Bringing the inside, outside

No garden in Australia is truly complete if it does not have a place to relax and BBQ with friends. In our quest to make full use of this opportunity of having a garden, we decided to add this aspect too.

Boxing day sales are famous in Australia for great bargains, so we went in search during that period. We saw many BBQ ranges, there are many options to choose to from! First, we had an option of fuel - coal or gas. Then was the number of burners. And finally, we had to decide whether we needed a stove on the side or not. It was a difficult choice, but we made it in the end.

New BBQ

Next was the seating. This was simpler and we knew that we wanted six chairs. The only difficulty was the selection of a colour for the umbrella because the choice was limited (read: boring!), so we were stuck with black. Finally, we also bought an outdoor kennel for the dogs so that they had a shady spot to relax in.

Doggie kennel

We tried out the BBQ the day it arrived. And to complete the Australian tradition, we hosted a BBQ party on Australia day.

Meanwhile, our first potatoes and coriander were ready! The tomato plant was also flowering, so the tomatoes were not far away either. We had a taste of them and it was so much better than the store bought veggies. The first harvest really brought home the fact that growing your own vegetables is really worth the effort.

First potatoes

Coriander

Tomato flowers

Update:  June 2013
Strong winds in Melbourne toppled over our outdoor seating. The umbrella caught the wind and flew off, shattering the glass. The winds were so strong that the chairs flew off too! We had to replace the table and umbrella with a new set, this time we had a brighter coloured umbrella.

Outdoor seating destroyed by strong winds

Umbrella blown away

Shattered glass of the table top

New outdoor seating

Fruition of our ideas

Gardening is almost Australia's national pastime! I discovered that only when we started working in our garden and discussed it at work. A colleague told me about Morrison's nursery which was very popular. Another colleague told me about Bulleen Art & Garden nursery, whose abbreviation is coincidentally BAAG, which means 'garden' in Hindi. We decided to visit both and expand our plant collection.

Morrison's nursery was owned by two brothers who grew up on an orchard farm on that land. The farm had been in their family since 1944 and they started the nursery in 1979. The speciality of the nursery were the fruit trees owing to their upbringing and this is what we set our sights on. We did not have any particular fruit trees in mind, we just wanted to have a look. Their collection really surprised us though! They had the expected citrus family trees like lemon, lime, oranges, etc. But they also had guava and pomegranate, two fruits that are rarely seen in Melbourne. Along with an orange tree, we bought one of each of the pomegranate and guava!

Guava

Pomegranate

Orange

Our next stop was at BAAG. They are more than just a nursery, they have a lot of sculptures and other things that can be used in a garden. We set our sights on their native plant collection though and bought a plant called Kangaroo paw. It is a native plant and has velvety flowers that resemble a kangaroo's paw. It attracts birds to the garden. We also bought a couple of native shrubs from a species called Hebe. Pictured below are Emerald Green and Pretty N Pink.

Emerald Green - Hebe

Kangaroo Paw

Pretty N Pink - Hebe

By this time, our vegetables had begun to take shape! We could harvest the first lot of methi leaves and were beginning to see the potatoes taking root. It was the start of summer and we were looking forward to more harvests!

Methi

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