$25 Challenge - The Garden is Now Bare

We've harvested 4 red cabbages this week and now all that is left is a few herbs. We need to top up the beds with compost and get busy with planting. Unfortunately, a dash to our capital city for a specialist appointment with our eldest is going to put off that job. That's life.

I had a bit of an "ah ha" moment this week when I realised I was selling myself short by going on our grocery store prices for my garden produce. Organic produce sells for so much more than supermarket produce. Mind you, I have no real way of getting organic prices and it's only a guide. Still, it's nice to know that what I'm producing is really MORE valuable than the price ticket I've been putting on it.

Of course, I kind of knew that in that I want to grow our own vegetables for freshness and nutritional value more than the monetary value anyway.

Still, 4 cabbages at $3.99 per half is roughly $32 so I'm ahead of my goal this week.

Our new fruit trees have grown leaves and are looking quite healthy so that's been quite exciting. It'll be a couple of years before we're harvesting from them but it will be good when we are. It's all about progress and babysteps isn't it.

I'm also getting some fruit on the strawberry plants so that'll be nice when they're ripe. Still only in small numbers though until I can get some more plants.

Hopefully I'll have some planting news in the next week or so (depending on what happens with Lleyton's appointment).

Garden Photo's

Thought it was time for another walk through my garden.



Red Cabbage (I have no idea why it isn't called purple cabbage but anyway...). This one I picked not long after I took the photo. It's still a bit on the small side but tastes really great.



Broccoli. My broccoli this year has done a little better than last year but still not brilliantly. This area of dirt is a bit tired and needs some compost added to it. Once the broccoli is finished, we plan to build it up a little higher with a trailer load of compost.


Farmboy got the fruit trees planted out. My idea of buying them and then he'd get around to doing the preparation work pretty much panned out. Originally I was going to wait for him to dig the holes before spending the money but realised that would put it on the never-never plan.

This is the Pink Lady Apple. We still need another apple for pollination but we couldn't get one at the time. I figured we'd start with this one and find a second one when we get a chance. I'm thinking I'd like a Granny Smith. According to the label, I can cross-pollinate with a Granny
Smith and they do make a nice cooking apple.


This is the apricot tree. I hope this goes well because we REALLY like stewed apricot, dried apricot and apricot jam (among other things).

The orchard is located outside the main backyard area. As you can imagine, we have plenty of room (being on a farm) but it's a matter of convenience and location of water supply as to the best place to put the orchard.

We've chosen the opposite side of the yard to the house. Which is close to where our Ozzi-Kleen waste water system is.


This is the only section of the Ozzi-Kleen you can see. The rest is buried below the ground. If you look closely, you can see the green backyard fence behind it.

ALL of our household water goes into this unit where it is treated. It then gets pumped out through a hose onto whatever section of the garden we choose.

Water is our biggest gardening challenge right now. Since we've moved here, we haven't had enough rain to even fill the rainwater tanks we currently have. Every summer it's touch and go whether or not we'll run out of water. So whatever the Ozzi-Kleen produces is about all the water I can have during summer.

Now that the front garden is pretty much established, I'm hoping that we can use the Ozzi-Kleen water on the fruit trees. It's considered safe to use on fruit trees but not so much for vegetable gardens (in case something gets into the food). Although I do tend to use it in the establishment phase of the vegetable garden.

And that's about all that is of interest in my garden right now.