Preparing for winter

Winding down summer is always a sad feeling, especially for us when we have grown up with sunshine all year round in India. The plants make up for it by giving us vegetables that last us for a while.

The newest addition to the veggie patch was the Brinjal (Eggplant/Aubergine). We harvested two really nice ones, though I had to watch out for the hidden thorns on the green part of the vegetable! There are a couple more that are developing, but not sure whether they will make it before the cold arrives.

Brinjal

The potatoes are still faithfully providing us some every year. They tend to start sprouting from a new spot in the vegetable bed every year, so I really have to watch out for them through the mulch!

Potatoes

Next up are the various chillies. I had planted three varieties last summer and had over-wintered all of them. They did well, though not as much as last year. This season will be their last in my garden.

Chillies

I also harvested the various herbs and a single bhindi (okra). Obviously the bhindi needed more heat than our so-called summer gave it.  In the picture below, clockwise from top, are mint, cinnamon basil, capsicum, chilli, jalapeno, large chilli and bhindi in the middle. The final harvests were done, summer was over.

Last summer harvest

To cheer us up, we thought of trying out our hand at some easy to grow winter veggies. Winter is a cold, damp and windy time in Melbourne, so we were not looking for something that needs a lot of care. We settled on Kale, Spinach, Garlic and Peas.

Winter veggies

While we were there, we also picked up a vertical herb planter. Our wall gets the sun in winters, so I thought this might work. We got Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary and Chives. We filled in the other spaces with Basil, Mint and Strawberry cuttings from our existing plants.

Vertical planter

Progress of summer

A year ago, we started the succulent project. This was to cover an area in the back of the house which got little or no sun. The soil is very poor, with only a shallow layer of good soil above clay. Succulents have shallow roots and grow without a fuss, hence they won the lottery to be planted here!

This Christmas we decided to complete the project. Within a year the succulents had multiplied and we got many more plants for free! We started off first by removing all from the bed and dividing them in individual plants. Then we worked in a sort of a pattern to use all the ones we had.

Multiple Semperviums

Succulents in a row

As with all good garden beds, we topped this arrangement off with a natural coloured mulch. The effect was quite pleasing.

View 1

View 2

The aforementioned cacti found a spot at the end of this bed. This is the route that our dogs love to use to wander into the beds. Hopefully no more!

Cacti

We were able to harvest a cucumber this year. It took a long time for one of the zillion flowers to become something edible! I also harvested loads of mint. I am thinking about controlling it's growth though, need to be ruthless and leave only one or two stems to continue the crop.

Cucumber

Mint

And finally, here is a picture of the Russell Lupin that we bought at Christmas! In the time we have had it, I have discovered it's seed pods (after flowering) are very harmful to dogs. So the time has come to relocate it the front of the house where none of them can get to it.

Lupin

A substantial harvest

Season 2 of garden harvest was more consistent. This year we had planted lettuce, capsicum, tomato, potato, strawberries, mint, cucumber, coriander, carrot and three kinds of chillies. Our veggie patch was groaning under the weight of all the produce!

Roma Tomato

Cucumber

Capsicum

Lettuce

The potatoes were our oldest plants. They were shooting up from leftover spuds in the ground. Compared to last year, we lost fewer to rot.

The strawberry plant was also from last year, having multiplied. Unfortunately, this season we have had an ongoing battle with a strawberry thief. We were unable to beat him to the fruit! Despite covering the plant with a cloth, the rat/possum/bird/whatever it was, still ate all of them.

This year we harvested the first of our asparagus. There was only one thick enough for eating. All the others grew side shoots very quickly, which is what sets the roots for the upcoming harvests.

Asparagus and few strawberries

Our most substantial harvest was from the chillies and capsicum. We had three varieties which had different levels of hotness. Hottest were the tiny ones, Jalapenos were less hot and the least hot were the fat ones. There were so many that I had to freeze them for use throughout the year and distribute them to friends!

Chillies in their full splendour

Mild chilly

The entire chilli harvest - ready to be frozen

We had a decent harvest of capsicums too. Most we ate while they were green, a couple we left to become riper and red.

Capsicum

Previous year, we had not liked the lettuce variety too much. This year we bought iceberg lettuce plants and harvested them in full before it became too hot and they started to bolt.

Iceberg lettuce

We harvested many more tomatoes this year, as we had planted them earlier in the season. They were Roma tomatoes, really juicy. The mint plant grew well and I dried a lot of leaves for the year.

Roma tomato

Mint for drying

I had also saved up coriander seeds from last year, which gave us some leaves. Frankly though, coriander needs too much work. One has to keep sowing them successively and can only harvest a few leaves per plant! Also, we got an odd carrot or two but most went to seed. The cucumber did not flower at all.

Coriander

Lone carrot

This season reinforced the satisfaction of growing our own vegetables. They were not as large as the ones in the supermarket, but were really tasty. Season 3 of our garden ended with a resolve to grow more next year!

Season 1 finale

By this time, we had quite a few vegetables that were ready for picking! Mint grows really vigorously and I had to start drying the leaves out for later use. The same can be said about Basil. It grew at a furious pace over the hot days, too fast for consumption. Hence, the Basil leaves were also put out in the sun for drying.

Mint

Basil for drying

Amongst the other vegetables that we had planted, the potato harvest was the most substantial. We did have isolated harvests of tomato, chilli, spinach and (a) capsicum.

Potato

A few tomatoes

Tomato harvest

Some chillies

Lone capsicum

Spinach harvest

But winter was approaching and Season 1 of Anshu-Pallo's garden show was over.

Seed of an idea

The temptation to grow some vegetables was too much! We had a really long garden bed, so why not?

We wanted a raised one to keep the dogs from getting into it. But our sunny spot in the garden had a downward slope. Thankfully, we found Birdie's raised garden bed, which was perfect! We assembled it, filled it with soil and were all set. On the way, we picked up the 42nd edition of Yates Garden Guide book. It was written for the Australian environment and covers everything from pests, propagation and watering to a comprehensive plant index suited to the local climate. It also has some great tips from other gardeners which I found very useful.

Now on to picking the vegetables! Naturally, it makes sense to pick the ones that we eat. But not all the ones we eat are easy to grow. For example, cabbages, carrots, onions and cauliflowers need so much space and they can be harvested only for a short time. And some of the others that we eat, are not available here like mooli (white radish), bhindi (okra) etc. So, we started with the very basic one - potato.

I got some good information from the Seed to Plate website, which gave information about various vegetables and how to grow them at home. Potato is the easiest to grow and also helps prepare the soil for other fussier vegetables. We did not buy the seed potatoes which are disease resistant because there were just too many in the bag. After all, I did not want to start a farm! We just planted a couple of sprouting potatoes from our veggie shopping. We also planted a few seeds of methi (fenugreek) and dhania (coriander) with the seeds picked from our spice rack. They all started sprouting up plants in two weeks!

Seed to plant - methi sprouts

Seed to plant - methi with leaves

Seed to plant - potato shoot

Seed to plant - potato plant

I mentioned in the previous post to resist the temptation to buy additional items when you buy plants. I learnt that lesson - and then promptly unlearnt it in the next trip! We bought a seed tray and some seeding soil mix, along with various seeds. In the end, the purchase was worth it as gave us the opportunity to try our hand at growing many vegetables. In the picture below you can see cauliflower, coriander, mint, carrot, onion, chilli and pumpkin.

Seed raising box

Seed to plant - Onion

Seed to plant - Mint

Seasoned gardeners may know that not all of these vegetables grow in the same season. But, we were novices and did not know that. We got seedlings from all of them, but some could not survive the exposure in the veggie patch. We also bought Basil and Chilli plants.

Chilli

Basil

Our final purchase was a lime tree. Lime is quite expensive in Australia but we eat them a lot, so this was a good investment. We looked forward to eating our first home-grown vegetables!

Lime