The Story So Far - May 2008 - Part 1

May 13th, 2008 -- Posted in The Rental | No Comments »

So, here’s the situation.

At the moment, we are living on a regular suburban block in Brisbane, and winter’s slowly sneaking up on us. Unfortunately, we’re only renting in a sharehouse at the moment - so what gardening we do is of the temporary variety.

So far this year we’ve feasted on our own home-grown lettuce (which is, I truly have to say, far superior to anything we can buy from the supermarket), snow peas, cherry tomatoes, beans, basil (I love fresh pesto!), chives, mung beans and parsley. The main problem we have discovered has been quantity! Or rather, the lack thereof!

We fell into the trap of planting one lot of seeds, and then forgetting about them because ‘we’ve already got snow peas’… But once we tasted our own home-grown ones, we couldn’t get enough! We’ve only just planted some more seeds out now, as our last vines have already died.

So - Lesson No. 1: Plant Sequentially! Make sure to keep a regular schedule of planting out new seeds and seedlings. When you’ve got limited space like we have (there is ground space, and we’ve tried some of it - however the soil is bad and we don’t know how long we’ll be here before we buy our own place, so we haven’t wanted to put more effort than necessary) it is difficult to grow the quantity of foods needed to actually keep a regular supply.

So, for the moment, we’re concentrating on increasing the number and density of our plants!

Another problem we’ve had to overcome has been the possums. Now those of you who live in Brisbane will know what we’re talking about… risk leaving a tasty tomato seedling out for even one night, and you’ll come out to find it leafless in the morning! Those hungry little buggers like to get their teeth into anything that we might possibly like to eat, and so we are also limited in our growing space by the need for ‘The Cage’.

So far, it’s worked a treat to keep the possums out, but it does make just picking the few ripe cherry tomatoes each day a bit more of a chore!

And the food garden isn’t the only thing. I believe that creating a more sustainable life includes creating peace and beauty around yourself to help temper the stressors most of us face - so I have a growing collection of ornamental plants as well!. All that plus the recycled-tyre compost heap and the best way to beat water restrictions is coming up in the next installment