Garden developments

Then over to some garden developments. Jodie has been working hard on a couple of garden projects, both which are now more or less completed.

First was a garden at the entrance are of the house. This is a mulched garden bed, using gum bark and also some oyster shells we got from the local oyster farm on the other side of the lagoon. It has a stone edge around it and hopefully will have some pavers leading toward the entry way once we get going on those. We did pick up about 600 pavers at a very good price some time ago (only 20 cents each) but have not started laying them yet.

Garden bed as seen from the garage wall.

And here seen from the entry way deck. Where there is a bit of gravel and some grass in the bottom right hand corner is where the pavers eventually will be put down.

The next garden bed is a slightly larger affair and has been titled "Jodie's garden bed of state significance". This probably won't mean much for people living outside of Tasmania, but it has a background in politicians on this island declaring large scale projects a "project of state significance" in order to get it through the planning process as soon as possible, with the least amount of "interference" from people who might oppose it.

Anyway, this garden is probably around 220m2, thus and consists of native bushes and grasses. We have put them all on drippers to make the watering job a lot easier. After the planting we then put down cardboard in order to stop the weeds, and on top of the cardboard either oyster shells or blue metal, which is basically a blue coloured gravel.

Process started, with plantings done, irrigation pipe out, and plants being protected either by tyres or by milk cartons.

The other half of the garden bed.

Here we have managed to get quite a bit of cardboard and gravel out.

But still quite a bit to go. Overall we spread out about 14 tonnes of gravel to cover the area.

Project finished and now we just have to let it grow for a few years.

And here is the rest of it. It probably will look very different in a year or two, with the bushes covering most of the gravel.

Then we have the vegetable garden which is really starting again after the winter. Unfortunately we were a bit too busy to plant a lot of winter crops, but we had green manure growing in a number of the beds. The silver beet continued to give us food during the winter and is still going strong, but we have now planted a lot of new seedlings too.

Vegetable garden, as seen from the new deck on the western side of the house.

Spinach growing really really well. We keep harvesting and more keeps growing, which is just fantastic.

Capsicum (or pepper if you like) seedling in the ground. We have around 8 or 9 of them in one bed.

Lettuce and herbs growing willingly, and with some flowers in the middle of the garden bed to confuse the bugs.

The grapes are starting to grow well now too. We planted them last year but did not get much growth, but it looks as if we might get some grapes this year, at least if we can keep them away from the birds.

Black berries (the tame type) - we have 4 bushes growing and they should also give some fruit this year. Did not get any last year.

And finally the fruit trees in the orchard. There are some cherries and some apricots coming, but we are not expecting anything much. We probably have to rely on our neighbours for the cherries, but as we have been feeding them with silver beet for months now, we hope to get a good deal.

Otherwise it can be mentioned that we have planted pumpkins, zucchinis, chillies, peas, lettuce, and different herbs. It is great to be self sufficient with lettuce again. Just to out and pick some for a lovely salad.

Any problems, please email webmaster. This page was last updated 24/07/2008