Everett Street Garden

Four friends from high school asked me to build them a garden in their backyard.  Adjacent to a large cemetery, I quickly found that the condition of the soil was going to be very easy to work with. Additionally, the spot we chose for the garden get's a serious 9-10 hours of sunlight daily (which can be too much for some plants) but is certainly a good amount of sun for a new vegetable garden.

Here's what the area looked like as I started to get the ground prepared.

After taking off the layer of grass and moving that aside to continue growing on the lawn, I forked the entire area to get some air and light into the ground.  Although I planned to build a no dig garden, I did want the bottom of the garden to be as arid as possible.

Next, it was time to start building up.  First, a few layers of leaves and newspaper.

Here's what the area looked like after a few layers of all that organic matter.  The inks from the paper might not be the best for the garden, but the paper will break down naturally over time and help condition the soil by keeping in additional moisture.

Finally, I built up small areas of soil where I planted the initial bunch of veggies; I filled in the other areas with leaves, knowing that I would be adding more soil, compost, manure, etc. to the garden in due time.

This is still a work in progress, but here's what the garden looks like most recently; currently growing in the garden: tomatoes (three varieties), capsicums (three varieties), green beans, snap peas, eggplant, parsley, cucumber, zucchini, watermelon, radishes, lettuce, arugula...

Royal Veggies

The Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney has been collecting and studying plants since 1816.  Nearly two hundred years later, the gardens spread a massive 30 hectares south of the Sydney Harbour and house over 15 different feature gardens.  The first time I experienced the garden in 2012 I simply enjoyed a stroll around the park, as I made my way from The Rocks to Woolloomooloo.  Recently, as I showed my friend Carolyn the gardens for the first time, we stumbled upon the the vegetable gardening efforts currently going on in the park.

These raised beds are a great size and shape for easy maintenance.  Plants can be easily separated by size and variety.  I can't say I'm a huge fan of growing Papaya trees in raised beds, as I've gone through the process of removing them from my raised beds at home already.  However, there's plenty of room here and nearly a dozen raised beds so using one for some fruit trees works.

My favorite part of the garden, and what really caught my attention to document the project were these massive tomato trellises.  Around the base are about 10 different tomato plants, ready to take on the summer sun and use these structures to grow as tall as can be.  Tomatoes love support as they grow, and this setup really lets them reach their full potential.

Another great project going on here, and something I have yet to adopt at home, is worm farming.  As the sign reads, worm farming is easy and great for producing healthy organic fertilizer to be used on all of your plants.

And last, but certainly not least, composting!

These guys use multiple processes in their composting efforts, similar yet different to the multiple steps I use at home.  Here they use an open wooden container to collect their garden scraps and rubbish where the green matter breaks down before being added to the compost bins.

It's really important to see projects like this set up in a botanic garden.  Quite often gardening organizations forget about the importance of growing your own fruits and vegetables, and get lost in the pretty trees and fragrant flowers.  Amongst all of the beauty and flowering, there's plenty to learn while exploring the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney.

Crystal Greens

Tucked peacefully up in the hills southwest of Mullumbimby in the Byron Bay hinterland is a labyrinth of gardens filled with beautiful flowering plants and some gigantic crystals.  I thoroughly enjoy the tranquil spirit flowing through this space, The Crystal Castle.  Something new I found this time grabbed even more of my attention...the vegetable garden!

There are nearly ten raised beds here on this sunny hill, with a variety of vegetables, herbs, greens, and inspiration for home-gardeners.

This rainbow chard is a mix of different colors and varieties, and everything looks healthy and happy here.  I wonder how these vegetables would look growing at the foot of some of the massive crystals around here...any thoughts @CrystalCastleBB?

The best part of this vegetable garden, and a design I plan to incporporate soon into my north-facing garden, are these sun shades.  Perfect for some of the more vulnerable lettuces, young seedlings, tomatoes; all vegetables that are subject to sun stress.  The sun is a really important element to growing food for myself all year round, but there are times that my plants could really use a bit of shade, and these screens are going to be a great solution.

What's For Dinner? (First Tomato Harvest)

You couldn't possibly have thought I'd let you have the fourth day of our ongoing Project in Brisbane. While we've been spoiled to some beautiful gardens from an urban paradise, things around my vegetable garden aren't looking too shabby either.  While this certainly isn't everything going into tonight's dish, our first tomato harvest proudly calls for another installment of What's For Dinner?

If you've been keeping up to date with the progress of vegetables in my garden, you'll remember these tomato plants mentioned with some delicious radishes.  The raised bed these tomatoes are flourishing in used to hold a papaya tree (also self-sewn at some point years ago) that rendered this space somewhat useless.  That was, until I dug out the papaya tree (they don't do so well in this spot anyway) and made room for new plants to grow.

Just before the beginning of winter (sometime in May) I planted broccoli in this bed, and it's already come and gone.  While the broccoli was first growing, tomato plants galore began appearing and luckily I know what these little guys look like, so out came the weeds and the tomatoes remained.

It's now taken nearly four months for these plants to really develop and begin producing proficiently, but alas, our first harvest.  I know this might not look like a lot of tomatoes, but remember I'm just a self-sufficient gardener.  This load should be plenty to mix in with a salad tonight, for two.

Happy gardening!

Welcoming The New Guy

One of the most interesting facets of gardening for me is to witness and keep track of which seeds and seedlings take care of themselves, and which ones you have to struggle with to keep alive.  Sowing seeds directly into my garden has had many different success levels.  Using @Mr_Fothergills has even had mixed outcomes; but by far the best producing organic seed from the best Australian seed provider has been radishes.  And finally, after just four weeks of growing (we've had an incredibly mild, dare I say hot, winter Down Under)...my first radish appears.

Beneath my harvest you'll see just one small bunch of them still left in the ground.  After planting this first group, and realizing how well they were taking off in the garden, I decided to grow through the whole packet of seeds throughout different areas of the garden...looks like we'll be enjoying these for a while.  I separated the planting by about 2-3 weeks, as they take between 4-8 weeks before harvest and I didn't want to get a whole bunch at once, but rather enjoy them over a period of time.

This small chili pepper did really well until May, when I decided to harvest everything to start a collection of dried peppers...and finally we can see some new growth, flowers, and few small chilies scattered about.

Above: Kale and Silver beet, two staples in my cooking
and
Below: Rocket abound, we'll be enjoying this for a while as well...

A whole bunch of different varieties of tomatoes self-seeded the past few months, and they've survived shockingly well for this garden and climate.  We're just starting to enjoy the benefits.

And there you have it, the current state of affairs...

Back To Life

After 17 weeks away from home you can only imagine the state my garden was in.  Although there was a couple renting the house for the better part of 14 weeks, and although they seem to be hobby gardeners, there was certainly plenty of work to be done.  It's now been almost 8 weeks without a serious rain here in Northern NSW and man does the soil tell the story...rock solid. Another surprise I came across were ashes from the fireplace that had been added to the raised beds.  Turns out ash can be used as a great input for compost as it adds valuable nutrients and can deter insects & weeds from accumulating.  I started by forking the beds in order to loosen the soil and prepare all the areas where I planned to @addmoregreen.

Below is a display of how we have the compost setup at home.  On the left are two small trash bins that are used on a daily basis for kitchen scraps such as orange peels and egg shells (only Guy eats eggs though).  When those bins are full we add their contents (usually quite smelly) to one of the larger bins on the right.  The triangle shaped bin takes much longer to process as the contents sit stagnant for much of the time unless you have a compost turning tool.  The tumbler on the right is our greatest piece of compost equipment.  When I go out each day with the kitchen scraps to add to the trash bins I give the tumbler a good six or seven spins which speeds up the process...nearly twice as fast as the triangle bin.

Next, I took the contents from the tumbler which were ready after our 17 weeks away from home and added them to the areas I already forked.  To this mix I added Yates Dynamic Lifter and Searles 5 In 1.  With freshly forked soil and natural fertilisers added to the beds, I stirred it all together using my garden fork again and then gave the beds a nice drink of water to settle the fertilisers in place.  Now that the soil was ready for new plants I spread out the "starts" in an arrangement that would allow each to get an optimal amount of sun while also working off each other in a permaculture sense (basil near the tomatoes, etc.).

And finally, I got my hands dirty...NO GLOVES!

I hope this post has been a great example for turning your old and worn out soil into something more useful and beautiful.  Let us know what you thought about this post in the comments section.  Take a peek at the pictures below to see exactly what I added to the garden.  Also, be sure to check back for upcoming posts as I will be posting more pictures as all of these plants progress!

Lettuce- Mignonette Mixed

Found these vines growing in two different pots when I got home.  Initially, I thought it was pumpkin but a friend added her input stating the vines are watermelon...I suppose we will have to wait and see when these plants begin to produce.

Tomatoes!

Lettuce- Mixed

Roma Tomatoes

Silverbeet- Fordhook Giant

Eggplant

Deep Roots

Growing up I always enjoyed the fresh veggies my parents grew on our deck.  Visiting home for the weekend I was again pleased to see some delicious greens in their same spot...thanks Mom and Dad for teaching me how to @addmoregreen