Winter Garden

Miss 3 and I spent yesterday afternoon gardening, getting our winter veggie patch ready.  Now, I have to admit, there aren't many veggies that I eat whichwill grow during winter, so our garden will be relatively small.

Yesterday in Canberra was a very cold day... and made me a little more than grateful that this seasons gardening will hopefully be very low maintenance as I really don't want to be out there in the cold with wet hands from tolling through the soil.

Miss 3 holding the worms in our garden

About a week ago, Miss 3 and I ripped out the old (and original!) raised garden bed to get it ready for planting.  After ripping out the veggies, we mixed the remaining mulch through the soil (it's sugar cane mulch and I have since learned that it doesn't decompose that quickly - which is what I was told at the garden shop lol).  Then we placed a layer of worm castings from our worm farm over the top - worms included!!  Hopefully these helpful buggers will help our vege garden and reproduce to make more. Finally we placed another layer of soil over the top. We left this for a few days to let it all sit and settle.

The freshly planted winter veggie garden

Then, yesterday we went to the local Bunnings and bought a few different veggies that we will hopefully use in our winter cooking.  We have just planted:

• snow peas
• lettuce
• leeks
• onion
• shallots
• garlic

Miss 3 feeling proud of our efforts

In the other garden bed we still have lettuce, carrots and a couple of broccoli plants (which haven't done much).  I am leaving this garden in place for a few more weeks, and then I will replant it to look like the one above.  This way we will have a bit of a rotation system going, and onions and garlic will last for quite a while and we use a lot of them, so that will be great.

In my garden, in total I have the following planted:

• thyme, basil and organo
• capsicum (which won't last much longer in the frosts, so I will probably replant the lavendar in this pot)
• snow peas
lettuce
leeks
onion
shallots
garlic
carrots
broccoli
strawberries
potatoes
chives and parsely

I think the next step will be mulching the top of the freshly planted garden bed.  I am still learning about this, but I believe it helps the plants in the frosts.

And for a bit of variety - some flowers!