First planting

My shoulder is at the point that I can wind up and unwind the hose on my own and that was my green light for planting. I know that I can tend to my plant babies without needing help from Andrew.

I have been reading a beginners guide to vege gardens from The Southland Times a few years ago.

Beginner's guide to vege gardens

Even though I'm in Auckland and the advice is for cold old southland (I'm a Dunedin girl, so I say that with experience) I'm going to take it all on board and because I'm not much of a reader/researcher I'm going to take it as gospel and have a crack.

So today I planted seeds straight into the ground.

Carrots, beetroot and spring onion seedlings I have been trying to grow since Mother's Day.

Red line - beetroot

Green line - spring onions

Orange line -  carrots

It's Soil not mud

Months have past, we have watched rain over our 4 hour weekend windows and when the sun has been out lawns and all the boring day to day stuff has taken priority. The good new, lawn mowing has been a breeze because all catchers have been emptied into the garden boxes. Such a great start to delicious mud for my plant babies.

Soil I mean, I called it mud for a long while but I am learning to understand the work/money that goes into good quality vege growing soil that I now respect it.

I am recovering from shoulder surgery so was lucky to have been helped by my Mum and again Andrew to get all the broken down manure and soil filled in and turned over. Also our neighbours did a bit of forking work with payment in fresh parsley and coriander (thanks Matthew)

I also have to thank our dog Bonnie for her daily manure deposits each day.

Andrew doing the hard work

LESSON ONE - cute fluffy dogs LOVE to dig freshly filled gardens!!! 

Time to build a fence

Bonnie just wouldn't be able to resist and I knew I would want to know all garden bits would be protected from both fur baby and baby baby.

Quick and also pretty, Andrew whipped up a Bunnings special for me with plastic warratahs and ready made garden frames. So far no toddlers or puppies have broken through.

Perfect garden protection from our little family members

Making the beds

The corner I have taken over already had a small rock garden and concrete trough that I planned to add to. We (husband Andrew is pulled in for any heavy jobs) built two frames out of treated pine, because it was treated I covered the internal sides with black plastic to avoid potential leeching.

The frames are ready to be filled.... On this blog it looks like we did this in a day or weekend - enter the full time job and 17 month old daughter, this has taken us a good few months!! Two two hour naps each weekend has been our window and more than often, depending on broken nights that week we choose sleep over everything else.

The beds are made!

Pavers laid by myself, not at all level but I figure that will right itself over time.