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Babies really do take up a lot of time. One minute you’ve got little laying quails, 4 chickens laying delicious yellow yolked eggs and a garden that looks like this:

 

Pineapple sage, russian tarragon, lettuce and marigolds

Then you look out your back door for the first time in months and the weeds are up past your armpits. I can’t blame it all on having a little one – we’re all pretty busy… and pretty lazy.

So it’s time for an overhaul. We’ve just had a water tank installed and it’s already half full! and I am becoming SO sick to death of not having fresh herbs to put in my cooking and I really enjoy going out and having a peek at what’s happening with the vegies.  Unfortunately our quails and chickens have moved on. The plan is to get just 2 chickens this time – more than enough eggs for the 3 of us.

Once we (Read: Darren) cleared all the weeds and long grass we found a few troopers still growing – nay – flourishing in the undergrowth. Here’s a list of what we were able to save:

 

Lavender, Pineapples and Oregano

pineapple sage – you can eat the leaves and beautiful red flowers
oregano – saved by the longer weeds shading it for a year.
lemon grass – this stuff is HARDY
roma tomato – just decided to pop up from a wild seed, now we have  4 of them.
pineapple – twisted the tops of storebought pineapples and shoved them into the ground then forgot about them
chili – also from a wild seed from last season. It was growing right up against the shed, hence the beautiful long stem – it’s definitely the centrepiece of the garden.
russian tarragon – a perennial. I learned something new
aloe – still kicking.

Our very pretty chili plant, under it is the aloe and the CRAZY lemongrass

So we turned over the soil, added some compost, slow release fertiliser and then a bit of potting mix to the areas around the new stuff.

Darren planting the capsicum (that stick in the back there is one of the four raspberry plants) and the supervisor – Lennox

We threw down some seeds:
Mint and thyme – scattered these between the stepping stones, we’ll see how they go.
mixed rock flowers
poached egg flowers
marigold flowers – these are great companion plants
spinach
lettuce
radishes – the very new shoots are so tasty

We also popped in some seedlings from the Ferny Grove Markets and Bunnings
mint
thyme
french red spring onion
rosemary
coriander (a big one – it often doesn’t grow well if it’s small)
chives
basil
sweet chocolate capsicum
tigerella tomato
lemon drop tomato
heirloom tomato
raspberry
strawberry
purple carrots
bok choy
lavender
dill
tatsoi lettuce
butter Lettuce

Thyme and Purple Carrots – Very exciting!

Coriander

So there you go – 35 different plants – the majority are edible. Hopefully we’ll actually get to eat them! The most exciting thing about this project is that it’s cost us only about $120 for everything including the mulch, mushroom compost, some soil,  fertilizer, liquid fertilizer, seeds and seedlings. We probably could have done it for way less than this but sometimes it’s easier to get more established plants.

I can’t wait to eat it ALL!