The Vege Garden Is Going Off

 I am loving this time of year when the whether is wonderful and warm or shall I say hot, everyone is looking relaxed after their holidays and most of all the summer veges are starting to produce like crazy.

I had a plan for our vegetable garden.  I carefully planned out what vegetables and herbs we needed to plant so that we had a lovely supply over summer with the garden structure we have.  Although we still haven't finished building a small part of the garden structure, we still have four great raised gardens.  To cope with the volumes, I simply planted some vegetables like tomatoes, lettuces, basil, sweet corn, chillies, and sweet peas in garden bags.  I hadn't done that before, but I must say it worked a treat particularly if you are pressed for garden space.  Simply buy a bag of vegetable mix ... and plant your vegetables straight in it them.

I even planted some maori potatoes that a great whanau friend gave me back in August.  That really fulfilled my vision that I blogged about in HOMEGROWN FOOD and I was so excited about.  I didn't get them in the ground in time for xmas picking, but nevertheless they are in the garden and it'll be a month before we see the fruits of our labour with those beauties.

My vegetable garden about 2 weeks into summer planting

The fruits of our labour .. and this is only a small portion of produce we are getting.

I'm really enjoying my vegetable garden and since we moved it closer to the house, it's wonderful to look out the kitchen window and gaze upon how lovely it connects to the house.  Maybe I'll blog about the transition to make it happen.

We have courgettes, rocket, herbs, cucumbers, kale, spinach, silver beet, radishes, lettuces and beetroot all constantly coming into the kitchen and I've made some lovely relishes to try and keep up (which I'll save for another blog).  

Our carrots aren't quite ready and neither is our water melons, sweetcorn, capsicums, spring onions, tomatoes and chillies but it won't be long to go now and I can't wait.

We haven't used any form of pesticides on the garden either which is great so the only real challenge is ensuring there is sufficient water.  Living off a water tank and with such dry weather we have been experiencing, conserving as much as we can is critical.

One thing that has definitely become clear during this summer exercise is that we need a bigger vegetable garden! 

Happy living peeps!