My garden is a topic that has been something to ponder on for a while. Is it blog worthy? Will it manage to meet my aspirations? Or will it instead fade away to the weedy snake bed that is the ominous and steadfast prediction of my wife's? Only time can tell and so I will start with a little of the history and then perhaps in a month or two the blog will be brimming with pictures of plump home grown vegetables and splashes of colourful flowers.
The initial plan of the garden was a chemical free, wondrous, cottage garden. I had read a few environmentalist magazines and was keen to use news paper and compost to stamp out the weeds and companion planting to deter the insect pests. This was to be a weekend hobby that would hold the kids interest, provide inexpensive, fresh tasting food for the family and lighten my environmental footprint. The final destination is still the same though the journey may have thus far taken a few changes in direction.
Starting with an all ready bare but infertile patch of ground a few months ago the first layer of newspaper was lain down, wet in place and covered with scraps. The compost heap was not established and basically what we covered the newspaper was kitchen scraps, and grass in very early stages of decomposition and still quite recognisable as scrap. The main lesson that came from this was that while five year old Sheryl was quite interested in the novelty of the garden her attention span lasted for about five minutes. transplanted into this garden were capsicum and tomato. Quite proud everybody calls it a day.
with watering the garden seems to progress along well for a couple of weeks and we are able to pick a couple of capsicum out of pocket expenses; none. The compost cover looking a little more like compost and the plants over any transplant shock. The excitement over the garden between the girls and I hits another level when pumpkins start sprouting from the compost. We plant zucchini seed and they sprout as well along side the pumpkin vines. It has been a good start.
Then things take a turn for the worse as other things start taking president over the garden and it starts to over grow with weeds. my thoughts when the pumpkin vines first started spreading in all directions were that they would stamp out the grass and all would be fine. Pumpkins prove to be more competition to tomatoes and capsicum then they are to grass and weed. it gets to the point of I told you so,so the environmental footprint turns to lead for a time and I mow over the lot with the ride on mower then I poison the matted weed that remains with only two zucchini surviving the onslaught. The crop so far amounting to three zucchini two pumpkins and a few capsicum; the costs negligible.
last weekend I took the poisened garden shape and dug a garden edge around it then lightly turned the earth finding that the fertility of the underlying soil had improved a little from the newspaper and compost. Then I was able to get the attention of the girls again for spreading a new layer of paper and grass clipings. Fortunatly there have been a couple of horses down the back on a short stay and we were able to collect a few droppings this may become a regular event also.
Today some plants are bought for $7.50 the first purchase made specifically for the garden. Sheryl has been a big help with newspaper mulch and planting and even Rachael almost two has helped with hoding the hose. our garden now includes corn, tom thumb tomatoes and our first flowers along side the established zucchini plants.
