garden plans

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Back before we actually owned our Farm we started to plan our gardens, and to put in some raised beds, filled them with clean soil, mulched them, and got some veggies growing.
They were staples like potatoes, bean, tomatoes, raspberry and sweet potato.
We’d agreed on a price, and on a date for settlement – but had yet to do the formal paperwork.

It was partly because we were planning for the future, and partly a way for us to start ‘marking our turf’ – and gave us a warm feeling of belonging and hope.
Putting it out there to the universe that this place was going to be ours….!

We’ve since had a huge glut of tomatoes from those plants, which we’ve canned a lot of to use over the winter, and had some the sweetest kipfler potatoes ever – which are still being tossed into curries now and then.

We are currently in the process of making some really big garden beds, which will also be raised, but unfortunately not as high as the initial ones, as at this point in time its just too cost prohibitive.
We’re planning 8 beds – and each one will be 3 metres x 1 metre.

Thats been quite a bit of work, and still isn’t finished – as now that we’ve got to live on the Farm for a while, we’ve worked out that we’d really like to put a creek-type drain down the western side of our property, and to have access to be able to do that, we need to move the beds a couple of metres to the east to make that possible.
Thankfully – this decision has been made prior to us filling up the beds, so it will just be a matter of finding some time when it isn’t stinking hot and and the sun isn’t scorching everything in its path, to be able to accomplish the move.
It will take two people, as each bed is difficult enough to manoeuvre just because of its size alone, but they also weigh quite a lot – there is another logistic thrown in to make it tricky to do – because we’re rarely home together at the times that the weather makes it possible to attack the job – unless its evening – when we’re both tired and really can’t be bothered, or we just plain don’t remember until too late!

Its one of those jobs that really need to be pushed up the priority list though – as the gardens are going to be a major source of our food in the future – so the sooner we can get up and running, the sooner we will have them producing.

We have quite a few fruit trees that have been patiently waiting to be planted out too – but the back paddock – which is where the orchard is going to go – once again got away from us after weeks of alternating downpours and horrendous heatwaves – and the grass has grown higher than we can manage to mow, which necessitates getting a guy with a slasher to come in and do the job.

This will then mean that once its been slashed, we will have a few weekends in a row (weather permitting) of having to continuously mow and mow and mow – to try and get it back into not only a manageable paddock, but to try and get some of the ruts filled – as well as making it look nicer!
(which is where we are at now…)

We’re also going to have to get someone to come and help out with doing the brush cutting along the fence line – another part of the paddock job that got away from us once again.

Thankfully – winter will be on its way soon, which will mean a slowing down of the paddock and fence-line growth, and we’ll hopefully be able to get into a routine / rhythm of keeping it all in check 🙂

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Until next time, look after YOU!
Sarah

One of the very first things we built for the garden, was our compost bins.
We also added a few quick raised beds, so that we could get planting as soon as possible.
We initially laid out the beds in this design, but then changed it up a bit after we’d had a chance to watch the fall of the land for a few months, and we worked out that we would later be creating a waterway along the fence-line.
Within a few short weeks, we already had tomatoes setting fruit. We were happier than you can imagine lol
This is what is affectionately known as Horatios Bed. Horatio is the big Water Gum that has pride of place in the centre. Below there are a mass of herbs, with some lettuce lurking in there too…
This photo was taken quite some time ago, and the bed is now over-run with zucchini and capsicum. Digby has a fetish for both, and is regularly caught plucking them off the vines/bushes and scoffing them up! 😐 He still leaves enough for us – so far – so we haven’t bothered fencing it off yet…
The gardens moved to their new design, and our occasional hired-help Terry is diligently helping out with filling them with dirt – something I can’t do right now with a dodgy back and hip.
We were sooo thrilled with our first glut of Strigidae tomatoes. We got sooo many that we have done loads and loads of canning. Its great to be stocking up the pantry with our very own produce!
Our first dig-over of the kipfler bed, netted us enough to keep us going with these creamy little beauties for quite some weeks!
Purple Basil from Horatios bed, hanging up to dry, before going into the dehydrator and then being bottled 🙂
Our first haul of Sweet Potato netted almost 20kg. There were some seriously huuuuuge tubers in the bed!!
More seeds have been planted lately, and the lettuce is already popping up after only a couple of days. It will be fun to see what pops up, as a lot of the seed (we think) was probably damaged during the move – due to exposure 😐

 

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