Enjoying the fruits of my labour

I have been waiting for this day for sometime. Over the past few weeks I have been lovingly nuturing my lettuce in the hopes that I'll be able to enjoy something grown with my own brown thumbs which aren't so brown now...yipee!!!

As I plucked the largest leaves hanging over the edge of it's bucket I began to ponder how I could enjoy these succulent offerings, perhaps a simple salad, a sandwich, or on their own. So that very night I made us a delicious salad with acid free tomatoes,camberet cheese,avocado and balsamic salad dressing...mmmmm.

Over the next few days have enjoyed sum very yummy salads and you can really tell the difference, or maybe I'm just thinking that....lol.

You say potato I say potar-to

I did a lot of research, asking friends, reading message boards, doing google searchings all because I wanted to grow the humble potato. Really I couldn't justify the cost of buying a bag of seed pototo's ,which may be my downfall, opting instead to use some organic pototoes I brought to boil, bake, mash and eventually eat..yumm!!! So far so good they are sprouting very well almost scarily so in the past couple of weeks they have gone from little tiny sprouts just barely breaking earth to OMG what if they outgrow the buckets I put them in. But it's not what is growing on the top that counts it's what is happening underneath. I haven't started dreaming that a giant, zombie potato chasing me down the road in my pj's nightmare yet and cross fingers I won't but here's a couple of pictures to show you what I mean - yikes.

Don't you just hate it when....

You water your plants and then it starts to ran less than a couple of hours later...grr!! Or worse still when your expecting rain and it doesn't...double grrr!!!

My Duh!! moment

The other day I was looking very hard at my tomato plants and thinking wow! I did that; and then I thought what happens to the branches as tomatos start to grow and then it hit me...Duh! I need to add some supports. I couldn't find my twine so in the spirit of improvision I found some stuff that would do for now and proceeded to wrap it around the supports(4 bamboo sticks). Only 10 more to go...

Pavers

As with any makeover it is mandatory in my book anyway to go out spend, spend, spend. Okay easy on the last part but money has to be exchanged... okay so it was only $12, shoot me.

At the local paving yard, the guy helping us must have been new as he kept referring to his pricelist which I notice had his own personal notes added to it.... so I took it easy on him, this time. Soon I found what I was looking for - the seconds pile and I chose 4 "couldn't tell the difference from brand new" ones for almost half the price - woo hoo!!!

The pavers were going to be the top surface of my newly refurbished back step. My first paver broke 'cause the concrete blocks underneath were uneven so I blamed Pheonix saying "if only you hadn't jumped on it"....lol. but I still managed to find a good use for it and the photos will show how.

Al then proceeded to break the next one in three different places, why do things by halves?! is his motto. Each time it happened was swiftly followed by a F$%^!!!! which made the rest of us crap up - hard out.

I'm pooped

My feet ache, my hands ache, my butt aches, BUT it was so worth it, we got so much done. Al is having a little snozzy behind me, poor thing he worked so hard - 'bout bloody time, lazy azzz....kidding. Tempers started to flare late into the evening but I think we had all had enough by then and it took some effort to push through to finish off. I watered my last plant around 8.30/9pm as i'm sure all the to'ing and fro'ing took it's toll on them too. Looking at my buckets was a "wow" moment only I could appreciate at that time of the night.

So who's silly idea was it to give the garden a makeover, they should be shot... We were at it from 2pm until after 9pm. For months I had been nagging Al to start clearing the weeds but since when do husbands ever do what we ask the first time, I don't know of any???

Al was in charge of the weedwhacker, me moving my buckets to a safe place before Al started with the weedwhacker, Phoenix mowed the lawn (needs money for Japan next year) and Cannon was in charge of the wheel barrow,broom,plant moving anything else to keep him busy and close by.

My list consisted of fixing the back step, clearing all the weeds down to the root. It took me most time of remove, clean and level out the ground before putting everything back in place. Phoenix came to help...grrr!!! it took me longer to explain what to do then do it myself, not only that he seemed to have left a path of destruction behind,beside and all over me...go figure. So I did the only thing I could do - give him the sack, otherwise one of my buckets would have ended up over his head.

Here's a couple of before and after shots - more to come.

Too Many Choices

As I've said I wanted to plant fun, easy and edible goodies. Tomatoes were at the top of the list, followed by potatoes then anything else was gravy. At heart I'm a cheap.o.holic so as we walked around the garden centre I was doing a "bionic man" - scoping out the bargains. So along with the tomatoes, I got lettuce,capsicums,snappy beans,strawberries,Potting mix(2), Compost(1), bamboo stakes(16) and buckets(5). They didn't have any seed potatoes at the time so I used some organic potatoes I brought at the supermarket. I've read that seed potatoes are better but I thought what the heck....

My second trip my local hardware/garden centre I brought more Potting mix(3 for $20), Buckets(5) Bamboo stakes(2 packs), on special (10 for $2.99). I so love my local especially with the door to door service you don't get from the larger stores, cause I wasn't lifting those heavy bags into my car..hell no!! It started to rain just as I got closer to home so I couldn't do anything until the following day...sniff, sniff.

You would be mistaken if you thought I had had enough, so my 3rd trip I brought, watermelon, rockmelon, courgettes(2 varieties), more tomatoes, cucumbers(2 varieties) and of course MORE BUCKETS. I also had a nice conversation with a lady whose grandaughter(aged 6) thought it was "gross" to grow silverbeet in amongst the flowers, she however said they were the yummest ones yet.

So... I now have 19buckets, 3large pots, 2planter boxes all filled yummy edibles. I took these photos this afternoon

Waa do ya call this?

Have you ever seen the movie "The Castle" when the father always says to his wife when she serves up dinner "waado ya call this?", and looks at her as if it's the most delicious thing he as ever seen in his whole entire life, it puts a smile on my face every time I think about it. Well I had one of these moments when Phoenix made a simple but ingenious device to put drainage holes in the bottom of my buckets.

When I asked him to do it I said I don't care how you do it or how long it takes but I want holes in all the buckets, okay I did care how long it took. If I was direct, stern and didn't show fear he might just take me seriously....lol.

I honestly expected him to give it a half arsed attempt, say he's had enough then walk off or worst still I'd call out to check on him; get no reply and then swear under my breath and look across at Al saying he's as useful as tits on a f#$%^&* bull. But he proved me wrong and in the following pictures you will see what what he did.

Small beginnings

The day I took these photos I was so proud that I was about to enjoy the fruits of my labour, the fact that I remembered to harvest it before the ducks got to it was sheer pure luck. When I showed Al (hubby) he made all the right noises and said all the right things when I lovingly brought it into the house but I knew he was secretly rolling his eyes at me behind my back. I can't remember if I offered him any - probably didn't....lol.

Job no.1,2 and 3

My first job was to clean out all the old pots of their soil and remove all the dead flowers from last year. Then I dumped all the potting mix down the back of the garage where the ducks had dug water holes, this worked out quite well as we don't have ducks in the same numbers crapping all over the place or trying to walk in the front door. I did this over a couple of weekends and it felt good to be as one with nature even it was only for about an hour or so.

If your wondering why I just didn't reuse the old potting mix I thought if I'm to give this a real go I need to start from scratch.

Second thing on my list was to look through the junkmail for what was out there and see how cost effective I could make this. I understand there are always going to be setup costs to begin with but I didn't want to be financial irresponsible. My poor suffering husband dutifully drove me to the Garden Centre where I spent about $70 on plants,compost,potting mix and buckets - not too bad. I was really getting excited on the drive home, with my mind racing with ideas. My kids just think I'm nuts and who can blame them, Phoenix was keen for about two seconds and then gapped it inside. I also chose vege's that are easy to grow, fun to watch grow and yummy to eat.

Thirdly deciding how many plants to put in each bucket - last year I tried to cram too many half dead, cut price plants into a pot/bucket and this just did not work. This season I put bigger plants; one to a bucket and then smaller ones two to a bucket and so far so good. I reused my planter boxes and larger pots to get me started before working on the buckets.

Why?

There were a number of things I wanted to do before turning the big '40' and high on that list was growing my own vegetables. The last couple of years I made a half arsed attempt at it, buying half dead but cheap plants and then willing them to grow when I knew it was futile, I managed grow 3 tomatoes over a two year period...pathetic. My mother would smile, shake her head and walk away quickly.

And with the economic climate being what it is and perhaps for some time to come; now was as good a time as any to get stuck in and start growing. I remember I first thing I ever help grow were some tomatoes at Flanshaw Road Primary School and then someone stole them before we could enjoy them, maybe this is why I haven't done anything until now, the thought of the fruits of my labour being whisked away in dead of night.

I do have some grand, perhaps foolish, maybe even fanciful ideas that one day i'll making chutneys from any excess, featuring in a magazine, writing a book about my experiences.....ahhhhhh! Reality Check - so for now i'll be happy just being able to say yeah I grew that and it sure tastes GOOD!!!