Aliens in the Apple

Our Veggie Garden

Franci 18 Nov 2016 Uncategorized

(Though perhaps a better title would have been My Veggie Garden, but I’m generously including Ben because he heaved heavy compost bags and helped with digging and building a frame for my beans.)

I decided that this year I’d like to have a veggie garden again after not having one for three summers. I built the veggie boxes myself, which really sounds more impressive than it actually is because they came in a kit set and I just had to put them together. I did, however, have to use a power tool — a.k.a. a drill — to build them. I planned and planted, watered and weeded and then we all enjoyed the harvest!

When we got back from our great two-and-a-half week long roadtrip, we were greeted by a veggie garden gone wild. Our kind neighbors watered our garden for us and the plants had grown phenomenally and produced a big crop!

We went from this:

To massive plants and this great harvest:

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Our garden continued to do well through the summer and well into the autumn. Not so much that we didn’t know what to do with it, but enough to keep in a good supply of good, healthy veggies freshly picked from our own garden. Does anything taste better than a carrot you just pulled out of the ground?

Here it is after it had started to slow down in the autumn:

As of now, in the middle of November, I still have a bunch of different herbs, swiss chard/silverbeet, and celery going, but I don’t think they’ll be around much longer. I love growing my own food — it’s so great to know there are zero pesticides or chemicals (though does anyone know how to deter those darn squirrels??), just old-fashioned good food!

I’ll leave you with this funny fella.

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He came to to a delightful end in our stomachs, along with his brothers and sisters who all got roasted with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and sprinkled with some fresh parley. If I was a carrot, that’d be how I’d want to die!

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Comments (5)

joanbee3 18 Nov 2016 at 10:33am

Fantastic!

Renie 18 Nov 2016 at 11:27am

Wonderful! I especially love the purple flowers… my favorites!… at the end of the boxes. We missed you and the girls in TN, Franci!

Ben 18 Nov 2016 at 3:53pm

Re the first paragraph: ah, the generosity, thank you! ;-) Seriously though, hun, you did a fabulous job — we ate from this quite a lot.

Elrike 19 Nov 2016 at 10:17pm

Looks amAzing!! Well done!

Laurel 23 Nov 2016 at 3:01am

Thanks for sharing your pretty produce photos … very inspiring as we’ve just finished putting in our vege garden for the summer (Show Day here). Actually ours looks quite impressive already, thanks to Rachael bringing home quite a few large seedlings from Zealandia nurseries where she’s working again.
I agreed, roast beetroot is delicious; we were just introduced to that last year, and (most of us) love it. Along with roast garlic, quartered red onions, potatoes and golden kumaras; and pan-roasted mushrooms, tomatoes and capsicum … who needs meat!!