Our present garden.

This is our garden. Welcome! It doesn’t look amazingly inviting, does it? That’s because our garden is far from finished. Let me explain:

We moved here a few months ago (in the middle of the growing season!) and when we arrived, I made sure most of my plants from my old vegetable garden came with me. It’s hard to move, to get your roots pulled up… literally! My vegetable plants really didn’t like to be moved, but with some heavy work and some fresh pot soil, they survived at least. Still, because of the move, we ended up having a pretty pathetic crop this summer so I focused on learning and studying about growing your own food instead. I tried to learn as much as I could about the plants I was growing, about plants I should try to grow and also what I could have done better. But what I realised after all this studying is that it is really easy to grow your own food! Much easier than I thought. So we decided to start this project for real and I am so exited to share this with you now:

The Edible Garden Project 2015!

Max and I have decided that we will make our garden as productive as possible for next summer (2015) and we are starting with a few fall-friendly vegetables already this fall! We don’t have a lot of space to grow on yet, but with a little planning we think we might be able to grow quite a lot and seriously cut our food expenses as well as decreasing our carbon footprint by growing organic and save the waste we would create by buying food in the supermarket.

The plan is:

– to try to grow as much food as we can by ourselves.

– to eat mainly vegetarian (although Max and the kids will eat meat occasionally).

– to buy what we can’t grow in bulk and locally grown (flour, oats, cheese, butter, milk).

– to have our own eggs (there is a chicken coop in our garden already!)

– to cook and bake everything by ourselves and really avoid processed food.

– to create a peaceful, organised and beautiful garden full of flowers and food.

So let me take you on a tour of our garden as it looks at present and let me explain what needs to be done to get started.

First: this is what our vegetable garden looked like this summer… Not very impressive, right? I just planted them in pots, buckets and what-not … what I had available really.

This is the second year I grow corn and still no success! The mistake I made the first year was not to give them enough sun and this year it was a combination of being uprooted three times (!!) and vicious slugs.

I like to mix my vegetables in the vegetable beds. Not only does it look interesting, but they all grow in different speed (fast-growing radish is great to grow while you are waiting for a slow-growing cauliflower). It also helps to grow certain vegetables next to each other as companion planting repels and confuse pests. I’m growing potatoes in those big pots in the background.

Broad beans, Cresse, Sunflowers and Lemon Balm, extremely productive courgettes in the background.

A yellow zucchini plant and popcorn (!!). My kids played around with popcorn for fun and they actually started growing! Although no cobs grew, they were still decorative.

I grow garlic and peas in wooden wine crates on the terrace. It always worked fine for me and it gives a little space in the precious vegetable beds for other goodies.

I grew my first tomato plant this year and at first it looked very productive as about 20 tomatoes started to show. Unfortunately I learned at harvest time that there is something called “Blossom end rot” and all my tomatoes had it 😦 Apparently it is due to a lack of calcium in the soil. You learn by your mistakes is what they say …

To continue our tour, here is what we have to work with and ideas I have to change or re-make to the better:

1. The entrance: This used to be a little gravel path leading to the garage you can see in the background. This will all be made into a lawn and growing beds. The garage has flooding problems, so the only thing we can store there are pots and maybe a seed growing table and a shelf. The ornamental grass hedge is gorgeous! It looks like Fountain Grass and will have featherlike flowers in the end of the summer. I’m planning to dig up the ground here to create a long vegetable bed along the grass all the way to the garage. That should give us about 20 square metres of growing space. I’m thinking that I will build a tall trellis structure with beans climbing between the house wall and the grass, creating a pretty entrance into the garden.

2. The chicken coop: If I was a chicken I wouldn’t want to live in this coop… It’s dark, disgusting, dirty and it needs a big clean up! I have already removed some old and moulded wood planks that was covering and weighing down the roof, plus taken down a scary looking tarp that looked like that sail on the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean! I’m planning to wash the entire coop, inside out, add wood shavings all over the ground and make a “dust bath tub” out of an old tire. I also need to add a door to the coop to protect the chickens from all the foxes that are running around in our neighbourhood at night. The cage can be closed, but I heard incredible stories about foxes. They can get in anywhere! So another door to the coop itself would be a good idea I think. As you can see the coop stands inside a cubic cage, so we could technically keep them shut in that cage with still some space to run free. I’m not to fond of the idea to close an animal in a cage though, so I’m planning to let them run around in the back area surrounding the garage. There is a closed fenced to “the house garden”, so they won’t be able to get to the vegetable patches and mess around, so I’ll be able to control their free range to the closed “garage garden”, the chicken coop area and the composts (where they are more than welcome to play!).

3. The compost: To continue the tale of dirty and disgusting … well, the present compost is the most disgusting compost I have ever seen. Apart from lots of flies there was no sign of life, no worms, no caterpillars, no beetles… I thought that was  pretty strange for a compost, so I decided to … ehh … have a look inside. And as I suspected, after some turning of the wet and gooey material, I found whole egg shells, plastic pieces, bones and even better: the remains of a pig foot with some rotten flesh still on it. yup. So I think I’m going to make a big hole and bury the remains of this compost, and start a new one. With crushed eggshells. Here is a great list of what you can and can’t compost.

Around the garage is a really wild area, full of nettles and thistles and facing the neighbour’s garden. I think this could be a great area to make a few composts actually. We also need to put up some sort of fence as the neighbours have a dog, I’m scared his constant barking will scare the chickens to death… Anyone with experience of barking dogs and chickens? Please tell me about it in the comments below. Anyway, the first task here is to pull up all them weeds by the roots. It’s gonna sting and cut me, but it will be nice and clean once it’s done 🙂 And then I’m going to build a huge compost.

4. The ornamental grass: The first part of this grass hedge is so pretty! And then the above happens. Thistles, nettles, wines and un-trimmed lavender has taken over! I actually feel exited to arm myself with a long-sleeved sweater and garden gloves and get it there to pull! There is life in there though… I’ve heard a mouse (please don’t let it be a rat!) running around in there squeaking and also some angry buzzing from what I believe is a wasp-nest. Gulp. You can imagine how nice it will look once there is a lawn and vegetable patches in front of this hedge instead of weed-infested gravel.

5. The good things that needs some tweaking: There are two fruit trees: one apple tree and one cherry tree, both very productive. For seasonal thinking it’s great. We can harvest the cherries in June and the apples in September-October. Both can be stored, canned or frozen and will give us a big supply during the winter.

There is a semi-shaded spot against a straw fence/ hedge next to the apple tree. I’m planning to plant strawberries and herbs there. We have a small citronella tree standing in the middle of the lawn, I’m moving it here as well. The citronella is a mosquito repellant so it will be a good idea to put it next to the terrace.

There is also some bamboo next to the chicken coop. Great for those important bamboo sticks to create growing structures.

So there you have it! Our garden. I’m so exited to do this project and I hope you want to follow us and see what happens and how we progress. Now I’m off to build a compost!