How Does My Garden Grow.

This is my garden.

Please ignore the weeds and the grass growing where they shouldn’t be and simply marvel at how green it is, like I am!

Since we live on almost ten acres of land, we have a BIG veggie garden. It’s bigger than our entire back yard was when we lived in the city! Having space is one of the best things about living here (countered by terrible net access so don’t be too envious). It means that we can dream big, plan big and think big – even if we don’t ever seem to have the time, money or knowledge to make it all a reality.

My Veggie garden is divided into two sections…

This half which has fixed beds and the duck house.

And this half which doesn’t.

The half with the fixed beds is the bit we attempt to use all year round.

Currently this half is looking lush and green and productive which is a first for us for this time of the year. I really am a fair weather gardener only, so if won’t grow pretty much by itself over winter then it doesn’t grow in our garden! This year’s winter hasn’t been too cold and horrible so I managed to sneak in some broccoli and cauli seedlings and pop in some peas and broad beans which have all done ok with a lot of neglect.

This half of the garden is where most of the herbs grow (the orange flowers you see in the photos are Calendula which have been flowering pretty much all year). It’s home to our crazily prolific rhubarb and the strawberry bed (though that is on it’s last legs and will need to be started over somewhere new next year I expect). This year we’ve also thrown some potatoes in an empty bed over this side and relocated the onions and garlic to accommodate the new duck house.

The other half of the garden is simply bare dirt at the moment.

Up until a few weeks ago it was covered in weeds and grass and that is how it is for all of the winter. Then the Little Orange Tractor (as oposed to the big Geriatric Tractor) comes along in spring and rotary hoes a few times and then all this lush brown dirt magically appears.

We learnt the hard way that trying to weed and dig over a huge garden like ours was way too much hard work for us. That is when the tractor idea came in. It means we can leave this area to it’s own devices over winter when we don’t need it, and let the tractor do all the hard work come spring when we’d like the extra space. Plus it gave the Baldy Boy a good excuse to buy a new tractor tool!

It needs one more go of tractoring (hopefully this week) and then this half of the garden is where most of the summer stuff will grow.

So that’s our veggie garden. We also have an ‘orchard’ (in inverted commas because we’re yet to see any fruits from our labour), and a large fenced off ‘back yard’. The back yard is mostly grass with a tan bark area for the kids with swings, a sandpit and a giant trampoline. We have a few trees started across the back but the rest is bare, waiting till after we renovate.

The rest of the ten acres is mostly bare paddock, except for a line of old sugar gums across the back and all the native trees and shrubs we’ve planted along the boundaries and fences – which are slowly slowly starting to grow.

So that is how my garden grows. What does yours look like?