Spring cleaning and mulch mulch more

We have a long weekend this weekend (hooray), so have been making the most of it out in the garden (despite the wind).

We took a drive down to Queanbeyan today to the Wholesale Sleeper Company and ordered 20 sleepers (A grade, well-priced), 2 x half wine barrels and 4 x bales of sugar cane mulch. We brought back 6 bags of potting mix with us too!

Do you get the feeling Spring is in the air? :o)

Remember this diagram? Well, we are about to dismantle our current backyard and put in garden beds made of sleepers. We'll start with beds 1 and 2, plus the worm farm area and the small area between the worms and the passionfruit. Currently this is grassed, so we're planning on putting a bed there -- it gets all day sun and we think perhaps there's a pipe below that keeps things moist(ish), as the grass is always green!

It's definitiely warming up. We put some strawberries in around the plum trees (Red Gauntlet variety) to see how they'll go. Companion Planting says that the strawberries act as 'an alterative host for a parasitic insect that preys on oriental fruit moths, a pest of peach trees' (1995, p.146), so we thought we'd see how they went with plums too. Borage is said to assist the growth of strawberries too, when interplanted.

We then drove a little further to Bungendore to the antique-recycling place there, and picked up an art deco(ish) style screen door on which to hang our jasmine - it's just taken off since the weather's warmed up! It sits next to our half-finished pond in the front garden, by the loungeroom window. Adds some height and perspective to the garden too. I'll pop a pic up soon!

Reference:

McClure, S. & Roth, S. (1995) Companion Planting. Lothian Books: Melbourne.

Springing into spring with broccoli

We've just got back from a two-week holiday overseas in the US, and were so pleased to see the garden still in tact and progressing well (somewhat slowly due to the cold)...

We were pleasantly surprised to see our broccoli doing well and were able to cut two heads for dinner!

The caulies however seemed to have fed the local possums - but I'm thinking in true companion planting style this benefitted the broccoli no end! :)

The rocket, coriander and parsley have had a burst of growth too, and the dwarf broad beans have copious flower buds (rubs hands with glee)! We have some red onions in too and have been thinning them to use as spring onions before they form their bulbs - love a plant that multi-tasks! :o)

Nice to have had a bit of rain too in the last couple of days - let's hope there's more to come.

Roll on spring, so far so good (and with very little insect damage to boot)!