One of the great advantages of writing this blog is that it has allowed us to keep track of how the garden is faring. Comparing these photos that I took over the weekend with the ones I posted a month ago, it’s astonishing to see how much growth there’s been in the last four weeks, especially as we’re now entering the second week of winter!
A shot of the garden from the back door – it’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, this was all overgrown buffalo grass that I had to nag the boys to mow…
The cos seedlings that we planted in May are thriving, as are the transplanted perennial leeks, which seem to be bulletproof…
The brassicas are making slow but steady progress. The weather has turned very wet and chilly, but hopefully they’ll survive…
The celery seedlings are well established…
…as are my transplanted celeriacs. Can anyone advise me on when these will be ready to harvest? Thanks…
At the back of the paisley shaped bed, we’ve planted comfrey – Pete thinks it will make excellent mulch, and it has medicinal uses as well…
The peas are coming along nicely. Our recent wet weather will test the “mildew-resistant” claims of the three varieties we planted…
We only seem to be able to grow sorrel in one spot in the garden, which is probably a good thing, given that some gardeners find that it spreads like a weed in their backyards…
The asparagus bed continues to fluff up, and we’re still getting the occasional new shoot…
We find Tuscan kale seedlings very hard to raise and establish, but once they’re going, they keep producing for ages. We’re slowly refining our planting choices – we now plant kale instead of spinach, and cos lettuce instead of non-heading varieties…
The bed most recently vacated by the chooks has been planted and mulched. This time we used sugar cane mulch instead of pea straw, and found it more economical and easier to work with. In this bed we’ve planted beetroot, broccoli (you can never have enough broccoli in the garden), garlic, peas (around the chicken wire teepee), dill, coriander and cos lettuce…
My beautiful bishops’ crown chilli keeps fruiting – it makes me smile every time I look at it. The seeds were hard to raise – we only managed a 50% strike rate, and of those, only this one grew once it was planted in the garden. But like the kale, once established, it seemed to gain momentum…
This is what can happen if rogue tomato seedlings are left unchecked! This is a single self-sown cherry tomato which grew in the small bed near the house once the cucumbers were finished…
I’m not sure how much longer it will last with the cold snap that’s just moved in…
We have a bay tree in a pot that hasn’t grown much over the past few years. It more than provides for our cooking needs though…
Finally, a short clip of our girls. They’re in our good books at the moment, as they’ve been tidying up all the really messy spots in the garden for us. This patch near the fence was covered in (no exaggeration) waist-high weeds. In the space of a few weeks, the chooks have done away with the weeds, turned over and fertilised the soil, and eaten all the grubs. I’m hoping Pete will let me plant potatoes there, although I’m not sure if the spot will get enough sun…
How’s your garden going this month?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Your garden is always so beautifully impressive Celia!
:-) Mandy
Thanks Mandy! :)
Celia, it is truly magnificant. You and Pete should be very proud of yourselves.
You might have to make green tomato chutney if your tomatoes don’t ripen.
Glenda, thank you! Some of the tomatoes are still ripening, despite the wet and cold! I can’t quite get a handle on how many, as Pete keeps eating them straight off the vine.. :)
I am astonished at the amount of veg. you grow! Clever Celia…. the only thing I can give you some advice on is that if you want your bay tree to grow more quickly plant it in the open ground. We have one that is enormous that I bought in a pot years ago. One winter I thought I’d lost it but a friend advised me to take it out of it’s pot and plant it in the ground. It has flourished ever since!
Jeannette, thank you, but we really don’t have a spot for the bay in the garden. We want to keep it contained. What surprises us is not how much veg grows, but rather how little work it takes to keep it all ticking over. Really truly, now that it’s set up, we barely weed at all (the chickens do all that), we rope Big Boy into a little manual labour once a month when we rotate the chook dome (he rakes over the soil and mulches) and all we really have to do is plant seedlings! And harvest of course. :)
Linda Woodrow’s plan really is quite brilliant..
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2012/05/25/school-project/
What a great garden! Beautiful…
Thank you! Nothing on your scale though! :)
So interesting to see the same plants growing in opposite seasons to ours. I made a similar post in California 6 months ago. http://californiamediterraneandiet.com/2012/01/23/california-winter-garden-tour/
What amazing produce you have! I think our climates must be very similar, although our avocado trees are nowhere near fruiting! And you’ve done much better with cauliflower than we have! :)
I have some serious garden envy now! (What are “chooks”? Chickens?)
And thank you for the shout out to my blog – I appreciate it very much.
I am trying to propagate a Bay cutting, It may just have to go into the ground with rooting compound. I am not quite sure how to propagate the plant but it is worth a try.
Chooks = chickens (over here in Australia!). I love your Tyler series, Pamela! My Big Boy isn’t far behind your son…
It’s so wet and cold here that most things in my garden have stopped blooming. Even the squashes and cucumbers are just sitting and waiting for warmer weather. Your garden however looks fabulous!
Misky, thank you – it looks fab on Saturday when I took the photos, and then the sky opened up and it’s been bucketing down ever since! Ah well.. :)
Your garden looks amazing! My brassicas have had thick snow on them for four days and have revived so i guess yours will endure, but your bay needs to be in a much bigger pot if you want it to grow bigger x
Max, I’m sure it’s MUCH colder in NZ than it is here! I’m glad to know the brassicas are so hardy, thank you! And I don’t think I really want the bay to grow any bigger, the garden is pretty jam packed already! :)
Your ‘winter’ garden looks better than mine, which should be coming into full summer production soon. It’s far from it this year – it has been so wet and cold that nothing is growing properly. We certainly wouldn’t expect to have so much still growing at the start of winter in the UK.
Suelle, we’re very temperate in Sydney, although the weather has been bonkers of late – I’ve never seen so much rain. We had a dry couple of sunny weeks, but now the skies have opened again!
Awesome Celia! I don’t have so much growing in our small patch now as we have had severe frosts. Lovely to be so self sufficient!
Lizzy, Canberra really gets so cold, doesn’t it? Stay warm!
I love taking photos of the garden and then looking back to see how fast they have grown. Your winter garden looks great.
Thanks Karen! It’s only a small space, but it brings us great joy!
Thank you dear Celia, it is always so enjoyable to visit your blog, how beautiful they are all… Good Luck with your garden, love, nia
Nia, thank you! I was thinking today that the cos lettuce are always so photogenic! :D
You are so lucky to have a lovely garden like that. Beautiful pictures too!
Thank you – yes we are very lucky! I think that every day!
I love your chickens Celia. There is something wonderfully relaxing about watching them and the pleasant contended sounds they make as they go about their daily business.
Thank you, I find them really therapeutic. Chickens are the ultimate “live in the moment” bird.. :)
Loving your garden – Beautiful & Bountiful:) Have a Great Day!
Thanks Renee! Hope you’re having a good one too!
Your garden is absolutely wonderful, I am so envious. The asparagus is so pretty, I didn’t realise until recently that asparagus grew so ferny and fluffy, I love it. And your chickens are fantastic!
Don’t be envious, I’ll take photos to share! :) The asparagus has been a complete surprise to us too!
So many good things in your garden Celia, a lovely tour!
Jane, thank you, it’s nice to take photos every month just to keep track of how it’s going. I’m very impatient, but even I can’t complain that things aren’t growing fast enough!
This post makes me realise just how opposite our seasons are! We are approaching mid-summer – though this year you would find it hard to believe!
Don’t worry about your bay tree. They really are ‘trees’ and, unless you want to go into business as bay leaf providers, small is beautiful.
Pat, you’re right, of course. I don’t think we could find a spot for another big tree in the yard! Thanks.. :)
So nice to see how productive your garden still is even in winter Celia. Each daddy last week we got a minus 4 to minus 6, so not too much happening down here! I have been diligently sniffing the earth around my truffle tree though, maybe this years the one! :)
Becca, you crack me up! I just had visions of you outside on all fours, sniffing the dirt! :)
Loving your winter garden!
It looks much better than my summer garden!
I did pick some lettuce today- and I have one green tomato growing on the vine.
Thanks Heidi! It’s very wet out there today, but we did have a couple of lovely days last week…
your veggie garden is as beautiful as ever celia..and of course i adore your girls..x
Jane, they make us so cheery whenever we watch them.. :)
I love peeking at your garden Celia, so many wonderful things growing. I’m not even game to talk about mine it’s such a disgrace at the moment.
Darling, you’ve been busy getting married! That’s the nice thing about gardens, they can always come back.. :)
Celia, on the last Gardening Australia episode there was a segment on growing vegetables in shaded areas and one of the vegetables was potato as well as Rainbow Chard, perpetual spinach and spring onions The bed he was growing vegies in received three hours of direct sunglight and the rest of the time dappled shade. According to Tino “the reason that root vegetables do so well in the shade is because they’ve got a storage unit – this tuber – so they don’t need as much sunlight.” A full transcript of the show can be found at Gardening Australia.
I
Carmen, thank you – I’d taped the show but hadn’t watched it yet. I loved seeing how Tino planted the potatoes – here we are trying to stand them up the right way, and he just throws them into the ditch! Made me laugh.. :)
Celia, your garden looks splendid with all your lovely vege and your gorgeous girls!
The asparagus with berries are female, they are thinner than the males and usually removed.However, if you only have females just remove the berries before they turn red and seed all over the garden.
The sorrell only seems to like to grow in an acidic area of my garden.
And of course Pete is correct Comfrey makes the most wonderful compost; it brings up lots of wonderful good minerals to the surface.
The gardening Australia program was just teriffic; I’m just about to look again after weeding the vege plot in between showers this morning.
Aaah ok, thanks Elaine, great advice. We really are flying by the seat of our pants when it comes to the asparagus! :)
Those chooks are so busy! What diligent and hard workers they are. Makes you feel so sad for the battery hens. Not much happening in my garden! I did grow a bay tree once but not in a pot and it grew so quickly it always needed pruning. Your garden looks like it’s going really well, especially as it’s winter. xx
Thanks Charlie! The chooks really do keep everything in check with us. I took them out some roasted ocean trout today as a reward for all their hard work.. ;-)
Oooh… now I want some chooks, my dog would probably go crazy. I’m not sure we’re allowed in the city here as well:P I just planted a wee garden.. will be blogging later about it. I love yours and still have garden envy… I love your “rogue tomatoes” :) xoxo Smidge
Smidge, can’t wait to see what you’ve got growing! We live in the inner west of Sydney, and chooks are a tradition in these parts. The elderly Italians have been keeping them for decades! :)
That explains it! We’re too young and “backwards” a city.. someone tried this year and got shut down, sadly! Time to move to an acreage!
It is great to follow someone with the same style garden. Our chooks just left the mandala on the weekend so we now have the full six beds ready for action.
Your garden looks so neat and tidy. Mine is filled with sow sobs. Have you been weeding or are you just not getting weeds?
Hi Jason, we get heaps of weeds, but since we figured a way to let the chooks into parts of the garden other than the beds themselves (by fencing off little runs for them), they’ve managed to keep most of it weed free. Lots and lots of mulch seems to help too – as I mentioned we usually use pea straw, but we’re trying sugar cane this time, as it’s cheaper and hopefully we won’t get squillions of rogue pea plants coming up! :)
Your garden looks beautiful,you are lucky to have Pete,who helps out :-)
Sponge, I’m lucky to have Pete, period. He doesn’t help out, he manages. I’m mostly ornamental. :)
I love your garden posts. It is so green for winter! We ate the first of our lettuces – so crunchy and the raspberries should be ready this weekend.
Oh how I would LOVE to grow raspberries! Sounds fantastic! xx
I like the look of your round beds. When do you start and stop cutting your asparagus?
Anne, we really have no idea what we’re doing with the asparagus, but it seems to be growing itself. I wrote a bit about them here.. :)
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2012/04/20/the-asparagus-diaries/
Now that is an impressive winter garden! Well I think I’d be impressed if mine was a fraction of that during summer! :P
Thanks love! We’re pretty chuffed with it! :)
The asparagus bed is my favourite (after the chooks). Wow – how it’s grown in one month.
Sally, it’s certainly very happy in that spot! :)
Wow what a stunning winter garden!
Thank you! Although with all the rain in the past few days, it’s taken a bit of a hammering..
Wonderful garden! We’ve had a “Grey May” and “June Gloom” so our tomatoes are still green for the most part. My master gardener Mother-in-law keeps giving us heirloom seedlings and we keep finding places for them. We have zucchini and green beans. We had tons of artichokes, a pretty good lemon and lime crop, not so good on the oranges this year. We have small cucumber seedlings. Lots of peppers, one gourd, too much mint, not enough strawberries, some berries… tons of herbs. Tiny apples. We just picked all our onions and garlic. The hub really went wacky nutty with the planting this year. :-)
Maz
Maz, what an amazing variety you have planted in the garden! Can’t wait to see how it all goes! I hope the weather picks up for you.. x
It’s looking fantastic! I must go and check on my carrots today :)
Tandy, thank you! I think our carrots are nearly ready too! Or at least I hope so, as the chooks are about to rotate onto that bed! :)
I did a stir fry tonight, miniscule amounts of onions, garlic, cilantro, green beans, lime and cilantro. All out of the garden. Makes me thankful for super markets. :-)
Hahaha…we had something similar – we needed cilantro, but it had only just been planted, and we picked just the teeniest amount, so little it was really just a token bit. I know it wasn’t heaps, but isn’t it lovely when all your stir fry ingredients can come from the garden? :)
I’m impressed that you have created such a wonderful, productive garden in a city backyard. In a backyard anywhere it would be a fine accomplishment, but the inner west… awesome. Love the chooks, and it’s true quite a few people have them. Our old neighbours in Darlington had 3 chooks after they tried 2 goats for a while!
Your winter garden looks fabulous and so green. Our plot always looks really dreary in the winter.
Aah well, you do live in England, Choc. :) We never get frosts – we get the very occasional 0C night, but often during winter it doesn’t get much below 6C overnight. In some ways the garden does better in winter, because all the bugs are on hiatus!
Hi Celia, I have just found your lovely blog. You have an amazing garden I am quite jealous! I noticed you planted comfrey. It is an excellent plant but although I am sure you do not need to be advised it can become a complete pest if you do not keep an eye on it. One itty bit of root left will become another whole plant. It makes amazing fertiliser for the garden. And it is great if you plant it on top of potato tubers before covering with soil. Natural compost.
Regards Jo in NZ