Our Veggie Garden

[Bonniegirl]

Here's out veggie plot before:


Here it is now:


Peas


Broad Beans and some sad onions!


Perpetual spinach, French beans, carrots, runner beans


Runners growing over the path between two beds


Corn & potato patch (mostly dug up)


Pumpkins do really well, we grow extra, makes good pig food through the winter


More pumpkins

and last but not least our small salad garden behind the house

tomatoes gone wild!



..and everything on this plate was produced by us:

[Thomzo]

Hi Bonniegirl
It looks wonderful.

I thought I was the only person who grew sad onions. I must try a different variety.

Cheers
Zoe

[Bonniegirl]

We had no trouble growing them in the UK, we used onion sets, but I've yet to find them here and we don't seem to be doing very well with either the seeds or the starter plants.

Perhaps some fellow down underer can tell me where I'm going wrong!

Glad you like the veg garden...sadly it doesn't look like that at the moment..we've has sever gales and it's all a bit flat!

[Millymollymandy]

It's very posh! Looks really good and productive.

[the.fee.fairy]

The pumpkin patches look fantastic!!

I started to get jealous...then realised you're in NZ so you've had a bit more sun that we have!!

[Bonniegirl]

Oh t.f.f it' doesnt seem like it this year

The pumpkins do grow really well, we've had to trim bacl the runners as we were having trouble getting into the garden!!

We grow heaps of them, we had pumpkin soup last night for tea with home made bread (bread maker) it was really yummy.


We also use them through the winter to feed our Kune kune pigs, so long as we store them properly, will be trying the cargo net idea for that and see how we get on.

[ohareward]

Hi Bonniegirl, My garden is also up like yours. Can you get access to untreated sawdust. If you put it between the plots to walk on, it stops your feet getting wet in winter, and when it has been down for a year or more it will be well rotted, you can then shovel it into the garden and then put new stuff on your path for next year. It needs to be about 100mm deep. Just an idea.
Onions. Try Pukekohe Long Keepers. They are those medium to large brown skinned ones. They are the commonest grown here.
Pumpkins. If you allow the pumkins to trail out, and when there are two on the vine, cut any laterals off and that will allow the pumkins to grow bigger. Some of mine are 250-300mm in diameter.
Robin

[Bonniegirl]

Hi Robin, Thanks for that, we have wood chips on the paths at the moment with weed matting underneath, so no wet feet.....well not yet anyway!

The pumpkins are growing really well, and I have noticed that they have grown in size since we cut off the runners that had grown well over and out of the raised beds.

Will definately give the Pukekohe LK's another go, they just don't grom in our soil, even though it's a very good, compost amure etc mix, brought in at he beginning of the season

[Wombat]

Looks really good BG! Looks like you have a nice amount of land there.

Nev

[Jack]

Gidday

Bloody hell you sure have bin a busy little girl Eh!

I harvested my onions the other day.

They weren't as dried off as I would have wanted but because of rain coming, yes again I thought I was forced to.

Try growing red onions, I think it's Californian Red. Taste really good at any stage too.

[Bonniegirl]

Awww Jack I'm downright jealous! I'm really jealous now!

Will have to try again, I really don't know why mine didn't amount to much. Tried both of those varieties.

What is your soil like that you grow them in?

[Smooth Hound]

Looks like alot of hard work has gone into that, will you be raising the soil to the top of the wood as time goes by ??

[Bonniegirl]

Hi SH, initially we had the veggie plots at ground level , we had developed a section of a paddock.

It all started very well but then the paddock tried to reclaim itself and the "Battle of the Weeds' ensued. The weeds won due to other commitments at that time!

So it was decided that raised gardens were the next option. We looked at a variety of edging then opted on some untreated timber, because treated timber contains arsenic! We thought that might defeat the object, but as the guy in the timber said, 'Ya gotta die of summat!'

Knowing that the wood would then have a limited lifespan the idea was that once it rotted down we could take the wood away and work the beds without them.

In the meantime until that happens we will fill with compost etc. Time will tell if the plan works, ya just gotta suck it and see!


Wombat we have 5 1.2 acres, we run livestock too, the veggie plot is set in the corner of the chook paddock

[growsome]

Looks awesome! Those beds look like they are filled with veggies. Way to pack them in!