Lottie's Lot

Ever since we started grubbing out the shrubs and tree to expand the area for the new veggie patch (see Creative Destruction and Destruction Completed) we’ve had a growing pile of rubbish.  We seemed to keep finding ways to add to it – parts of the old swing set, chunks of weeds and grass, more roots and feral shrubs – so we’ve put off dealing with it.  Until now.

This weekend we hired a skip bin and tossed out all this miscellaneous rubbish (and 88 years of kitchen flooring too, but that’s a different story).  Much nicerer!

Before Pile of Cuttings Gone

After Pile of Cuttings Gone

Before Slide Etc Gone

After Slide Etc Gone

Such an exciting day!  Today so much happened in the garden.  First Christina drilled holes in the bottoms of the wine barrels.  They were certainly solidly built as it took longer than expected.  The sawdust smelt great (a bit too good; I inhaled its oakey-winey goodness a bit too enthusiastically!)  Cam arrived, and he filled the wine barrels with soil then got the raspberry bed ready to be extended by moving some of the compost that was there to where the trees would be planted, hacking out some feral shrub things, and digging the rest of the compost through.

We got to work planting out the 5 raised garden beds, under Christina’s instructions.   First drip hoses were installed into the beds; the hose is made of recycles tyres and oozes water when connected to the hose.  After this the planting begun.  Mostly I wrote labels while Christina and Scott planted.  I was really surprised to hear Scott say he hadn’t planted seedlings out before!  These are the 5 raised beds:

Big Green:  This one went quickly as it was just being planted out with green manure.  This will later be the tomato patch.  The green manure is made up of fava beans, lupin, grains.

Big Yellow:  This also has a green manure crop, broad beans.  Later in the year this will be planted out with cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins.

Big Blue:

• Climbing Peas, Telephone
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Snow Peas, Oregon Giant
• Bush Pea, Greenfeast
• Bok Choy
• Pak Choi Purple
• Mizuna
• Tatsoi
• Lettuce, Lollo Rossa
• Lettuce, Speckles
• Lettuce, Frilly Pink

Big Red (root veggies and soft herbs):

• Coriander
• Spring Onions
• Italian Parsley
• Carrot, Royal Chantenay
• Carrot, White Belgian
• Carrot, Red Cored
• Carrot, Lubyana
• Beetroot, Chioggia
• Beetroot, Detroit Red
• Beetroot, Golden Globe
• Beetroot, Bull’s Blood

Little Red:  This will one day be the asparagus patch but for now it has been planted out with potatoes, pink eyes and kipflers.

With the beds done, the cherry, mulberry, and chestnut were planted and staked.  Then the raspberries were put into the marvelous bed Cam had prepared.  Then the irrigation system was checked.  Christina gave us a few suggestions and instructions, then she was off to the next garden!

Once she left we watered in the beds, then grabbed some lunch at Churros Cafe.  After lunch we went to Stoneman’s and got some berries (I’ll go into all the varieties in the post when we plant them!), a lemon (for one of the wine barrels), and ordered delivery of some mulch.  Then Lottie and I went to Kingston to try to catch a guy we could get some sheep poo from, however he had already closed up ‘shop’ for the day.  (We’re going to Franklin tomorrow, and if we can’t find sheep poo down the Huon we really don’t know what we’re doing!)  Lottie and I went to Chandler’s and got the 2 olives we’d looked at with Christina, a bay, and some more varieties of lettuce.  These are all for ‘the Mediterranean Zone’.

Back home, Scott dug out some of the woody herbs from my herb garden to move to the dirt patch in the Mediterranean Zone.  Christina will steal some fig cuttings from her mum and come stick them in the ground tomorrow.  So around the outside of this patch is thyme, lemon thyme, marjoram, sage, oregano and in the back is mini lavender (blue and pink – and I put in extras so I can get some out for Naomi once they’ve struck).

There’s so much more to do, but we’ve certainly made a start!  There are, of course, some photos.  (Note: you can just follow this through to Flickr to view them or see the slide show here; if you want to see the descriptions, select ‘Show Info’ in the upper right.)

Yesterday was a BIG day in Lottie’s Lot: the Fimbaristas came and got the garden beds into position and moved what must have been several billion wheelbarrow loads of soil to fill them!

For us, the day started out with dropping Lottie off to spend the day with her friends Flynn and Devon.  This ensured she was out of the way and the back gate could safely be left open.  The blurry furry bodies in this photo show that this was a popular plan.

Lottie came home to find that one of her favourite puppies, Kenny, had done a LOT of work in her absence! Either that or he thought this new ‘bed’ was a great place to nap with its freshly moved soil.

The beds fit even better than I thought they would. We used to have a dinky veggie patch here that nearly killed us to dig out and was never very good; now we have these excellent raised garden beds, holes have been dug for the cherry and mulberry, etc!

Garden beds from the uphill side (with added ‘ghost husbands’ and a bonus schnauzer tail!):

I’m so excited about planting out on Saturday!  Note:  if you select the last 2 photos and check them out on Flickr, there are a few notes on the photos.