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I am so proud of my food producing garden!
We are so lucky to always have too many lemons, sooo much rosemary, a really healthy and large parsley bush, plenty of sage, thyme and oregano.
I am so excited that we had our first limes this year, the little tree is now about 3 years old.
We didn't do anything with the olives, but the sparrows enjoyed them. I'll harvest next crop I think, not a huge amount, the prep takes up so much water.
Sacha and my Mandarin Tree has little budding flowers for the first time. It's our tree because it has our placenta under it. The tree has been in the garden now for a year. It will be a precious moment when we eat the first fruit from it.
The apricot tree is blossoming and revealing that yet another branch has died since Autumn, but she still grows strong and has such character in her twisted trunk.
The capsicum plant from last year is producing again.
The new plants: a Black Russian Tomato, Vietnamese Cucumber, Carrots, Beetroot and Strawberries.
I am not doing Zucchini again, they take up so much space.
I am so excited to see how our garden grows this year!
Once again Sacha's bath water will nourish the garden, bucket by bucket being carried and poured over it all the morning after. It is quite a process but makes the produce even more cherished.
When things start growing from the newbies I will take and post pictures.
I'm already looking forward to next year when Sacha is old enough to help me plant and pick our crop.

: )

Looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labour! Sounds fabulous.

We have a tiny garden with sandy soil that's water allergic. We bought indigenous plants from our local volunteer collective as they are the only things that will grow in our salty, sandy, blustery garden beds.

Our tucker is grown in pots (even our 12 year old olive tree and raspberries) and polystyrene boxes that we got from the fish market. But we're contemplating getting a plot at one of our community gardens next year, so we can grow more. Fortunately for us we have a choice of two garden venues: one council run, the other is church run. Then we'll go beserk!!

Your garden sounds great!

I am trying to grow some of my own for the first time this year.
We have potted strawberries just flowering.
Garlic, that I'm feeling a little dubious ( or maybe just impatient) about!

Yesterday I put some old fashioned curley parsley, thyme and oregano in a pot.
I have recently planted seeds for baby carrots, cherry tomato's and Zucchini...

Its all a learning curve!

Learning curve is certainly right, Tammy!

I've been half heartedly maintaining a food garden since we moved into the house we're in now- about two years ago. This is the first year I've put a lot of effort into trying to get a really productive garden going and it's been such a learning curve!

Living on the Northern Tablelands was the first challenge- we went down to -8,9 or 10 degrees quite a few times this year over winter. Day time average temp during winter is around 10 degrees (or something ridiculous like that, hehe) so we've had to see which plants can survive in dormancy over winter. A lot of our herbs have gone really well- Oregano, Sage, Marojam Thyme and Lemon Thyme all survived being snowed on this year. So did our Vietnamese Mint- it's second winter survival. This was the most surprising- I thought it was going to be a goner for sure! We've since added some curly leaf parsley and some Mexican tarragon into the herb garden to see how they go. I've tried normal tarragon with limited success, so we'll see how this goes.

I'm trying to grow a few things from seed this year. I have Onions, Leeks, Rainbow Chard, Beetroot, Tomatoes and some hungarian chillies all popping up in pots trays all over the place. The only failure so far is the chillies- which we constantly struggle with up here anyways.

I'm going to start off my next wave of seeds this weekend. I've tried to stick to plants that should grow well up here. We'll see what works and what doesn't I guess! There's going to be little experimental Kales and Beans and Brussel Sprouts. It's all very exciting, and our taste buds (and hip pockets!) are loving us for it.

Hi, all, just thought I'd tell you about my efforts.
I'm in Perth, 30kms from the coast and in foothills, where the soil here is rock and sand! (even this far inland!) so not very conducive to growing veggies.
So most of what I grow is confined to pots, and also the polystyrene boxes that SF mentions.
Had success with herbs over the years, coriander, Italian & curly parsley, Vietnamese & ordinary mint, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, chillies, chives and last summer, Thai & plain basil (both annuals) but this year will try the perennial. Only limited success with veggies, the varmints get them just when the crops' are looking good, as I don't go in for pesticides, plus I have a nuisance dog!
My ideal would be to have the whole back yard given over to raised garden beds (no dig) and chooks, but we're only renting for one, plus the aforementioned dog, are both problems; one day! Cheers

I may as well throw in a quick update myself.

I have been recently picking the usual lettuce by the bucket load each day, butter beans and we just picked our first bunch of broad beans. Lucky DS eats them raw otherwise we'd never get rid of them. I have cucumbers starting to produce and I get to pick a small handfull of snowpeas every couple of days to munch on while wandering around the yard with beer in hand.

Asparagus is coming along nicely, can't wait for my first pick next year, garlic is still hanging in there and the strawberries throw out a little treasure every couple of days.

The cows got into my second plot again. I got as far as 3 sides to my fence around the garden but just haven't had a chance to finish it, and the buggers come through and mowed down my lettuce and my green beans, capsicum and tomatoes. Only good news is they left lots of poops that went into the compost.

Once we pull the broad beans we are going to plant kipfler spuds that are sprouting in the pantry. I will plant more beans and lettuce and maybe some corn soon too. Fresh corn is yummy.