Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Our garden box...


It all started back around March when I decided my little garden of pots on the front porch wasn't big enough to house everything we wanted to grow. I do most of the gardening at our house but occasionally the girls help and chip in money, mostly from our groceries account if there's a bit of surplus. It's grown a lot in the past 6 months or so and here's the photos to prove it...

One garden box off trademe + soil from ZooDoo (they deliver)
= one garden ready to plant seeds in

It worked, the seeds started to grow. But issues with neigbourhood cats spread them all over the place
And so the string garden was born to keep the cats out
It grew
And grew, and survived the hail and snow...
This is it 2 weeks ago when we ate the last of the silverbeet and planted new lettuces and pak choy (the toilet rolls are to scare the cat away from the radishes. Everything grew except the caulis it seemed, they were just all leaves
Until today when the english flatty had a look and look what she found!!! Now she knows for sure that caulis grow above the ground which is something she has learnt this year. Bless.
We were all so excited and ran out to see for ourselves (that is me in the foreground with 6 months worth of hair. Yay!)
So very excited that we took a photo of all three of us with our bountiful garden
Then my very kind friend took time off from playing with his gorgeous baby to go out for lunch and take me to Bunnings to spend up on new soil. We've planted purple beans, peas, spinach, radishes and lettuces and taken a pre-emptive strike against neigbourhood cats by raiding all the water bottles out of the survival kit...at least if there's an earthquake and the house collapses our water is safe outside...
I also got more strawberry plants but was too cheap to buy another planter...and I found a tomatillo (cape horn gooseberry plant for sale. squee!)
And made the tough choice between buying a purple basil plant or chocolate mint
After all that gardening it was time for afternoon tea. I made the louise slice with pommy flatmate's homemade plum jam (half it went to the friend that chauffered me this afternoon to say thanks). It tastes prettier than it looks haha.
While jafa flatmate and I were busy gardening, pommy flatmate spent her day in the kitchen making rolls and fruit bread and tonight's dinner of egg plant and tomato pasta sauce... please Immigration don't deport her otherwise I'll have to bake all the bread myself! :-)

2 comments:

  1. I also do box gardens. What a great idea with the string to keep the cats out. Ours think this is a glorified litter box for them (sigh!)

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  2. It looks so ugly but does keep them out. Once the seedlings get bigger I take the string down and sprinkle cayenne pepper on the soil if the cats persist. I'm thinking though that if they had a small area with fresh dirt they are allowed to dig up, they might leave the main garden alone...I love cats but they are mighty annoying at times!

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