Last Year’s Garden — 2023

Last year’s garden boasted a bumper crop of strawberries and cherry tomatoes, along with multi-coloured carrots and bushels of spring onions. The perpetual spinach I planted survived all the way until winter. There were flowers a plenty as well, a sunflower as tall as the fence, hundreds of tiny wildflowers, bright yellow marigolds and my favourite of the year, eggplant flowers. The eggplants themselves were not so successful as I wasn’t sure of when to pick them and they ended up tasting quite bitter, but the bright purple flowers made it all worthwhile. All of the plants were grown in pots and plastic boxes and it was impressive to see what can be grown in a small amount of space.

2024 Plan

• Wildflowers (black box)
• Strawberries, marigolds (black box)
• Sugar snap peas x2, bergamot bee balm (black box)
• Determinate cherry tomatoes golden cascade x1, fantastico x1, marigolds (black box)
• Indeterminate cherry tomato sugar plum (green pot)
• Indeterminate cherry tomato cherry berry (green pot)
• Lettuce cos (green pot)
• Lettuce lollo bionda (green pot)
• Alyssum (green pot)
• Capsicum, marigolds (black circle)
• Spinach x4 (green circle)
• Spring onions (trough)

30/8/24

Most of the plants I plan on growing this year I have sown into seedling trays to start them off. Peas, spinach, tomatoes, capsicum and lettuce are the main ones. There’s also a couple of bergamot bee balms and marigolds, but I will probably direct sow a bunch of these outside once it’s a bit warmer. I tried sowing spring onion seeds inside last year but it turned out that they’re a hassle to transfer and I ended up just sowing so many seeds outside that they protected each other in a big mass.

I forgot to take a photo of the seedling tray earlier — this photo was taken after I took a bunch of seedlings out of it to find them bigger houses.

1/10/24

Only four weeks and lots of the seedlings have grown too big for the seedling tray. I’ve pricked out two each of peas, capsicums, tomatoes, lettuces and spinach. These pots are still small enough that I’m able to bring them inside when it’s cold or too windy, but have given the plants a lot more room to grow.

17/10/24

The seedling tray is currently in a period of overcrowding. My spinach and lettuce seedlings are proving to be quite the success.. taking over any sunlight or space other seedlings would hope to occupy, such as the small tomato seedlings at the front of this picture which are getting pushed out of the way.

The lettuce, spinach and tomato seedlings that moved house only two weeks ago are thriving and ready for an even bigger house.

The pea plants are boosting as well. It’s entertaining watching them tangle their stringy limbs together and with other plants.

Lots of flowers coming out as well, strawberries, wildflowers and our sedum mexicanum succulent called Hugo. We’ve had Hugo for four years and this is the first time we’ve seen flowers.

16/11/24

Two of the pea plants are growing really well and have started producing peas. The other two aren’t growing well, so I’ve sown some more seeds.

Our first two strawberries ripened in early November and were enjoyed by a sneaky bird who would wait for them to ripen until eating them. I plucked the next few before they were fully ripe and that seems to have deterred the birds as we’ve been able to enjoy the rest ourselves, so far...

We’ve got a couple of beautiful marigolds flowering now as well, and these capsicums plants are slowly getting bigger.