With the warm weather upon us, we are keen to get stuck back into our veggie garden at the farm. We didn’t plant any winter crops, and instead used the cooler months to do some major restructuring of both the gardens and the greenhouses, including completely relocating the veggie beds. It was a big job, but it’s done now, and so we are ready to get stuck into spring planting!
Our planting actually started in the orchard, not the garden, or even the hot house – my mother-in-law gifted us a cherry guava grafted from her own tree, and then father’s day also saw Mr Barefoot go a little bit crazy at the nursery and buy some more apple & pear trees, along with some more stone fruit. With our 2019 rainfall currently sitting somewhere below 35% of the year to date average, this has meant lots of trips out to the farm after school work is finished to water them in. Once they are established, they should be rather resilient, if the other trees in the orchard are anything to go by. Fingers crossed.
Once we had the majority of the veggie gardens moved and rebuilt, we got stuck into planting some of our favourite and most used plants – potato, strawberry, peas and beans to start with. They were all growing so beautifully, until…they weren’t. Through the magic that is hungry kangaroos, all our plants except some celeriac disappeared almost over night. The following day, even the celeriac was gone. Every last plant, eaten to the soil level. To say it was disheartening would be an understatement, but laced with the disappointment is a whole lot of sadness for the roos as well, who I am sure would prefer not to be so close to the humans, but are absolutely starving.
Thankfully, we had back up stocks in the hot house, so we got busy germinating a new batch. Currently baking away in there we have a veritable food forest – zucchini and corn and carrot and lettuce and multiple varieties of tomatoes and carrots and spinach and more strawberries and peas and beans to replace what we lost. This weekend should see the last of the fencing of the veggie area, and then we can start thinking about planting out. Again. Frustrating, but I guess it’s all part of the adventure that is gardening. We are very much looking forward to the long summer evenings being able to head out to the farm to potter around before harvesting our day’s needs and heading home to cook up a big home grown feast. yum yum. Nothing like homegrown veggies for taste and to effectively fill small people’s bellies!