Our Autumn Garden

We spent both yesterday afternoon and this afternoon out in the garden getting beds cleared and seeds sewn for our Autumn plantings. As usual with the garden we're not as organised as we'd like. I've completely forgotten about peas and have no seeds so on Thursday when we go to our local Farmer's Market I'll see what the 'Seed Lady' has got. She sells Eden Seeds at the same price as from the website so we save the postage and get to have a chat at the same time!

The main job yesterday was clearing the old corn stalks out of the bed and in it's place we sewed onions, shallots and two types of carrots. One variety of carrot is called Dragon and it's purple skinned with bright yellow/orange flesh! I can't wait for them to be ready. We're hoping the corn will have opened our clay-ey soil up a bit, the last time we attempted carrots they tasted yummy but looked a bit worse for wear.

Along with the carrots, onions and shallots I also sewed broccoli, cauliflower, kale, ruby chard and pak choy seeds in trays to be planted out in the garden when they're bigger.

The other big job yesterday was getting our seeds potatoes in. We are going to plant two varieties, Coliban and Desiree but only the Desiree had shooted so the Coliban are still on the window sill in the kitchen. Luckily I had the boys to help get things ready!




Also in our Autumn garden this year is some garlic that I planted around a standard rose that is planted in a half barrel out the front. I just broke up a couple of bulbs of organic garlic from the Farmer's Markets in town. A few weeks ago they started to send up the first green shoots!

And lastly we met another one of our neighbours this afternoon and got talking about gardening. She took us out the back and started pulling all sorts of things for us to take as cuttings. She gave us Singapore Spinach which is apparently similar to the Ceylon Spinach we've already got, but with red stems, sweet basil and lime basil plus a lovely looking eggplant which was ripe. I think I may grill the eggplant for our pizzas later in the week.


And now we water and wait. Oh, and pick the cabbage white butterfly caterpillars off the brassicas ;)