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Unfortunately, between holidays, water restrictions and lack of rain we didn't get the anticipated crop of vegies we were hoping for over summer/autumn. Our tomatoes tried so hard to hold on, but their poor little fruits were mostly roasted on the vine during a week of 40C+ temperatures.

Everything's been pulled out now. A load of poo and straw have been put down. I've bought a shredder and have also been putting the remains of discarded artwork and junk mail on the garden as mulch.

Rain is forecast in the next week. Hopefully we'll have better luck with our next crops.

The garden continued well in our absence over the September holidays. When we got back we decided to pull out the rapini, as we weren't using it. We've decided to replace them with cauliflower and perhaps a strawberry plant or two. I haven't ever had any success with strawberries in pots, so it will be interesting to see how they fare in the garden.

The broccoli are quite large now, but no sign of any heads. I'm wondering if we just need to be patient or if they simply haven't liked the conditions and that's the end of that. I saw our first cabbage moth today, so I'll need to research how we're going to keep on top of them.

Today I thinned the carrots a little and planted another 50cm or so of seeds. I also did another 50cm of mixed lettuce seedlings. We also planted some cucumber (2), beans (4), zucchini (2) and pumpkin (3)

The weather has warmed up and dried out considerably. We're starting to see most days in the high teens, even up to the high twenties while the nights are mostly warming up as well. We still get the odd below 10 degrees, but they are getting fewer and fewer.

The vegie garden is starting to dry up although underneath it is still damp. We'll need to start collecting water now as the night time rains that we've been relying on seem to have disappeared for the summer.

Well, finally I have some ideas how to use the rapini growing beautifully in the vegie garden. Squawkfox has a bunch of yummy looking recipes that I'm keen to try out. I'm so glad to have found these, because I was seriously contemplating pulling them out.

Image via Wikipedia We have slowly been replacing some of our non-performing trees and shrubs around the yard with fruit trees. Today we planted a pear tree - a Williams bon Chretien, which is a lovely juicy dessert pear.

We're hoping that someone in our neighbourhood also has a pear tree for pollination. I think we'll be pretty safe, although it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we had to plant another. Pear trees are lovely even without their delicious fruit and we do need a few more trees around our fenceline.

Pears fruit around late summer so it will fit in well with our other fruit trees. We will now be able to harvest various fruit from mid January to April. I guess I'll have to do some learning about preserving!

Over the last month most of our seedlings have been slowly establishing themselves. Mostly they've started putting on some new growth now. We discovered that it is still too cold here to try tomatoes. We only have two of the six seedlings left and they're not looking very happy either.

Today I sowed about 80cm of carrots (Heirloom mix) and lettuce (Mesclun mix). I'll do weekly sowings of these for the next couple of weeks. We have begun to prepare a bed for the beans, cucumbers and zucchinis which I will start planting out in around two weeks.

In other parts of our garden, our peacherine tree has started blossoming today. It seems to have a good covering of buds, so hopefully we'll get another good crop. It took me a little by surprise, as when I did a walk around earlier this week, there were no buds to be seen. For anyone wondering what on earth a peacherine is, my explanation would be they are very big nectarines. I believe they're a cross between peaches and nectarines (hence the name), but I don't find too much "peachy" about them. Most importantly, they're delicious! Usually the fruit ripens around mid January, unfortunately coinciding with our annual beach holiday.

The plum tree should be flowering in a week or so. The peach is still looking very quiet. It's a young tree, only in it's second year so I don't expect much fruit anyway.

We've had some quite heavy frosts the last few mornings. I was a little worried that our new seedlings would not be too happy about that. How disappointing to have them curl up their toes only days after being planted!

It appears that we've been spared though. The vegie garden is in a reasonably sheltered corner that the frost hasn't quite crept into. Phew!

The upside of frosty mornings are the beautiful, clear sunny days we've been having. Our little vegies are hopefully soaking up all this sun, making lots of energy to produce bumper crops.

Today our real vegie garden was born (as opposed to the container garden we've had for a couple of months).

We have opted for no-dig gardening. Initially we have one plot 2.4m x 1.2m.


I've ordered some seeds from the Diggers Club Seed Annual. To begin with we've decided to stick with seeds that we can sew directly. On order are:

• 3 colour bean mix (includes Blue Lake, Rattle Snake & Purple King) - $3.80, 20 seeds
• Chioggia beetroot - $2.75, 29-150 seeds
• Heirloom mix carrots - $3.45, 500-1500 seeds
• Sweet & Striped cucumber - $2.75, 30-60 seeds
• Mesclun Mix lettuce - $2.75, 150-400 seeds
• Creamgold onions - $2.75, 480 seeds
• Australian Butter pumpkin - $3.45, ? seeds
• Zucchini Tromboncino - $2.75, ? seeds

Today I planted seedlings:

• Broccoli - ?/? seedlings, $3.65 punnet
• Beetroot - ?/? seedlings, $2.96 punnet
• Rabini - ?/? seedlings, $2.96 punnet
• Tommy Toe tomatoes - 3/? seedlings, $2.96 punnet
• Grosse Lisse tomatoes - 3/? seedlings, $2.96 punnet