Effort pays off

This week we have been working on the garden in every spare moment, even foregoing our usual early morning walk to get things done.

We both work full time, and have had full social lives on the weekends, but this garden needs our care just now.

The summer is warming up and the biggest task was to spread some wonderful lupin mulch on the veggie beds in the back yard, to shade the soil and protect the moisture within. Lupin mulch feeds the soil by adding nitrogen to the soil. I used it last year on the veggies -and the added bonus is that it smells wonderful!

Last weekend DH worked very hard getting all the back yard covered with in-line drip irrigation. It was a huge job, but it will save a lot of water and put it to better use.

There is still a lot more I would like to have done, but it is so rewarding to see the Seven Year beans climbing the trellis we have made on the fence, and the passionfruit with a lovely crop of green egg shaped fruits.

The tomatoes in
the wicking bed are looking seriously healthy at the moment. We water this only once per week via a tube that puts the water underneath the plants in a reservoir of sorts, and the shade cloth just breaks the heat of the sun.

I wish I had planted more cucumbers -we have only four, but if I look after them that will be a good crop.

It is not all productive in the garden however. I am just as pleased that the jasmine that I planted in a desperate attempt to cover up our ugly fence near the back entertaining area, is now in flower and smells wonderful.

I am even happy that the cannas I had given up on and tried to pull out have defied every attempt at eradication and are now in glorious flower.

It is interesting to see how much food we can get out of our small garden, given the fact that we don't have a lot of space, and the work we do in the garden tends to be a bit sporadic.

We are harvesting huge rainbow chard and tiny lettuce leaves at the moment, along with a large variety of herbs which add a lot of flavour to our food.
The added benefit of course is that the food we produce is entirely organic and totally fresh when we eat it, so we are getting the very best nutrition we can get from these things.

Apart from the exercise required to make it happen of course! However nothing really happens without effort and in the case of the garden the effort seems to be paying off at the moment.