Garden Bed

This post is nearly six months old at this point, but why wait when you can catch up now? When we planted the front gardens, we just had two trees in the front right in the lawn. You can see them pre-fence here. Unfortunately we discovered that having two trees sitting in the lawn (albeit in their neat cubes of garden mulch) were annoying to mow around right next to the fence.

Steve and I kicked around the idea of a garden bed along the front, with the two trees from the sides encased in it. I think we had been talking about it back and forth for at least four months, when suddenly we were kicked into gear last October and decided to build the garden bed out. We had some leftover hard wood fence palings that we figured we would repurpose into garden bed edging. 

Thinking to kill two birds with one stone, we ordered some top soil for the nature strip out the front, thinking that when we dug up the Sir Walter grass to make way for the garden bed, we would be able to replant it out on the nature strip. The whole nature strip was so weedy post-renovation and not at all level, so having a good amount of top soil would help things immensely. Unfortunately, the dirt arrived a whole week ahead of schedule, so we had to do a bit of a rush job with the grass transfer. The girls loved playing in the dirt pile though. 

Anyway, we did manage to get the new garden bed boxed in and ready for some plants. We want to keep it pretty simple out there, but it is prime real estate for growing things, so I have been getting a little carried away. 

Initially I just planted flowers and ground cover (herbs and pig face), but I got a stack of free seeds from school and decided Rachel needed a job one afternoon. It was a very hot October when we planted them, and I honestly thought nothing would grow (way past the recommended planting time), but suddenly we had spinach, beans, chilli and coriander growing in full force. I was so surprised at the coriander, since I've never been able to grow it from seed before. 

We also had a stack of tomato plants pop up from the compost (as well as pumpkins, but I've pulled them out since it's really not the place for them), and a random cucumber plant. It's been a very fruitful garden all up. Always so wonderful to eat your own salad at the end of the day.