Constructive gardening!

My DH has been busy this morning creating climbing structures for the garden. This is the passion fruit vine trellis -it has to be large and sturdy as a passion fruit grows quickly to over 4 metres in spread. When grown, we won't be able to see the less than attractive fence, but instead will see lovely leaves and -hopefully-lots o fruit.

In the corner you can see a circle of wire which we are training the cucumber to grow on, and at the back of the photo, some wire to assist the tomatoes and beans. The roma tomatoes are setting fruit now and I have a very impressive Grosse Lisse also setting fruit.

Poor DH had to get into the corner where there is an old rose, which was very prickly, but such is the commitment of my garden helper, he didn't even complain! Thanks DH!

In the front of the picture you can see the Mexican tarragon, which is really liking the extra mulch and coir we used in this bed. I have just planted some curly basis and some beetroot here too.

Last year this bed was not productive, but we are hoping that improvements we have made to the soil and the watering regime will overcome these problems.

I think that my garden is showing the benefits of the experiences I had last year. I have learned the hard way about what seems to work here but I am still worried that the real hot weather has not hit us yet and the improvements we have made have not been tested under the conditions that saw an end to nearly everything I tried to grow last year.


The new raised garden has been having a makeover. The celery I planted first in this new bed, recently showed signs of being attacked by aphids and ants of course, who follow aphids.

I had planted more celery than we could use anyway, so I chose to empty the bed and instead have planted more lettuces today as that will be in most demand over the summer. I have planted a punnet of celery in other parts of the garden as an experiment.

The rainbow chard has been huge in this bed, and the strawberries and asparagus are doing well for their first year.

I have a couple of experimental cherry tomatoes in here too. I wondered if the shade would be too much but they are flowering and setting fruit.

We are now harvesting the zucchini from the wicking bed and the silverbeet of course, and the lettuce I planted some months ago. I have had one feed from the beans, but I must get more into the ground.

I get such a 'kick' from using things in my cooking that have come directly from my garden. On the menu this week will be zucchini slice and vegetarian quiche. I have a lot of herbs which I use to flavour the cooking too

The seedlings I got were from the Market stall at the Wanneroo market. I also bought some lemon basil and some sweet basil from the ladies there and they have gone into a large waterwell pot which has purple basil in it.

This gardening stuff is a huge learning curve but I am very happy to see the results I am getting.

My new books from the Good Life book club should be here this week !