What are we growing?

We are growing Bok choy, lettuce, red onions, cherry toms, chillies, various capsicum, cucumber, parsnip, cauliflower and beetroot. Only growing what we will eat. I think we will be sick of veggies. Unless of course they don't grow in our little veggie patch. If they don't we will just have to survive on rump steak!

Mini greenhouse

We have babies! 

I only planted these 10 days ago and the bok choy, lettuce, cabbage and beetroot have all germinated. I'm waiting rather impatiently for the others to appear. Now we've got to get the soil and compost into the veggie boxes so I can plant them out. More blisters!

The work begins

We ordered 9 cubic metres of Mary River gravel to cover both areas. Luckily, Luke's (our Son) mate Ryan was here to help as it was a massive job to spread this lot. Luckily, Luke was at work as he would have been a much use as a chocolate teapot! Sorry Luke!

Notice the dogs ( William & Harry) are penned into one of the veggie boxes!

That's because they would have savagely attacked Bruce's dog Archie if they were let loose!

Luckily for Archie, William and Harry were restrained as I'm sure they would have eaten him for breakfast! lol

Neil and Ryan, still smiling, plod on putting the 6 veggie boxes together. 

I must add that the construction of the boxes needed a little female direction, of course I provided this (Neil & Ryan would not admit to their blunder)! Though I'm not pictured I did work my arse off and sustain several blisters as a result. I will keep you posted on how the veggie garden project unfolds. 

It's all about the preparation

OK.... so here I am thinking.....what can I do with that wasted bit of garden at the front of my house? We can't build anything on it as the main sewer is there and it gets waterlogged in the heavy rains. We live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. 

I know...build a raised veggie garden! And while we're at it extend the drive onto the awful  water/river/rock pool garden, or whatever the previous owner called it. I just called it " bloody mosquito's" every time I got out of the car! 

I know that we need to build a retaining wall and get a guy with a digger to level it all off. Luckily, good old Bruce next door (who used to be a landscape gardener) has a contact. So I give him a call and the serious stuff started!

So we are going great guns until we had to bore down 1 metre to make the holes for retaining wall posts. By this stage, as it was a public holiday we had an array of males not doing much, just leaning on shovels! Namely, the neighbours! Then Bruce ( from next door) shouted " WATER! " He was smiling so I just laughed until his face turned into one of horror and I was in state of panic. My hubby (Neil) went to investigate and YES there was water, lots of it! 


We had gone through the mains water pipe! And before you start thinking "why didn't you find out where the pipes were first" WE DID! BUT the idiot that built the house decided to put some more pipes down after it was approved just to piss us off! We thought we had fixed the mains water but the joints kept leaking and Neil was out there at 9pm with floodlights in a 1 metre deep hole full of water trying to fix it. Needless to say, he was not a happy bunny and was swearing like a trooper. Finally, he fixed it so we carried on with the work. 


However, the saga continued as we then went through the main sewer pipe too! Hard to believe but, yes we did and before you start thinking "why didn't you find out where the pipes were first" WE DID! BUT the idiot that built the house decided to put some more pipes down after it was approved just to piss us off! History repeating itself!

The pipe was fixed but we decided to hold fire for a week before back filling just to check there were no leaks. Being impatient I wanted to keep the project going. I popped down to Bunnings and bought a mini green house and ordered some seeds from Green Harvest online http://www.greenharvest.com.au for my patch. I spent a quiet Sunday afternoon planting the seeds and put them out on the back deck to get them started.