kathies-garden.com

I go through phases of gardening passion and during one of those phases a couple of years ago I asked my family to buy for my birthday a software program relating to the planting and planning of one’s garden. They did just that and bought for me Garden Composer. I used it a lot when it was first installed on my computer, but when my computer was later upgraded I hadn’t gotten around to re-installing it – until I went to the Garden Show a few weeks ago and then I realised I should be using the program again.

It is great because I can look up various plants and check the time of year for planting, how to deal with different pests and diseases and a number of other things. You can even design your garden with the program. My family claim I’m just a software addict and perhaps that is true . This time round I printed off the user guide and bound it, and included inside the front clear plastic cover, a large copy of the ornamental vegetable garden I show in an earlier post of this blog.

I’ve been doing some research online as well to find various things to assist with my gardening. And as I find more, the blogroll will be added to. One thing I found to be really good is Better Health’s Planting Calendar. It tells you which food plants can be planted at various times of the year and gives you tips for each month too. You can download the calendar to write on and use. I printed it off and it’s been put inside the book I made from the program above so I’m compiling a lot of useful information about our own garden. KMT

Garden Composer, Planting calendar, food plants, gardening

I forgot about the pests you can get in a garden. We did plant Rosemary, Thyme, and Sage, things I had read about that would assist with warding off pests, but I guess being such young plants they are not yet doing their thing. So we have leaves being eaten from the ends (a nursery experienced friend asked if it were holes in the leaves or eaten from the ends) and believe it may be caterpillars.

I had already put snail and slug bait out and not seen any evidence of them around but had to go and invest in some spray suitable for vegetable plants. I did think about powder but we have cats that love the garden and so we didn’t want them sniffing or licking it and making themselves sick so I steered away from that. Think I better do some more reading. Currently we also have planted: Strawberries, cabbage, chilli peppers, lettuce and parsley.

I’ve been gardening for years but never studied it and it’s always been flowers, bushes, etc for a cottage style garden so the vege garden thing is new to me. Comments/suggestions from readers who are experienced in this area would be very welcome. KMT

garden pests, caterpillar, snail bait, vegetable plants

Over Easter my daughter and I got stuck into the rather overgrown back yard down by the rabbits’ cage. The ground was covered in wandering jew and a creeper that’s been growing over the back fence so we hacked away at it all, ripping it off the fence and yanking out of the ground and throwing it into an overflowing garbage bin and then throwing the rest in a pile on the ground for throwing out later. Our rabbits produce manure mixed with straw so we’re going to use that for mulch and for keeping the plants damp, especially since we’re in a very dry period here in Victoria currently.

Graham, Chris and I made our way over to Bunnings and bought up a heap of seedlings and came back home and Chris and I proceeded to put them in the ground. We bought what we could see in the photo I took at the Garden Show as we want to try and replicate that kind of vege garden.

So, below is our meagre start to this garden and we’ll be monitoring it closely. It doesn’t look much now, and in fact probably looks a mess but I’ve got visions of it growing like the one we photographed… I hope! KMT

overgrown, vegetable garden, mulch

About two years ago I finally got around to working in our front garden. We’d had a new paved path laid several months before for our eldest daughter’s wedding but we’d not done anything else with the garden after our home was renovated several years ago.

The neighbour across road had removed their top soil to make changes to their garden and it was left in a pile on the nature strip for anyone to take. So Graham took our wheelbarrow over the road several times and filled it up and brought it back for me so we could level off the ground on either side of the pavers and I began to work on our garden. We had a couple of trees and some bushes but nothing else.

Over a 6 month period (Nov – Apr) I made constant trips across the highway to Bunnings (so convenient being that close to home) and brought back more plants. I’d take the car if I needed to buy things that were too heavy to carry (like 40ltr bags of bark) but otherwise I walked so the exercise was good too.

Eventually we began to see flowers in the garden and different ground covers starting to reach across the ground. We also have a fish pond which we put in around 10 or so years ago so that is not looking so bare now, with lots of plant life around it.

With the drought in Victoria my main challenge is keeping things watered and to stop weeds growing. After several months indoors I’m venturing back out again into the garden. The cooler weather is more pleasant to work in, and hopefully we’ll start to get more rain. We’re allowed to water twice a week in the morning but the rest of the time we place buckets in the showers with us and I also collect all the rinsing water used in the kitchen sink. So we have containers sitting around in the house for the collection of ‘grey’ water so we can keep watering our garden. Below are photos of the garden about six months after I started work on it.

flowers, ground cover, drought, grey water

Angie and I went to the Garden Show in Melbourne on 1st April. The day started out quite dark and overcast and it had rained overnight (thank God) but by midday we had a brilliant blue clear sky and it was getting warm.

The displays there were fantastic and it rebirthed my passion for gardening. Naturally I bought a number of items – couldn’t help myself. Got some new orchids, begonias and carnations to plant and bought Hyacinth and Dutch Irish bulbs, and Freesias as well. I love the cottage style garden we now have in our front yard and am looking forward to seeing even more splashes of colour in it in the months to come.

I was also very taken with their vegetable garden display and had been planning to develop such a garden in the backyard down near our rabbits cage. Poor rabbits will end up salivating – so close and yet so far out of reach for them! We have begun and I’ll share on that in another post. KMT