Hello Dear Reader,
Today I thought I would share another update with our garden. Last long weekend (thanks Queen Lizzie) we started to plant out our new, raised garden beds. We had two long suffering citrus trees, a lemon and lime, that have been in pots their whole lives and because of this, weren't the healthiest specimens. They both had leaf curl, citrus leaf miner and gall wasp. I had treated the lemon tree a little while ago with home made white oil, but the lime had been even more neglected because of where it was. It lived at the back of our little "veggie" garden behind the compost bin and was almost invisible behind the huge lemon grass.
The lime tree got a full makeover before it went in the raised garden bed, firstly it had to be cut out of its location, the roots had grown through the pot and deep into the ground, so the tap root had to be cut. It then was dragged through the narrow walkway, between the house and the shed and out into the courtyard, it did sustain some damage but we weren't too worried as most of the limbs had to be cut back. Lovely hubby then used an electric cutter thingy to cut the pot away from the root ball. We then cut about a third of the thick root ball away with a hand saw and fluffed out the compacted roots.
Next I set to work cutting back damaged and unhealthy limbs, picked off infected leaves. We dug a hole much deeper and wider than the, now exposed, root ball, we added some compost and some fish frames into the hole and then lifted the tree into position. It was backfilled with more compost and garden soil. Once in position, I gave the whole tree a good spray with white oil. It looks much better, albeit skeletal, and have high hopes for it now to become a big healthy lime tree.
We gave the dwarf lemon tree the same treatment and it also looks like a million bucks, we have only planted one other plant in this "L" shaped garden and that is comfrey, I know that comfrey adds lot of nutrients to the garden and hope it will benefit these two citrus trees. I have plans of planting a pumpkin vine, starting at this end, hopefully it will also be prolific and I can train it all the way along the back of the garden.
After this job of getting the citrus trees in, we set about bucketing the compost from the back veggie garden into the new raised beds, there was only enough for 4 beds so the last one missed out. However, what I have started to do with this bed is to dig a narrow deep trench and put the fruit and veggie scraps into this trench and back fill it with soil. I saw
this tip on Gardening Australia recently. I will plant this garden bed out last to give the scraps a chance to decompose and add nutrients to the soil. With my compost I simply dug it in deeply and thoroughly to the soil, I hope it improves it.
Later that afternoon, I planted out our herb garden, starting with seeds that I had saved, already had in my seed collection and I also bought a few. I have planted out two rows of spring onions, two rows of basil, a row each of oregano, basil, coriander and sage as well as one row on either end of carrots, just because I had the seeds and I have never grown carrots before. I then mulched all of the garden heavily with sugar cane mulch and then gave everything a good drink of seaweed solution.
This is the herb garden, I have mounded the mulch in between the rows of planted out seeds, once the seedlings are established I will move the mulch around each plant.
I have also planted up some little paper pots (
like these ones) with seeds for chilli, tomato, pumpkin, cucumber and zucchini and have popped them into a little mini green house that I have had for years but never really used. I am hoping the humidity will help them to germinate.
Looking back down to the citrus trees, this end garden is the one that missed out on the compost.
You can also see we've had to buy some "fencing" to deter the little woofs from jumping up into the gardens, so far, so good. They are a simple black plastic garden edging that clip together, we have just pushed them down into the space between the concrete sleepers and the weed matting. We simply remove some panels of the 'fencing' when we need to access that part of the garden.
I am so enjoying this garden project and have high hopes of a prolific garden where I can go out and pick produce for our table everyday of the year.
What's growing in your garden at the moment?
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