Starting out

Last summer we moved into our new house, and after nearly five years in our old place this spring/summer season just past was the first time that I did not have any of my home grown vegetables. It was the tomatoes that I missed the most, you really do notice the difference in the taste and flavour and was really eager to get started again.

It took us (or I should say my husband) a couple of months to get the garden beds ready as he was busy doing other things around the house. But once he got around to it, he managed to get it done (creating the beds and filling them with about 5 cubic meters of soil) in three days. We used timber sleepers along the fence line and filled them up with garden soil and cow manure that we ordered from the nursery. We built veggie patches on both the side boundaries and reserved the back boundary for fruit trees.

The veggie patch on the east side is about 500 cm high, and this is where I will be growing all the root vegetables and the other side is about 200 cm high. As this side has the sun for the longest part of the day, this is where I will be growing my tomatoes and other sun loving plants.

Once, the garden beds are established, The fun begins as you can commence with the planting.

I chose a combination of seeds and seedlings. As we were in the middle of Autumn, I planted cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, onions, leeks, shallots, radishes, potatoes, garlic and a plethora of herbs which included coriander, dill, chives, rosemary, thyme, sage and basil.

I was a bit apprehensive about some of the herbs taking off so used seedlings from the nursery and they have held up pretty well.

I have uploaded some pictures and cannot wait to start harvesting. Whoever said gardening was for spring-summer should come and have a look at my garden right now, and they will have to eat their words.

This also shows, that you do not need a massive yard or a lot of experience to grow your own vegetables, it is pretty simple and if I can do it, so can you.