…and a bunch more to come

I have been a bit neglectful of the house and the garden. I am afraid that the small trip away, and then working on the last assignment for my course, somehow ate my brain, but I got back into the swing of it this weekend as my slightly aching muscles can attest to! 🙂

While all things aquaponic are getting back on track, the soil garden is developing and changing as we move through the seasons. Yesterday, while Chris pulled all of the galangal out of the bed closest to the house (this one is the hardest to grow in as it gets heavily shaded in Winter) I busied myself with clipping the lillipilli bushes (on the eastern side of the house) which cleaned them up nicely.

I then kept going with the ‘Tidy Campaign’ and ended up installing a pad of wooden blocks at the entrance to the soil garden. These blocks were formerly used as stepping-stones in the herb garden and this space has evolved into the aquaponics system. I am so happy we found a new purpose for them! I pulled out a large patch of buffalo grass and then, after a bit of shovelling of excess pebbles and some raking, we now have a better defined path to the soil garden that I hope to keep grass free.

As part of this process we repotted a lavender bush and a pepino—a native of South America grown for its edible sweet fruit. It had been a little ignored in and amongst the tomato bushes, but now sits proudly at the entrance to the soil garden sporting not one, but two small egg-shaped fruit!

We continue to harvest tomatoes and think we will have a bumper crop of potatoes over the coming months. Chris has also planted some green beans, more carrots and is preparing beds for peas. Yesterday we went a little silly at Bunnings and bought all manner of odd veggie varieties in seed form, but more on this later.

I shall try to put up a gallery some time today as a snapshot of life in the soil garden at the end of September!