Vegetable Garden

When I moved into this house, there was no clear veg patch like at my last place. There were, however, a couple of unused, sad looking skinny but long garden beds, full of bindies or grass, or nothing. Fantastic!

After getting permission from the real estate (as I’m renting), I set to work on my veg patch – a priority for me, as I’m trying to grow more of y own food each year.

The bed I chose runs along a colourbond fence I share with my neighbour, and is about 6m long and half a metre wide at best. challenge accepted! With the help of some rather chaotic framing through tomato trusses/trellis and pickets with coconut rope run through the holes to form a garden-long trellis, I have planted a LOT!

What do I have? Lettuce, bok choy, capsicums, chilli, tomatoes (3 kinds!), sweet corn, beans (growing up the corn), watermelon, zucchini, pumpkin, button squash, silverbeet, basil, rockmelon (not doing great in producing, but lots of flowers), and cucumbers. I want to add in some more leafy greens and seeds to grow as the veg produces and finishes, so it’s never empty, but my first goal was to throw as much as I could in and see what does well. So far, the answer is almost everything!

I did watch how the sun travelled over the yard, and this patch in particular, to ensure it will get enough sun even in winter, and that it gets a little bit of shade too. It gets plenty of wind through it, but the fence helps protect the plants from falling over. The first few weeks, things grew slowly, and then I had an explosion of life thanks to some rain and an influx of insects – things started to be pollinated (woohoo!), and life came to this little patch. I’ve seen plenty of lizards and the birds have been loving the source of food in the insect life that now occupies that part of the yard.

I started by building the soil – compost and straw mulch to break down as time goes by has done wonders as usual. As the insect life and soil bacteria gets to work breaking down the mulch and improving the soil, the plants improve. I will continue this building process just as did at my last home, as the better you treat the dirt and feed it, the better it feeds you.

Have you gardened in a challenging bed before? Narrow, small or poorly positioned? What did you do to make it work?