Sydney has been drenched for weeks, so when the sun peaked through for a couple of days last week, we raced outside to see how the garden had fared.
Leeks are the garden success story of the moment – the large annual ones in the top photo were transplanted from a previous bed and have continued to fatten up. They’re just about ready to be eaten.
The true marvels though have been these perennial leeks. Bless you Christine for putting us onto these – I know I keep saying that, but they’re such a wonderful plant! All the ones in the photo above are self-seeded – we planted a single leek in that spot last year, and this year dozens have appeared from nowhere.
If you’re in Australia, you can usually buy them from Cornucopia Seeds – and if anyone knows where to find them in the UK, please let us know, as my friends over there have had trouble tracking them down.
Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, Ian gave me a small sample of his wild rocket seed. Here’s my happy little patch growing…
All these broccoli plants are self-sown. We’re overjoyed at how well our “let them go to seed” approach has worked…
Some hardy potatoes are pushing their way through – both the ones we’ve planted, as well as some that have self-seeded…
Pete’s beloved chickweed – growing like a weed!
Our crazy bed of nasturtium triffids, all self-seeded from last year…
On the herb front, oregano is thriving…
…as is the impossible to kill continental parsley…
…and the rosemary is doing fine too. The sage, however, seems to be dead, possibly because of all the rain.
The rhubarb has survived its first year…
…and the sorrell is growing happily in its little corner. Both the chickens and I love it!
Can someone please tell me what the trick is to growing strawberries? We can raise beautiful plants, but every berry seems to be eaten by slugs before they’re ripe. We even caught Bob the dog having a nibble recently!
Finally, I bought an expensive Italian sweet onion from the fruiterer and let it sprout – hopefully we’ll get some seed for next season!
What’s growing in your garden at the moment?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Oh, your kitchen garden looks marvelous!!! I’m a bit envious… :P
Do you have chickens? How lucky you are!! I wish I could have some, too!! :)
Thanks Rita! I wish you could have your own chickens too – in fact, I wish everyone could! They’re just the most wonderful creatures.. :)
I can’t grow anything. I can cook it and I can keep my kids growing, but that’s it. I admire your green!
Thank you! Growing kids is a big job. I can barely keep up with our youngest – he’s currently eating us out of house and home. Last count, he was up to six loaves and ten rolls of bread each week, on top of meals… :)
I love your beautiful green garden. Everything is so fresh and vibrant. All my plants in the balcony were dry out since we made a long vacation last month. Now I will have to put something back in.
I’m thinking of some fresh mint and basil as the starters :)
Tes, our basil has been a joy this year – mint is nice, but I don’t use it nearly as often. Have fun with your new crops! :)
My peony is trying to flower, but ants seem to be attacking it. I may not get any flowers at all. I will be so disappointed.
Hope it’s ok, Deb, would be a shame not to have the gorgeous flowers!
We have ants always scouring the surface of the peony buds, but they don’t seem to do much harm and there is no trail of aphids in their wake. One of my peonies has no buds but the rest are all doing fine. I don’t think it is the ants, unless it is ‘Italian’ ants behaving differently from ‘English’ ants. (Can’t believe I just wrote that, oh well…)
I have the usual herbs (chives, thyme, fennel,parsley, basil, dill, sweet violets, oregano, cilantro, and caraway.)
I have planted some lettuces and potatoes.
Spring is finally here- but we have frost warnings until May31.
Heidi, I’m so impressed that you managed to sneak some vegetables into the garden past your hubby! :) I’ve never thought of sweet violets as a herb…and I have fingers crossed for some potatoes too, although they always take sooo long to grow!
Impressive collection from you green-fingered gardeners. Here a severe winter has damaged many shrubs and plants for many of our keen gardeners.
Thanks Peter! I’m sorry to hear about the cold – the wet weather on our end has done the same thing to a lot of fruit and veg farmers this year too…
I am very envious of your garden esp that rosemary. I can give you no tips on the strawberries yet. We’ve planted some and they seem fine. But we have a rather friendly Nut Brown Hare which might be our taster!
Gill, have you tried making rosemary infused truffles yet? I’m sure I read something about them…
I wish I had just an ounce of your green thumb and the room for a garden. I tried starting tomatoes & peppers this year for planting but I forgot about them on the window sill and they died. I guess I’ll still be buying them from the grocery this summer. So, for what its worth, I have heard that the best way to grow strawberries is in hanging baskets.
Cat, thanks for the tip. We’re not really set up for hanging baskets though, and we don’t have a lot of luck with anything grown in pots – don’t think we’re really attentive enough to them!
That rosemary looks magnificent! All the garden looks quite happy after all the rain we’ve had.
I’m growing monstered mint from caterpillars.
Giving-up rosemary.
Chewed within an inch chilli.
And I’m-not-so sure capsicum.
Brydie, we’ve had no luck with caps or chillies this year either. I’m not sure caps are going to work (or be worth the effort) and all the fancy chilli seeds I bought just didn’t shoot at all! Come over for rosemary anytime! :)
Hi Celia,
Your garden still is going strong, I see. And you’re moving into winter? Wow! I like your “let it go to seed” approach. Nice results. I want to try letting a few things seed this year. Will see how it goes. My tomatoes are almost all blooming. I spent Mother’s Day “relaxing” by working in the garden getting it ready for planting. Have a late spring and still have frosts every night, so won’t plant out until end of May.
Try scattering crushed dried eggshells around the strawberry plants. It’s supposed to keep the slugs away. All our strawberries grow on the ground as well, and they don’t do as well in the wet, wet weather.
Cheers,
Manuela
Manuela, I talk about the “let it go to seed” approach as if it was all deliberate, but the truth is most of it was because we’re sloppy gardeners and/or we were leaving the plants for the bees. Nevertheless, it’s been pretty fruitful!
I’m almost to the point of giving up on tomatoes. The ones we grew were nice, but not really great, and we seem to have a bad wilt virus in the garden. Thanks for the tip re the strawbs!
I’m not good at the growing – but very good at the eating!
Your greens look so healthy and I can envision large pots of creamy leek and potato soup!
Dianne, I’m dreaming of the day, especially if the leeks keep going! :)
Another wonderful account of your growing. My strawberries have been the same. I only have two little plants but every time they flower something eats it.
For the first time I can actually say I have heaps growing: tomatoes, basil, bok choy (growing like crazy I can’t consume it fast enough), capsicum (two varieties), chilli (two varieties), eggplant, zucchini, squash, beans and snow peas and a whole lot more herbs. My continental parsley seems to be invincible as well.
Claire, wow! Bless the Queensland weather – it was 4C here this morning! You’ve got such a lot growing for heading into winter!
I’ve heard that once you have grown continental parsley you never need to put it in again, however after I let mine go to seed I never saw any in my garden again. I’ve just bought another, but it is not happy.
My sage struggled all through last winter and finally carked it, too, for no good reason. Frost? I’ve just put in another of those, so we’ll see how it goes.
I love those perennial leeks – must get some!
Amanda, isn’t it funny how some plants suit a garden and others don’t? It’s true about the continental parsley, it’s all over the garden now – luckily we use it almost every night. Sage was great the first year, but just hasn’t come back since. Do get those perennial leeks – they’re fantastic!
Oh how wonderful, everything is so lush and green. Does that mean a wonderful hearty leek and potato soup in the making, for our ‘chilly’ evenings!
Yvette, I’d love to be able to do that, and it certainly is getting chilly here now! :)
I’m a bit over the wet weather too. After 10 years of drought I swore I’d never complain about rain, but I’m breaking my promise! Over time, chooks will get the slug and snail population down. Meanwhile, one of my favourite methods is to wet a little spot on the ground and lay a big green leaf of something they love (like lettuce or chinese cabbage) on it at night. In the morning, pick up the leaf, underside covered in slugs and snails, and watch the chooks go beserk over it.
Linda, interesting you should say that – we have almost no snails in the garden at the moment, and I’m sure that’s because of the chooks. I don’t know what I’d do without them. We tried your leaf trick on our last strawberry patch, but the slugs preferred the strawbs! Plus we were never out quite early enough to catch them. Hopefully this new spot will work a bit better.
There’s nothing like ogling pictures of other people’s veg patches. I have a particular fondness for nasturtiums and love the fact they are rioting in your garden.
Sally, the nasturtiums are absolutely running amok, it’s quite lovely to be greeted by the sea of green every time we get out of the car! They’re nice eating too!
What a treasure walking into your garden! You and Pete will soon be able to write your own “Home-Grown” book and I remember the picture of your herbs that I loved so much for the cover.
:-) Mandy
Aaah Mandy, you’re so sweet, thank you! :)
Your garden’s looking great, Celia. My sage and one rosemary have met the same fate as yours in our wet weather but I have chillies coming out of my ears and baby parsley springing up everywhere. A flock of king parrots has moved in and are competing with the ravens for the early mandarins, its hard to be too cranky with them.
Liz, I reckon sage is going to cost a fortune – sounds like we’ve all lost our sage plants this year! It must be lovely to see flocks in the backyard (even despite the damage they do!).
Great idea about the slugs and snails Linda. My chickens are going to be very pleased.
Do you have strawberry pots out there? They look like an urn with pockets in them. The secret to strawberries is to get them up off the ground.
My friend Janet, has a strawberry tower!
http://janettakahashi.com/?p=246
As for our garden, tons of citrus, herbs and artichokes. Still waiting for our tomatoes, berries and other fruit. I’m hoping for some apples and peaches this year.
Hugs, Maz
Maz, thanks, but our strawberry tower failed – the plants just didn’t produce a whole lot of fruit! The ones that did were picked off by the birds. We’re hopeful the ground strawbs will do better this year, but who knows? At least these ones are grown from seed, and the certainly seem more robust than the previous ones!
Your garden sounds fabulous, as always!
What a lush bounty of greenery! Don’t ask me what’s going on in my garden though. Not very much. The worm farm has taken over! :P
Hey, worms are good! :)
How gorgeous Celia, sadly we’ve already had some frosts down here that is polishing off the last of the garden.
Our doggie steals fruit and veggies all the time too. He’ll even digs up the onions and plays football with them! My little truffle tree had disturbed soil around it the other day, and I was livid with him- thinking he had snaffled up a truffle- but luckily don’t yell at him unless I catch him in the act, as I caught my cat dust bathing in th tub instead! Maybe she likes the smell :) We have self seed tomatoes everywhere and they are a darn nuisance, coming up in the grass and everything, ours fruit prolifically though, maybe the climate makes all the difference?
Becca, lucky you! We get seedlings coming up everywhere, but they just die off. The few that are growing don’t look like they’ll survive the sudden cold snap. I can’t wait until you actually find a truffle!! ;-)
That looks so lovely, Celia. We’ve been disappointed with our tomatoes too, wilt and just not that great. We have some beautiful chillies growing and lots of limes – I’ve borrowed a friend’s book – Preserving by Oded Schwartz – it’s a terrific book, the basics are really well explained as well as the history of preserves and the methods used. Hopefully I can turn some of our limes into preserves and pickles. It was chilly here this morning too but not as cold as Sydney – hot chocolate weather!
I’ll look out for the book, Jan, thanks! It’s been 4C here in Sydney in the mornings!
I know nothing about strawberries, I will ask he whose parents had a strawberry farm… hang on…. ok he says, ‘straw ’em’ i.e. bed them with straw, lift the stems and leaves up and put the straw right around the plant – this will discourage the slugs and keep the strawberries dry, the clue is in the name…’ Well, that’s what they did in Cheddar. Now they tend to grow strawbs off the ground at waist height on platforms in growbags or troughs commercially, to save the backs of the pickers and for easier maintenance…. you could try ground up egg shell he says as an afterthought.
Fabulous verdure, Celia, I have just been lectured by a fishmonger on micro herbs, apparently all the rage in cheffy circles and someone out there will be making loads of money out of supplying them no doubt ;)
Ours is revving up at the moment, I think there might be a row of radishes ready and there is some of your fave hate veg, the rainbow chard which survived the winter, garlic fattening, poppies blowing in the wind… I’ll write a proper post hopefully soon. xx
Thank you darling, and for checking with he-who-knows-these-things. We do have lucerne hay around them, so that might help. Even if we don’t get any strawberries, they are very pretty plants!
Gorgeous, gorgeous pics, Celia. So glad the leeks are growing well for you! You will never be without again. We have flatleaf parsely everywhere too, as well as silverbeet. Must make a pie! Strawberries – have you tried them in containers or hanging baskets so the berries hang over the side? I tried some over summer and they worked well..just needed to add water crystals to the pot to prevent the soil from drying out… sorry if it’s already been mentioned, I haven’t gone through the comments yet.
Chris, we’re not very good with pot growing – we always forget to water and then everything karks it. I did see on Gardening Australia that one of the guys suggested growing strawberries in polystyrene boxes, so you could move them around. We had a look today and there’s quite a few unripe berries forming – fingers crossed that they’ll ripen without being scoffed by the wildlife!
Your vegie garden is inspiring, we’re hoping to expand ours this year, we’re removing a shed that’s not needed (plus its cement bottom) then building up a big bed with sleepers, to keep the pug out! I’ve sent your blog to my fiance for inspiration! Thanks, Mel.
Melissa, thank you, it’s still early days for us, but it’s nice to try and figure out what grows and what doesn’t. It’s a very messy garden – we don’t use any chemicals (organic or otherwise), so things are often bug eaten and sometimes all the seedlings get gobbled up overnight. Linda’s trick works for protecting new seedlings (see her comment below), but in general we try and stay pretty laid back about it. ;-)
The garden looks lovely – will look into those special leeks… Good tip.
For the strawberries, snails and slugs don’t like travelling over coffee grinds, which also are supposed to help increase flower production on lots of flowering plants… Might need to check there are no snails/slugs on the plants and then chuck on coffee grinds when you have them and see how it goes – works for us.
Oooh Paula, thank you. The coffee grounds tip is a new one to me. The perennial leeks are just fabulous – I use them interchangeably for leeks and spring onions…
I had to go and google verdure.
Word Origin & History
verdure
c.1300, “fresh green color,” from O.Fr. verdure “greenness,” from verd, variant of vert “green,” from L. viridis (cf. Sp., It. verde ), related to virere “be green,” of unknown origin. Perhaps ult. from a root meaning “growing plant” and cognate with Lith. veisti “propagate,” O.N. visir “bud, sprout,” O.E. wise “sprout, stalk, etc.” Meaning “green plants, vegetation” is attested from c.1400.
I do know if your strawberries are not sweet you need to water them with magnesium sulphate (epsom salts are the same thing) but maybe they are sweet if the things are eating them.
Shangri La, I love words, thanks for looking up the origins of the word! It came up in a recent crossword we were doing, and just seemed to fit the post so well! :)
Thanks for the tip on the strawberries, will remember it if we get to taste any! :)
If anyone is after perennial leeks you can often buy them on ebay from a seller named Myrtlebeechnursery. Great quality plants and great service. :)
Thanks Chris. I didn’t find them, but did find a couple of other local ebay suppliers with perennial leeks – good to know it’s available there!
btw tweeted lots last night re the perennial leeks and no one here supplies or offers them that anyone knows of…. Gap in the market for sure :) Are you allowed to send seeds this way? I know I can’t send them to you, but maybe they can come in to the UK? I am going to investigate.
Will save some seed for you if they ever flower!
I’m just clapping from the sidelines of all this garden business, so on a good day Celia Lovely, that little clapping noise is me, cheering the gardening gods on for you.
Thanks Anna darlin’! :)
What great herbs and plants! You must have an amazing garden – I’m limited to just three large window boxes at the moment, stuffed with mint, chives, nasturtiums and old English sweet peas.
Thanks! We used to have a tiny garden and lots of lawn, now we don’t have any back lawn, and scrambling garden beds. It’s very messy and a little untended in recent months, but there’s still stuff to eat out there! Sweet peas sound lovely – you must have a lot of colour in those boxes! :)
Seattle has a ton of slugs – I’ve heard about the coffee grounds, but the other thing that effective is small dishes of beer – for some reason the slugs like the smell and crawl in and then not out again.
We don’t have much in our garden this year – too much rain and a cold summer predicted. We are sticking to radishes, lettuce, garlic, herbs, blueberries and broccoli. Our most prolific crop is hops. This is the 3rd year since we planted them and they have quadrupled in output. They may take over our deck before long!
Dear Celia
I came across your site some time ago when searching for fig recipes when I had lots from the garden. I’ve enjoyed reading it and so have friends when I told them about it. I showed my husband the wind chime site that you mentioned and he thought that I would like one for my vegetable garden. He cleverly made one himself as a surprise for my 60th birthday. I also made a couple of your polar fleece sacks. I sent one to my son who lives in London and it was a hit. In regard to your strawberries I have found that the most sucessful way is to use weed mat. I live on 10 acres and have a big vegie garden grown organically. I use lucerne mulch on everything else and tried the strawberries with a straw mulch and also with pine needles ( they are acid forming and supposed to be good for strawberries). I have tried growing them in containers but find that the soil settles and then the strawberries sit low and tend to rot and it is hard to search for snails and slugs. So I have done it the way they are done commercially. I make a rounded sort of hill to plant the strawberries into. I make a hill wide enough for two rows of plants and it’s probably about 900cm wide. I use the 1800 width weedmat as it takes extra to go up and over the hill and I tuck the edges under a row of bricks. Or you could do a single row with 900 wide mat. I find it easiest to put the plants in and then put the weed mat over and cut a slit to pull the leaves through. You can put a dripper line in under the weed mat or they can be hand watered still. It’s a bit fiddly but makes for low maintenance once done. The berries stay clean and it makes it easier to search for snails and slugs. I have sawdust on my paths between the vegetable beds and that helps with the snail and slug problem. I still get an occasional slug but it’s the easiest way I’ve tried so far.
Jackie, wow, thank you for such great advice! I’m forwarding it to Pete now. We had a look today and there are lots of strawberries forming, but the slugs are already getting to them. The strawbs are planted in a separate part of the yard, near the path, so the chooks don’t really keep the slugs in check as much as they do in the main bit of the garden.
I’m so impressed by your clever husband, those wind chimes are hard to make! What sort of pipe did he use? And how did he tune them? That’s quite a project! And thank you for letting me know that your son enjoyed the pf sacks – it’s surprising how much of a difference a little box corner in the blanket can make to the warmth levels! :)
Thanks again, great to hear from you!
Cheers, Celia