Around our Suburban Garden

One of the biggest adjustments we've had to make after the move back to suburbia is giving up the dream of growing the majority of our own food. Even though we are renting a great house with the perfect backyard for us, it's still not the same, you know?

Anyway, we're doing what we can. There were already not one, but three (!!!) lemon trees so that is a bonus! There is a tank so we can water when there hasn't been rain for a while and there are a few garden beds that we are planting out in between the existing ornamentals.

A capsicum seedling among the ornamentals

 

Potted carrots, hopefully growing straight!

We're planning pots, pots and more pots!

The Chicken Tractor

We are housing our 6 chickens in a second hand chicken tractor. Matt is in the process of building a permanent coop, but you know how things are, it's taking a while. :)

Our wonderful tractor. So glad we were able to purchase one second hand from a friend. It was less than half the price of a new one and in excellent condition.

The plan is to have the orchard area fenced off so the chooks can free range while being safe from the dogs (there has already been an incident, but we won't go into that) and the permanent coop will have a little chicken door we can open from the inside to let them out into the orchard (once we cage the trees and build the fence of course).

 

The girls working over our horribly grassy and overgrown veg patch. The a-frame to the left is the half-built permanent coop with the orchard area behind waiting to be fenced.

Until then they are in the tractor being let out to roam around for a couple of hours in the afternoons once the dogs have been put away. We've moved the tractor onto the veg patch so they can get rid of all the grass and plant remnants and get it ready for more planting. Once they've done their bit we'll move them onto another section of overgrown veg patch and plant out where they were. We'll keep moving them around, following their progress through the garden with seedlings and directly sown seeds. Hopefully this will prove more successful than our last lot of vegie gardening which was an abysmal failure!

 The area where the tractor was for about 2 weeks. Grass is gone and the soil has been turned over and full of valuable chook poo. We've now sheet mulched and are waiting for seedlings to be ready to transplant.

Over The Weekend We ...

made a start on the chicken coop

continued edging the herb garden with recycled bricks

decided it was time to try out making a sourdough starter

watched new life springing up in the veg garden

played on the verandah

planted two more fruit trees in the orchard

A lovely quiet weekend pottering around the house.

Turning the Plan into Reality Part One!

We have been mulling over the planning of the garden ever since we first inspected the house. We want to make sure we do it right and don't have to re-do anything. But towards the end of last week I had a brainwave with it all and all the elements fell into place. Matt took Friday off so we've had a lovely weekend starting to put all the planning into action!

We're planning to have as much of the veg and fruit garden behind the house as possible, leaving the front as it is (oodles of grass) for now. Down the track we'd love to get some grazing animals to help keep the grass down but we're unsure of what. That is a while away anyway! Also, speaking of the front, we're lining the driveway with a hedge of lavender on either side. It should smell divine!

So below is a photo of my little mud map that came to me quite out of nowhere! I'll do my best to explain it to give you an idea of what we're thinking we'll do with our little piece of Eden.

Firstly, the narrow rectangle running along the bottom of the card is the house, with the back stairs going down to the garden. The squiggly lines coming from the bottom of the steps is a path going off to the clothes line to the right and the parking area and shed to the left. The big blank area to the right of the shed will be edged with bricks and re-gravelled. There will also be a rosemary hedge around this area at the top and along the right-hand side. The little dots to the right of the parking area will be a herb garden with culinary and medicinal herbs. The rosemary hedge will be on the left-hand side of the garden bed and a brick path on the right-hand side. That path will continue past the herb garden, up around the parking area to the left where we'll have the chook house which will open onto the orchard. The line going across the top of the card is going to be a fence to separate the orchard from the rest of the garden so the chooks will have a safe, contained place to free range (away from dogs!). Heading left from the chook house is the bore pump surrounded by a little stand of trees and then beyond that will be the compost bins. We're also thinking about placing a bed of asparagus here because it will be shaded by the shed and should be nice and cool through summer. To the right of all of this will be the veg beds, the eight small rectangles on the card. The veg beds will actually be right up next to the path, but my drawing is not to scale! We're planning to fill up all the remaining space with lots more edible and medicinal plants so that there are lots of windy paths and no grass out the back at all! I'm sure that is a long way off though so we're just taking baby steps for now.

To give it some scale, the shed is a four bay shed. The herb garden is approximately 14m long and 1.5m wide. The fence for the orchard will be about 16m from the back boundary fence of the property. The area we've got organised for vegetable beds initially is 8m x 14m.

Now that I've given a bit of background about what the plan is, tomorrow I'll post more about what we actually achieved over the weekend!

Breaking Ground

Now that we are in our own place we can start getting serious about our food production. The rental we were in was good because it had a big weed-infested garden bed that we turned into our veg patch but now that we've got 2.5 acres of our own space the feeling is completely different. Overwhelming, exciting and daunting all at the same time. We want to plan things properly, taking our time and really thinking about where the chickens will go, what is the best site for the compost etc etc. Luckily for us the site for the orchard was pretty obvious.

The previous owners told us that they had great plans for the gardens and yard but simply did not have the time to devote to it (they are running their own small business). Luckily for us they spent some time (and money) on some pretty good garden infrastructure. There is a bore (that pumps up ground water) connected with underground pipes to many sprinklers (think big farm sprinklers) all over the grounds. This means that we'll be able to water gardens without using our precious rain water (We aren't connected to mains/town water) Two of these sprinklers are behind the house towards the back fenceline. Confusing I know. Sorry. Anyway, we're planning the orchard to be along the back fenceline, two rows 7 metres apart with the trees in each row 3 metres apart, then another row in between with trees 3 metres apart staggered to the outside rows. Even more confusing? It makes sense in my head!

There was one citrus tree already there so we're taking our spacings off that one. Saturday we planted a new mandarin (Emperor variety) and Sunday we planted a very sick Eureka lemon that we've had in a pot. My parents gave it to us for Christmas last year and unfortunately it hasn't been the same since it got decimated by grasshoppers a while ago. Hopefully now it's in the ground it will recover!

I've decided that I'm going to try and stretch my grocery/market/housekeeping money a little further and buy one fruit tree every fortnight, maybe two if they're a good price or need a friend for cross-pollination. After looking around the markets and a few smaller nurseries in town I found that the only place I could get a mandarin tree (it was Elliot's request) was Bunnings. Good for the budget because it was only $20, not so good for the ethics of supporting local businesses.

Oh well, you can't win them all.