Week 20 - Garden Overview

Last weekend had the first major changes since starting the garden. The squash plants and tomato plants have been removed and some new seedlings planted.

Here are two photos showing what the two garden beds look like now. I still have a considerable amount of space left to plant out. Will spend the next week considering my options.

My other task for this week is to work out how best to keep the pests off the Bok Choy plants. These plants have suffered badly from caterpillar attacks over the last two weeks and a couple of the plants may need to be removed.

Week 15 - Post Christmas Update

Well it has been 15 weeks since I started my vegetable garden and the family is starting to enjoy the fruits of my labour. This seems to be a good time to reflect on some of the things I have learnt over the last 15 weeks.

I started this garden using the knowledge I had gained from both studying agriculture at school and watching my mother tend to our garden on the farm at Lisarow. My mother grew almost all of the vegetables we ate as children and had a vegetable garden that occupied around 70 square metres.

My garden is only around 6 square metres and obviously we do not derive all our produce from it but we use it to supplement what we buy. For this reason I selected vegetables that we use regularly but do not store well.

The vegetables we now have in the garden are:

• Tomatos
• Lettuce
• Capsicum
• Squash (Mixed Varieties)
• Cucumber
• Sweet Corn
• Strawberries
• Mint

Now for the lessons learnt.

1. Squash and Cucumber plants require a great deal of space. They should also be spaced out at least 70cm to allow space for the plants to grow. Next year I plan on creating a new garden bed on the other side of the backyard to grow these type of plants. This will allow me to grow more vegetables in the existing bed. 
2. Tomato plants can grow to up to 1 metre in height. When I first planted out the garden I planted a row of sweet corn behind the other plants. In most cases this was OK, but the three sweet corn plants that were planted behind the tomato plants were completely overshadowed within 6 weeks of planting and have only grown half as high as the other corn plants. 
3. Sweet Corn plants should be planted in a block (3 by 3 plants) to aid in the pollination of the plants. It also will ensure that the plants are not overshadowed by other plants.

I am sure there are more lessons learnt I will expand on these over the next couple of posts. I will also document the creation of the next garden bed on the northern side of the backyard.

Keep on gardening!