The beginning

All growth starts with a beginning - although like the chicken and egg debate, one could also ask which came first the plant or the seed.

Neither it seems without some key factors:

• Sun
• Nutrients
• Water

In my garden the beginning had to start with the space which had the most sun. I had tried a couple of veggie patches in the preceeding years. The first year I had a few cherry tomato plants which did well and wet the appetite for expansion. The following year, during the summer 2008-9 I did just that and expanded the space by moving some of the non-edible plants and introduced lettuces, cucumber, capsicum, corn, eggplant and more tomatoes. It was really only the tomatoes and lettuces that gave the family fresh produce. The others failed to survive - I'll come back to this at another time.

You can have too much sun it seems. With soaring temperatures of the summer, who says we are not experiencing climate change, many of the ornamental shrubs nearby literally karked it. So they were removed promptly to make way for the New Veggie Garden ( The V patch).

The soil in the V patch was pretty stripped of all nutrients. This I assumed because of my first two attempts noted earlier and my forgetting to give nutrients back into the soil. A man at Bunning's said to me "you feed the soil first, then you feed the plants...". The soil also consisted of a layer of pine bark chips which had to go. So grabbing my tape measure and working out the space (twice) I ordered 2 cubic metres of a soil mixture (top soil and organic) from Broadbents.


Next I removed the the soil from the V patch area and carted it around to my front garden to build up sunken beds that had formed over time (also the place for my future bulb garden under the magnolia tree) then refilled the V patch space with brand new load of soil. Back breaking and leg strengthening work for two days...but was made more enjoyable with a little help from my son.

I then added some lime, wood ash (from the outdoor open fire place), Dynamic lifter and Blood and bone. Added another layer of soil about 5 cm deep and turned the fertilised layer over. It will stay like that for 2 weeks. I'll turn it again next weekend.

We have a dog. He has had free range of the V patch area in the past and this had to change. So from my Bunning's expedition I also purchased some puppy fence and stakes. I constructed a small fence around the V patch to keep out the dog. Curiosity has caught the cavvy due to the blood and bone aroma....and he has tried it on a little to get into the soil.

Lastly, I needed to put in place a new watering system to work in with the new area (another one of my Bunning's purchases). Fortunately it wasn't too difficult just a matter of hooking it up to the one not used but in place already. In the near future with our new water tank I'll be able to maximise water captured from the house roof.

So after three long days, I have sun (well the optimum space for my back yard), I have soil with nutrients and have water.
Stay tuned...