We have been sorting out the vegetable and fruit gardening again for another year, although we've had a very very dry, weird spring again. Stinking hot to cold fluctuations in temperature, have made it a bit of a lottery, without all the hassles of trying to maintain soil moisture. Still we keep building up infrastructure in raised beds and making more and more soil in the hopes that another 5 or so years we'll be a lot more weather resilient than we are now...
This is our new long, raised bed, flush up against the wind barrier at the back of the vegetable garden, there's still plenty of clear space between here and the next set of raised beds to be filled up eventually with more raised structures. This is now planted out with zucchinis, cucumbers, pumpkins, sunflowers, watermelons, bitter melons, rockmelons and assorted asian greens.
It's amazing what you can do with a leaking water tank and some old gal that was on the roof of a shed that's now been rebirthed into a duck house.
Meanwhile the original snake bed is back in action this year:
Still trying for the Holy Grail of tomatoes by Christmas....
The red gum sleeper beds have been operational all winter - and I must admit the borage that survived all through the cold months was a bit of a surprise! So they've been restocked with new straw / manure / compost and off we go again.
Other little spots around the place - snake beans on the end of the snake bed.
Crop circles of tomatoes and pumpkins:
Not as many tomato plants in this year - had a problem with the timing of striking seedlings this year which I'll need to sort out next year (no more SheKilda's and things next year - things to be done on the farm!) but all in all, it's great to see the brassica's clearing away and the tomatoes and pumpkins and the things that say summer rolling out.
On the upside we shouldn't be short of apricots - this is just one of the trees that's only a couple of years old - they are all covered in fruit, as is the original older tree.
