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.

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!

Name That Vegetable

One of the beauties of composting is that you never know what seedlings and starts will perk up out of the soil on a daily basis.  Sometimes these volunteers are not so good for your veggie garden, like papaya or the rampant lemon grass (both better in the ground or lemon grass in a pot).  But sometimes you get surprised with wonderful veggies that addmoregreen.  Take this peculiar squash-like vegetable for example...

I added some of this greatness to the pizza I made tonight, the only issue is that I have no idea what the vegetable actually is.  When I initially let the volunteer take off, I thought the cotyledons resembled those of a cucumber...boy was I wrong!  So, I need some help on this one if anyone knows what vegetable this is...in any case it was delicious!

What's For Dinner?

Before preparing dinner every day I step out to the garden first to check what fresh veggies I can base my dish upon for the evening.  Tonight, what's for dinner? GREENS!

These greens were all planted about a month ago from seedlings and they've taken off...I can easily pick from any of the varieties daily.

Above we have Silverbeet, Asian Cabbage Tokyo Bekana (crazy name I know), Basil, and more Cabbage.

Rocket and Bok Choy in the other bed.  I've been adding Rocket to my hummus lately and it's delicious.

Tonight I'm going to add Bok Choy, Silverbeet, and Asian Cabbage Tokyo Bekana to a yummy pasta dish...hope my friends coming over enjoy it!

UPDATE

Friday 13 September, 2013

This post has now become the first in a series focused on some of my daily harvests from the garden.

Check out What's For Dinner?

The Power of Juicing

Fruits and vegetables are an integral part of your daily intake; we've heard all the rules about how many and when specifically during the day, but to me what really matters is just making sure they go in one way or another.  If you have ten minutes to spare each day for the sake of consuming something delicious, juicing could be a good way for you to spend that time.  Here's an example of what goes into my juice...

The workstation: cutting board with heaps of delicious fruits and vegetables, compost bucket for food scraps, power juicer, juice collector (I prefer a measuring cup).

A good portion of what you see comes from the gardens and fruit trees at home: chives, kale, silverbeet, starfruit, roma tomatoes.  The oranges and carrots are both organic juicing products from local health food stores.

And a delicious finished product.  I'm not a nutritionist, and don't want to pretend to be a preacher of healthy living secrets...I am, however, a very healthy vegetarian who experiences the delight of consuming fresh fruits and vegetables first hand.  You can read more about what other's have to say here.