Veggie Garden Update - Spring 2012

My poor winter garden has been completely neglected and unfortunately, the "divas" (chooks) have had a ball stripping the cabbages and brussel sprouts of any leaf. However that said, spring has done it's magic and plenty has survived.

The lemons are doing well. (Ga Ga checking me out in the background!)

Plenty of spinach which is good for the iron levels! I use spinach as a vegetable in meals but I also use the baby spinach leaves in salads so I don't tend to buy lettuce all that often.

I have five of these long pots full of strawberries which a friend gave us. They were suckers off their plants from last season. Bonus because we now have more than enough strawberries and they didn't cost us a thing. A good tip if you know people with gardens, get as much as you can from them first before going to a nursery to buy your plants.

These are dwarf broad beans but I'm yet to see what is dwarf about them! I've planted them where I intended on planting this years tomatos but as you can see, they haven't even produced yet so I'm going to have to find somewhere else for the tomatos. Oh well.

As I don't have a lot of garden space, I plant my herbs in old plastic rubbish bins. Here I have my thyme and oregano and in the others chives, dill, mint and parsley.

As you can see, my cabbages have seen better days. They've gone to seed too I think in protest to being abused by the divas. I'll pull them out this weekend and replace them with something else.

In an attempt to keep the divas out of the garden, I've invested in a couple bird nets and used some black agricultural pipe to create arches to drape the net over without damaging the plants.

So there you have it, the veggie garden as it stands. There's a few exciting things amongst the weeds and in the next few months, I'll plant tomatos, zucchinis and whatever else I can squeeze in there. I always try to plant stuff that costs the most at the supermarket, hence using the small space as well as I can for my hip pocket too. As I've said before in my previous blogs about having a veggie garden, you don't need a lot of space to have a few things on the go like herbs, tomatos, lettuce etc which all thrive in pots. If you haven't already tried then I say give it a go! There's nothing better than a home grown tomato, the taste is truly the best.