We've planted tomatoes, basil, peas, corn, shallots and capsicum. This should give us a good start on salsa's and pasta sauces, plus some fresh veggies in the summer.
We also planted some seedlings of Italian parsley and spearmint in a soup pot which lost some of it's enamel in dramatic fashion. They will stay as inside plants, providing fresh parsley for cooking and lovely fresh mint to flavour water or make tea.
Without any more advertising than a link on my Facebook, this little blog has already gained 130 page views! It's very exciting. However, it would be a lot more fun if someone would leave a comment! So let us know, are you starting on the path to self-sufficiency? Did you just get your spring planting started? What are your projects for summer? We'd love to hear from you!
Cheers, Emma
i have yet to reclaim the veggie patch from the weeds.
ReplyDeleteLas season i planted upward of fifteen tomatoe plants ranging form cherry tomatoes, to beef steak to a selection of heirloom varieties, I also purchased a preserving kit and was all ready for a bumper season. Sadly last summer was very hot, some of them were baked on the vine, and the others, well they became wallaby food, or possum food i'm not sure which but i barely got enough fruit off the vine to put in my sandwiches.
So needless to say i'm discouraged.
I ventured out today to find all my fruit trees are still alive so they got some fertaliser and water, i'll be tending them wedding them to help them out a bit and trying to get them into states that will render a crop in a few years. And i need to see if i can get through the weeds and find out what state my strawberries and rhubarb are in.
As for the veggie patch...i still feel at this stage that there's not a lot of point, it'll just feed the wildlife, and my roses have an awful aphid problem that will transfer to the veggies if i don't sort that out but i don't want to use chemicals. It's all very complicated.
I wonder if some netting might help to protect the vegie patch. Even a couple of posts in the corners of a raised bed and some bird netting thrown over might help to keep the possums and wallabies out.
DeleteYou're doing better with the fruit trees then we are! The cherries and apple didn't make it through last years' hot summer, but mum's fig tree is doing ok. Having it near the front door, where you can see it everyday and water it when it needs made a huge difference. Maybe we should put the fruit trees in big wine barrels near the front door until they get better established and then put them in the yard.