil and rocket (arugula)

and half a dozen different types of lettuce which we will plant every two weeks or so to ensure a continuous supply.

Naturally the weeds which had been seeding unabated for years think all their Christmases have come at once with the addition of fertilizer and copious amounts of water and are thriving just as well as the veges. But hoe-man (and hoe-woman) are keeping them at bay.

Of course we have to protect the whole area from kangaroos, possums, parrots and satin birds which means enclosing the area with a wire netting fence and covering it with some spare vineyard netting.

On our back veranda we also have a potentially good supply of rosemary, more basil, chives and oregano.