Joanna’s beautiful garden photos inspired me to take some of my own. Here’s a glimpse of our winter garden…
The dwarf nectarine and peach trees are flowering…
The first vegetable bed is growing well. We’ve planted kale, spinach, cabbage, beetroot, celery, parsley, lettuce, broccoli, and broadbeans.
Broccoli…
Lettuces…
The second bed has just been planted out. In addition to more of the above, it also includes peas, carrots and shallots…
The peas are thriving!
The garlic are growing steadily in their laundry tub home – in total we have about forty plants…
The three rhubarb crowns are thoroughly enjoying their semi-shady spot…
The asparagus are still in pots, but growing well. Spice Girl gave us a single pot, which we divided into seven smaller plants. We still need to find a permanent home for them…
Our incredibly robust chilli bush has continued to fruit all winter, albeit sparsely…
Bed three is now ready for planting – tomato and capsicum seedlings are ready to go, along with the chitted seed potatoes…
Edit: Our large prunus tree has never fruited, so we have no idea what type it is, but it flowers prolifically every year. Here are a couple of photos for Heidi..
What’s growing in your garden at the moment?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Celia my friend, look at your raised veg beds, and those little fruit trees, such pretty blossom! Wow, aren’t they fantastic!! I see you with a stall outside your front gate in a few months time, laden with produce and beautiful sourdough loaves, queues stretching down the street, people jostling for the girls’ fresh laid eggs and your flower-ful salads… no… I know that’s not why you are doing it, but you are going to have so much produce – unless the chickens get out of course. :) Thank you for mentioning me. Did I tell you about my spring planted garlic, we took them up a while ago and a lot of them had formed into one large bulb with no divisions. I will plant some new ones in the winter which is probably the correct time. Maybe you could ask your garlic growing friend for tips for me?
Jo, I didn’t know you could plant garlic in spring! I don’t think it would work here in Oz, as our summers can get so hot. I’ll ask Ian for tips for both of us! :)
garlic needs to be planted the shortest day (june 21), but we planted end of march. loves a good frost for flavour. the clove development and division are surprisingly very late in the garlic life cycle. pulled when the leaves are half yellow. this should be on the longest day (dec 21) but end of november we start to pay attention. planting spring seems like starting a race after it is over so only the ‘shallot’ size bulb, i suppose like ours now. i think of it like a daffodil – waiting, developing, sprouting, flowering, absorbing the goodness to multiply and do it all again. even the bolt and single bulb are delicious so don’t stop just do more. good luck.
Thanks Ian d! Planting day should be December 21st here then! Oh yes, they are delicious however, I love my home grown garlic, we end up with some very garlicy meals with the big singles.
Chopped one up the other day, and sauteed it gently with flaked almonds, chopped green herbs, and a few other assorted spices and used it as an extra topping on some tomato vegetable papappdelle. The crunch of the topping made a nice contrast to the soft silky pasta and the garlic made it divine!
Nectarine and peach trees sounds so exotic and the blossom is so pretty. I love the way you have nasturtiums growing up them too. I don’t think your concept of winter can be quite the same as our – chillies growing outside all winter!!!!!
Choc, they’re just tiny…only about a metre tall when fully grown. There is a long bed with fruit trees planted – all dwarf varieties – two sorts of apples, a crabapple, and the peach and nectarine. The nasturtiums were planted as ground cover, but they’ve gone crazy. Luckily we eat them.. :)
Our tomatoes are just about done and we have more peppers then we know what to do with.
Our citrus is starting to come in. It will be in full force by December. Lots of orange juice for Christmas. :-)
Maz, I wonder if you could make orange butter, in the same way we make lemon butter (also known as lemon curd). I posted a recipe a while back for making this in the microwave – link is here in case it’s of use. :)
No tomatoes for a few more months yet!
Looking crisp. It must be the season for this in Oz!
I am apartment bound an envious! Looks wonderful.
For the first time ever I can reply to this question! As of one week we have mirabelle plums, greengages, apples and hazelnuts. Blackberries are just appearing and we may have redcurrants but need this to be confirmed.
I’ve only had one successful mirabelle jam making session out of three attempts. One involved burning and the other worms – and when do those darn little stones rise to the surface?! Jane Grigson told me they would.
Anna
Anna, we always remove the stones from stonefruit before cooking – I know it’s a pain, but it’s easier than accidentally leaving one in the finished jam! They say the stones in cherry jam should float too, but we’ve always religiously pipped them all.
I can’t really have a garden up here, the growing season is about three weeks and the deer and elk eat anything that you can get growing, so I especially appreciate the beautiful pics of your lovely garden.
Thanks for sharing them!
Just silverbeet and the odd rogue carrot, there are still heavy frosts so I can’t plant out until September. Your garden is making me jealous!
Celia your garden looks lovely. So many things growing, lots of busy corners there. Do you have any problems with the lettuce, slug/snail type problems?
My garden in pots? 4 ferns, one geranium, one rosemary and a “I refuse to die” strawberry- *sigh*…not much of a garden at the moment
Peter, Newlywed (congratulations! :)), thank you!
Mountain Woman, deer and elk! It all sounds too wonderful! :)
Chef, Canberra can get so cold, but when things grow down there, they seem to do it so well! We’ve been down a couple of times for Floriade…
Brydie, the vegetable garden is brand new – you’re all getting to see it as a work in progress. :) So no slug problems yet, although I’m sure they’re coming. Actually, I think we might have a slug problem with the strawberries, even though they’re in pots. They make fruit, but while it’s still green, it seems to mysteriously disappear!
Don’t you just love the different seasons? Sub tropical Brisbane doesn’t offer much change, but I am soon to head back to our lovely house in Italy for a taste of autumn. Great photos.
Your garden is sooo amazing! How many beds do you have altogether? I lost count. Soy will be SO jealous cos as InTolerent chef mentioned, the cold here is horrid. Nothing much growing in our garden at the moment except broccoli and carrots. Fingers crossed they will survive!
Deb, I’ll bet you can grow the whole year through in Brisbane! Have a wonderful time in Italy! :)
Honey, six beds in total! Canberra can be bitterly cold, but it is such a gorgeous city! And I’ll bet you can grow amazing garlic and blueberries there. Do you have Linda Woodrow’s book The Permaculture Home Garden? It’s written for Oz conditions, and is the blueprint we’re using in our backyard.
Beautiful garden Celia, my ambitions never quite match up to the reality, the best I manage in apartment dwelling is a few pots of herbs, I go a bit nuts in Spring every year though but what you’ve got growing there looks amazing.
It looks lovely. My garden is in an embryonic stage at the moment but making progress.
Anna, herbs are really the go though, aren’t they? Out of everything we’ve planted, it’s really the herbs that have made the biggest difference to our day to day eating…
Lee, thank you for stopping by! Your garden looks wonderful – I’m astonished how much you have growing!
Celia, a garden like this is really one of my dreams. Everything looks like it’s coming along beautifully! Living in an apartment means that a garden is about a windowbox sized big! :P
Herbs ,mainly, here as well. I have become quite dedicated to farmer’s markets locally. They have wonderful offerings for reasonable prices, and I am a flower gardener- veggies have always disappointed at harvest time. (Although I do have several pepper plants that have beautiful red peppers on them.)
But my lemongrass is so beautiful this year- soon it will be time to harvest- and the sage and thyme are quite hearty- the garlic chives have just put out their most lovely blossom and the bees are loving it!
Your garden is amazing! The conditions you call winter look like mid-spring here. love the fruit blossoms.
Lorraine, I hope you get to realise that dream one day! :)
Heidi, thank you – we are blessed with a very mild climate (even though we complain about the cold!). Our large prunus is flowering prolifically at the moment – I must take a photo to show you.. :)
Those are drop dead gorgeous!
Growing up in the greenhouse business, my father would plant the most glorious fruit trees! We had fruit and vegetables and flowers all year long!
But my husband is not a gardener OR interested in caring for fruit trees. Every tree and bush I have managed to get into the ground he has managed to cut, kill, or prune beyond productivity. He is a garden’s nemesis!
And living in NE Ohio means our growing season is not optimum, so it is a joy to see the beauty and hear of the bounty you have!
Thanks for the pictures!
Celia, I’m very envious of your beautiful garden! It must have taken a lot of hard work to get your beds to look like that. All that’s growing in my garden are weeds – even the grass is swamped by them!!!
I’m also hugely envious that you clearly have bright sunshine and things growing in the middle of your winter. Theoretically it’s summer here. It’s about 17C and lashing with rain as I type!!! I might emigrate!
C, you need chickens! They’ll weed for you! :) As I mentioned above to Heidi, the weather here really is glorious. It’s the end of winter now, and it’s about 19C outside. Most of our friends from the UK marvel at how mild it is here!
You make me long for home and huge back gardens. My small patch is full of mint and lemon melisse. I plan on uprooting and drying a lot of the mint plus removing some greenery that lends nothing to the table yet takes up space. I’m awed and inspired by your commitment to sensible living – growing your own and eating right
Beautiful photos! How lucky you are to be able to have a garden in winter! I think you are going to have an amazing garden as everything comes together.
Celia the first photo of the dwarf stone fruit amongst the nasturtiums is particularly beautiful. It’s been a while since my veggie garden looked like yours! The only things growing in mine (through sheer persistence) are silverbeet, rhubarb and asparagus. I’ve always got quite a few herbs dotted around the garden and in tubs (right now its all perennials – rosemary, bay bush, lemongrass, thyme and lemon thyme, oregano and a new parsley plant). I agree though that growing herbs is by far the most useful thing to grow in a backyard. I’ve got plans to plant for spring/summer – we’ll see how far I get. I have raised beds and I use the no-dig method which has worked very well for a number of years. We’ve just completed adding a whole set of new watering lines in readiness for summer growing (and we’ve been speaking to rain tank people to start seriously capturing water for the garden).
Your garden looks great! I would show you a shot of our weeds, but it is just too wild, windy and wet to get out the door. Not to mention the damage that the 18 month old Irish wolfhound has done!
Fabulous pictures, Celia! Everything is looking so healthy. :)
No blossom in our garden atm, still some way off I suspect. The garlic is needed weeding (what isn’t!), and we are growing our first ever purple cauliflower head, which is currently about the size of a 20 cent piece. Very exciting! :)
The plants doing the best in my garden right now are the lemongrass, peppers, and basil. I think I just picked my last tomatoes today… the season is definitely winding down here.
I need to research how to harvest my lemongrass – there is so much, I don’t want to waste it. I’m thinking about freezing it.
Oz, thank you! :)
Cindy, when it all starts to really produce, I’ll be heading to your blog again to see what to do with it all! :)
Sarah, the nasturtiums have gone completely bonkers! Hope to see photos of your garden – are your beds raised to waist height?
Amanda, I would suggest chickens – best weeders in the world, I’ve watched them meticulously track down every oxalis bulb in the bed – but I suspect your Irish wolfhound would have them for supper! :)
Chris, I wanted to take a photo for you of all our perennial leeks, but I couldn’t get a good shot. They’re growing fast! :)
Sasha, lemongrass grows like a weed in our backyard, so I’m looking forward to seeing how you manage your harvest!
Oh so beautiful! Lovely colors and sun light. I can’t imagine the effort that must have gone into such a luscious garden.
Sandy, thank you! It’s a work in progress.. :)
this is your garden in winter?!! seems i’ll always have to regret not trying harder to move over there. don’t know if i’ve ever mentioned it – we have relatives in melbourne and for a while we were considering moving there. things got in the way, for now we have to stay put, but let me tell you – winter here means three feet of snow and it’s too cold for a stone garden.
i’m so impressed with the variety, you have so much stuff going!!! i hope your plum tree bears this season. great job, celia, i don’t know how you and pete manage your jobs and kids and the house and garden, the baking, the canning, aaand posting about it for us, but i’m happy you do!
Thanks Dana! No plum tree – peach, nectarine and apple – for some reason I couldn’t convince Pete about a plum, although we do use that more than any other stone fruit! I don’t think the prunus is a plum – although I guess it might be!
I know this is hard to believe, but when the kids get big, you get lots of time back…you’ll see in a few years time when Zahra goes to school.
It never snows here in Sydney, but it can hit 40C in the middle of summer (although not often)…
Celia – your garden looks fantastic.
your photos are absolutely beautiful!!! i have eggplant, herbs, arugula, tomatoes, lemons, papaya, banana and peppers but in a small scale. i am a beginner at gardening. thanks for sharing. btw, saw an add for a site called theamazingavocado.com with recipes like avocado cheesecake…might be interesting…
LJ, thank you!
Aleida, wow, papaya and bananas, you must have quite a tropical climate. But please..don’t say avocado..at least maybe not for a week or so…hehehe…
Gorgeous
Hi Celia,I have only recently found your blog. It’s great! I think your prunus is a flowering plum. Does it have purple leaves? If this is the case, then you wont get any friut. I think that these “flowering” fruit trees{flowering cherries as well}are sterile, they only produce flowers.
Angie, thank you – Pete told me the same thing just a few days ago. He said it’s a flowering variety, and it will produce the odd ornamental fruit, but really it’s been hybridised to give us a massive show of flowers each year. I’m not complaining – it’s very beautiful! :) Thanks for stopping by our blog! :)
Uau, what a garden! Breathtaking! I wish I had climate for a garden like that, not anymore. Now we live in a region with a “near-arctic-weather” hence or garden is nearly as poor as the arctic’s greens. We have trees, apples and cherry plums, redcurrants, a lot of them, raspberries, a lot of them, strawberries and never enough of them, sage, a lot of sage, nasturium flowers and leaves which I like to add to salads and some rhubarb. For two months we have some stuff to pick but for 3/4 of the year we live on imports or on the tasteless greenhouse grown Norwegian veggies…
Claudia, we really are blessed in Sydney with wonderful weather. The only limitations are on plants that require a frost – we’re trying to grow garlic and apples, but conventional wisdom suggests that it’s too warm here for them (not enough chill hours). We shall see.. :)