Tag Archives: vegetables

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Ain't Spring grand?! dscn6547dscn6552

With the almost perfect balance of sunny days, a little humidity and regular rain recently, you would not be blamed for thinking it's a perfect Spring for gardeners. Our edible gardens certainly think so, with an abundance of wonderful produce from the garden so far this season, amazing growth on new plants and seedlings, and some lovely diversity in garden creatures.

Our intensive greens beds are flourishing. Our green manure crops have exploded. We've been harvesting at least a heaped double handful of native raspberries daily for weeks now.

Lots of things are flowering beautifully in the gardens, both edible (the end of most brassicas - feeding the bees) and ornamentals companion planted for colour and bee food (sunflowers, marigolds, rockery and cottage garden mixes and more). We're swimming in salad greens and herbs like lettuce, silverbeet, spinach, chicory, rocket, basil, parsley, coriander, ssuk (in the chrysanthemum family, loved by Asians), mountains of mizuna and cascades of snow peas. We've been making amazing kimchi with our home grown daikon and other radishes. We're still eating our way through our last harvest of potatoes - around 5 varieties that yielded around 6 to 1. And finally we're enjoying some broad beans.

While we're saying goodbye to many of the favoured winter brassicas, we're welcoming in Spring lovelies like corn, more herbs, more lettuce varieties, rainbow chard, re-veined sorrel, amaranth, warrigal greens, more spinach, okra, pumpkins, various cucumbers, eggplants, chillies, more flowers and lots of legumes. I'm excited to be growing a variety of Korean black bean I brought back from our recent trip to Korea, as well as an old friend like Borlotti.

The chickens seem to be enjoying the change in seasons also, with more sunny spots to enjoy throughout the day, a daily flourish of spent brassica greens and regular lawn cuttings from neighbours over the fence, now that grass is growing again. In my opinion and experience, Autumn and Spring are the best growing seasons and time to enjoy the garden in Brisbane. Once the humidity and heat of Summer comes to stay, it isn't as pleasant, but it's still great to be outside in the Summer early mornings and late afternoons when the temps are cooler. Viva la Spring!

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In the famous words of The A Team ... 'I love it when a plan comes together!'

I feel this way and lots of excitement when I do a consult for someone and they really embrace the session and great things result. On Thursday September 1st, I did a Garden Consult in Marsden, Brisbane for a lovely young family who were unsure of the potential of their site.

They had grown some produce and kept chickens in the past, but were seeking some direction and inspiration to do more with their site, and needed a vision to go to the next level. We explored potential future layout for new garden beds, fruit trees, trellises, a new chicken run and much more. We also focused heavily on marrying their desired lifestyle with these positive changes, including a beautiful revamped entertaining area, surrounded by herbs and veggies at their fingertips for the BBQ and visiting family and friends. Child friendly and safety were also important.

We covered a lot of ideas and goals, a lot of ground and urban farm design features. They have since ticked some awesome boxes on their site, giving new life to tired fruit trees, constructed new raised garden beds and daily been working on a healthier, happier, more functional home and garden.

Thank you, well done and BIG thumbs up to Sally and Grant for choosing to get professional support in stepping up to achieve a wonderful new urban farm. The proof will be in the pudding to come. Sally's healthy choc treats were certainly a delish perk of the job also!