Showing posts with label melon of some sort. Show all posts
Showing posts with label melon of some sort. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

A day at home


Finally a day that I can spend at home alone, as a stay at home mum, it is surprising how little time I have at home with nowhere to be, though my youngest spawn is ten.  Maybe I'll spend some of my day catching up on laundry, tidying, and dusting, but there will be blissful uninterrupted reading. Yesterday I arrived home in the afternoon to Kalayna Price's Grave Witch in the mailbox, I bought it on an amazon recommendation, a bit like genius on iTunes. I think it serendipitous, this book arrives just in time for my first day off in almost forever, a perfect break from hectic reality.

Because I have the time, I thought I would take some photos of what's growing in my garden, firstly, because I'm proud of my first attempt at growing our food. And secondly, because it's great to have a comparison for later on.

These are my dwarf butter beans just over two weeks ago, and today.  



Zucchini, These little babies are going to make me very happy! 



My tangled tomatoes, I mistakenly planted 9 of them very close together, and next to the broccoli which is apparently not a good thing. Underneath them is my basil, I have read that not only do they taste great together, but growing them together is beneficial as well.

This is the melon of some sort, found the day I started to plan out my veggie patch, and the day before I was to plant my pumpkins. 

This is what it looked like, and I, thinking I was an expert on such things, was so sure that this surprise plant, growing from nothing I'd ever planted, was in fact a pumpkin. I'm glad I didn't rely on that, knowing now it is a melon, or I wouldn't have bought and planted the pumpkins in time. I moved it from where it was and planted it in the newly turned, weeded, manured, and mulched bed, and brought three new pumpkin plants to plant with it. 


the day after I moved it, I was sure I'd killed it...


A few weeks later it looked like this and now, it's probably the happiest plant in my yard... I am happy to hear any theories on what melon this may be, Any! The curiosity is killing me. My son Micheal is hoping for rockmelon, and has already staked his claim on the fruit, I'm thinking honey dew.

The celery, It seems to be the slowest growing thing in my backyard, I keep looking impatiently at those perfect little stalks with a predatory eye. 

Our green mignonette lettuce, these have been adding some green to the spawns sandwiches and rolls. 

Lastly, my cabbage seedlings. 

The white butterflies have been busy on these tiny leaves too, I'd better start picking those eggs off.

This is not the whole of what's growing in the garden, and the other things will have their turn too, but I think this post is past long enough, I can ramble on forever about my veg, so I'll stop for now. Plus I hear the rubbish truck, and am desperate to take out the school holiday build up of recycling. 

'til next post,
Bek.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Happy Birthday My Justin...

Today is my partners birthday and it is, in part, his fault I have started this blog. In my quest for self sufficiency, I have been reading other people's experiences on blogs such as this, all of the advice and information has been invaluable. Not that I am in anyway experienced, but I am learning. Justins thought was that I should be sharing our veggie venture, creating a sort of online journal, so that I can look back and see how it started, having a good measure for the progress we make. I love that he is enthusiastic in his encouragement of my humble beginnings in our Veggie patch. And although I don't want my blog to be predominantly about the growing of vegetables, this post is for him.

The veggie patch was a little inspired by Hugh, that infectiously enthusiastic chap from the river cottage series, oh the seed had been planted long ago, but he definitely made sure that seed germinated, and grew! As a vegetarian I can't enjoy all he does, but I respect when he slaughters an animal, he respects the animal enough to waste nothing. With this new idea of growing my own food, high on information overload gleaned from two months of non stop internet research, I went to Justin and rambled and ranted and raved about all things permaculture, and growing our own veg. Poor Justin, for all he had to listen to, watch, and read.

The first thing I did was plant pumpkin, right next to my ashamedly unused greenhouse.


 There are 3 Kent pumpkins and one melon of some sort, but that's a tale for another day. I am amazed at how fast they've grown in less than a month! We also have 2 raised garden beds and are hoping to make use of every part of the garden we can for food.




My veggies planted just before the end of the year.
The same bed this morning!























We are currently growing cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cucumber, pumpkin, some sort of melon, leeks, celery, strawberries, zucchini, and butter beans. There are also various seedlings we have grown from seed, I can't wait to plant them, watch them grow and eat them.

I still have a lot of work to do, and there is so much more I will share over the coming weeks, but it's a fair start, and for Justin's dinner, tonight we ate something I'd grown, some delicious home grown Basil on some home-made pizza's.

Happy Birthday my Justin.
Bek.