Veggies! Veggies! Veggies!

I think the first thing Nathan said to me when we bought our house was, "I want to plant a vegetable garden." Noah didn't let him forget that statement either, constantly reminding him, "Dadda, we still need to plan and plant our vegetable garden, don't we?!" And since we have 2 little boys who love being in the garden and "helping out" it was a goal we wanted to realise sooner rather than later.

So with the some inspiration from this pin on Pinterest, we decided we should utilise the "garden bed" on the eastern side of the house, outside the laundry. It has the benefits of being just outside the laundry so its convenient to maintain, but its a bit of a dead area in the backyard. It also gets a good amount of sun, but not too much. This was the drab looking site we picked for our veggie patch.

Over the course of a few weekends, even a little planting on Christmas Day, Nathan and the boys built a garden bed and planted our veggies. It took a lot of reminding to get Beau to keep the dirt in the garden bed but all-in-all the boys were great little Bob-the-Builders/Don Burkes.

So far the veggie patch has two types of beans, two types of tomatoes, corn, carrots, blueberries, basil, jalapeno chillies and shallots planted. We have already been able to pick and eat some of the blueberries! Delicious! And we have our first tomato growing! The carrots are constantly being "checked" by Beau, so lets hope they survive and we are so thankful the veggies all faired very well during Tuesday scorching 42C day!

The boys seem to be enthusiastic about watering the veggies, and especially about eating the blueberries! We can't wait to be harvesting more veggies from our patch soon! Maybe our next batch of tomato relish will be from our garden!

Next stop collecting our own eggs...maybe next year.

Tea Tin Basil

After we had completed the Herb Garden Redo back in October I did not throw out the sad and woody basil plant which I had left in the original pot. In fact, those large planter boxes have sat on the balcony and now down in the garden providing many more hours of dirty fun for my boys (I am trying very hard to embrace the mess of my two little boys and the dirty fun they get up to).

Furthermore, after reading this pin on how to prune basil so you grow larger leaves, and hence a larger plant, that sad looking basil plant was starting to look like it may be worth saving. Thank you again Pinterest for some useful information which actually worked.

So I needed a new pot solution for this recovering basil plant, and with my new kitchen completed I was missing having herbs in my kitchen to just pick at when I needed a leaf or two (not that the balcony is such a trek to pick from my new basil plant - all of 15 feet from the kitchen!). I saw a couple of pins using old tea tins for herbs and kitchen plants and as I had a plethora of tea tins following an amazing High Tea Baby Sprinkle I hosted for my sister, I just had to wait for one of the tins to be empty and my desire for a small indoor basil plant would be realised.

It was the Mother's Bouquet tea that was completed first - hardly surprising in this household I suppose. And what a cute little addition to my new kitchen this tea-tin-basil-plant makes!

P.S. I highly recommend reading this basil pruning tutorial. It takes about 30 seconds and it is so worth it! I can't make pesto fast enough to keep up with my plant on the balcony! And it had taken my neglected old woody plant back to producing lots of leaves that are significantly larger than I had been getting for the last year.

Herb garden redo

With spring in the air, and our new house and garden, it was time to rescue the neglected herbs. Previously planted in unattractive long green planters, the herbs had been long neglected since we moved out of our Fairlight townhouse in June. The basil had become woody and sparse, the spinach had been all eaten (by a spinach-loving-toddler who didn't discern leaves from roots), and the rosemary was starting to get brown leaves.


I think you'll agree this little corner of our balcony looks pretty drab and unattractive. So after a little reading about how to care for each of our herbs, and taking a little inspiration from my mum's herb corner, I bought some new basil, spinach and lavender, and a number of different sized pots to repot the herbs into.

This is the result:



A little more attractive, definitely more lush, and I love the pop of lavender in the back. We still reused the chalkboard garden stakes, and what remains of the red and white toadstools. The oregano, the rosemary and the very sad looking parsley are all from the old pots.

We have spent the last 5 months renovating and repairing the interior of the house (more on those renovations to come soon), and whilst we have many plans for the garden area, this may be all we manage for the next year.

Once again, I had a little boy delighted to help "move the dirt" using his dump truck and spade. Though I'm not terribly sure how much dirt got moved into those new pots - it all just ended up on the balcony. He had fun though and it was an hour of dirty fun spent together.



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Chalkboard Garden Stakes and Toadstools

I had quite a lot of fun with my 2 little boys planting some new herbs in our garden on the weekend. Too much fun in fact, to take any photos of the 2 of them up to their elbows in dirt and mud. Apparently, little boys love digging in dirt - who knew?! :)

My 3 year old was especially excited when we bought some cute little chalkboard garden stakes to label our herbs with. We bought them at one of our favourite coffee shops, Favourite Things, which is stocked full of - well favourite things. My mum actually bought us the cute red toadstools in the same shop a few months ago. We go to this cafe on Tuesdays either before or after the boys music classes and I think my son is of the opinion that they "make the BEST baby-ccino's" as they come with a chocolate coated snake.

Hopefully this lot of herbs survive a little better than the last lot which suffered from too much water as I had planted them in what was previously a fish pond. I didn't really think through the drainage issue very well. This time we planted the herbs is pots resting in the space that used to be a fish pond.








I am looking forward to having Noah and Beau help me water and care for these herbs and especially the spinach which Noah is super excited to eat!

What do you love planting and/or eating from your garden?

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