Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you will join me in my ongoing quest to produce my own food in the backyard of my rented house in Melbourne, Australia. My house was once dubbed 'The Chook House' by a visiting friend and the name has kind of stuck since then. I don't have a lot of gardening experience but I am learning as I go, under the watchful eyes of my 3 loyal and curious chickens!
My approach to gardening is, to be honest, pretty hap-hazard. I don't plant in rows and I like experimenting! Because I am renting, I have to garden around already existing plants so my 'veggie' garden is really a mixture of different plants (and weeds)! My garden looks like a bit of a mess, but I like to think it has character.
It's a really exciting (and patience testing) time of year at the moment, as summer veggies like tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant and zucchini are growing but are still small! I'm getting pretty sick of broad beans and silver beet so I'm super excited for these veggies to start fruiting!
As well as sharing my gardening successes and failures, I hope I'll also be motivated enough to share with you some of the meals I create with the food that I harvest - after all, why else do we grow veggies if not to create delicious meals with them?
I'll start off with a tour around my garden - enjoy!
Pumpkin and zucchini
My chook dust bathing
Horseradish - never grown this before so if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them!
Lemon tree, comfrey, pumpkin and potatoes
Seedlings galore! (Mostly tomatoes...)
More seedlings, including tomato, capsicum, basil, eggplant, lettuce and broccoli (which I'm pretty sure won't grow at this time of year, but as I said, I like to experiment!)
Tomatoes and mint (which grows like a weed)
Beans...hiding in among the overgrown grasses
Potatoes, nasturtium and coriander that is going to seed (I'm going to try and collect and save the seeds, which I've never done before but it doesn't look too difficult!)
Potatoes, cucumber, rosemary, tomatoes, nasturtium and a tiny dying eggplant. I don't know if it's OK to plant these things together...?
Broad beans (which have been prolific!) and potatoes
Tomatoes, zucchini, borage, nasturtium, carrots, purple kale and eggplant
My giant leek! Just seeing how big it can get...
Happy gardening!
Jess
Hi Jess, Welcome to blogging. I too have three chooks who mostly seemed determined to destroy my garden but I love them nonetheless. Regarding your horseradish - it is really easy to grow. You shouldn't have any problems this year. You may have problems next year as it is really quite invasive and will reshoot from any little bit of root you miss during the harvesting process. In my experience that is quite a few..... I now grow mine pots having finally rid the garden of horse radish after 3 years of trying.
ReplyDeleteI have the same relationship with my chooks! I have only recently installed a good fence that really keeps them out, so up until now I have been gardening under milk crates! Thanks for the info on the horseradish. I have planted it in a part of the garden where I don't have anything else so if it spreads I don't mind too much, but I will definitely keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't go crazy. Thanks for stopping by!
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