Garden Update

The garden and I aren't motivated to produce much at the moment. It seems we are preoccupied with events, heat etc. My seedlings mark II have been another dismal failure. In our last place my cucumbers took off, but in this place it seems to be much harder work. I think also have the veggie beds spread out makes it less motivating to take care of. But anyhow, here's how things are:

Strawberries

We discovered that our strawberry in pipes would have worked except we planted running strawberries rather than the regular sort. These babies love to run, but had no where to go, so Nate knocked up these awesome planter boxed out of 'acquired' pallets.

The two plants that survived are thriving and running, so we should have more soon. The plants in the other planter died, BUT some other goodies, we're not sure what yet, have sprouted from the compost!

Fruit trees

We had our first delicious nectarine the other day. It was perfectly juicy and we shared it between the three of us. There are no other fruit, but in a year or two we look forward to that tree spoiling us in Summer.

The other trees aren't ready to fruit yet, but have got lots of leaves and are doing well. A few weeks back I took some mint cuttings from Grandma's for ground cover. Quite a few weeds and other average looking plants started to make the area look shabby, but all it took was 20 minutes of editing and it went from this:

to this:

Vegetable Beds:

I have successfully grown heirloom carrots, spinach and lettuce. They are so pretty and colourful. I think we have really lost something by streamlining what colour, shape and size all vegetables should be.

Our corn is also coming along nicely and I replanted some watermelon and rockmelon (cantelope) and I see one healthy shoot! It's disappointing as I planted four, but I've got to take what I can get!!

Our grass invaded sweet corn.

Finally, a melon sprouted!

Our garden bed has got a lot of grass growing in it, so I have trialed zero weed kill directly on the grass in our garden beds to see how it goes before attempting to do it near the veggies. I'm waiting for this crop to be over before doing it. I'm also tempted to try the old boiling water trick.

Tomatoes

I caved and sent Nate to get seedlings. They have done so well and have been delicious  I'm starting to think seeds don't like me as they know I love to eat them!

Terrible photo, I know!

Not much better, but you can see the little orange glow peaking out begging to be eaten!

And that's it, our garden in the middle of Summer. How is yours going?

Strawberry Vertical Pallet Garden

Ages ago we picked up a pallet off the side of the road and have been dreaming up how we were going to use it. This weekend we finally made it into a vertical wall, I know it's been done, but it works so well I thought I should share.

In our last house we had a garden bed full of heirloom strawberries that multiplied from four plants I got from the Marion Life Community Market. They were doing great, but the millipedes kept beating us to them. Nate did some research and came up with replanting them into PVC pipes with holes cut out the top and mesh gaffed on the ends. He went above and beyond and even put dripper pipes in it so we can just pour water into the pipe sticking out of the top of the end hole. It was a super simple solution and took him about an hour or so to knock up six.

Our one small family including our sponsor child. 

Next to me is 2 of the 4 original Heirloom strawberries. Within 18 months the bed was full and over flowing!

This weekend Nate pulled off the back of the pallet and slid in the two strawberry pipes. Once we get the tomatoes out of the other pipes we might plant more strawberries and nail in the other pipes.

I also wanted to make some garden beds, but the thought of buying wood is so expensive so I got googling (yes, it's totally a word) and discovered this page of inspirational pallet delights. Now I'm going to hit up the local businesses to see if I can score some free pallets!

What have you tried with pallets?