It's a gorgeous spring day here today, quite chilly this morning though.
I thought I would share a bit more about myself and my garden today.
My love of gardening comes from my dad. We grew up on a 1/4 acre section in suburban Auckland and dad always had a huge vege garden. We also had various fruit trees including a whole hedge of feijoas along our back fence.
The laundry had shelves which were filled with rows of bottles & preserves and a big chest freezer underneath fulll of frozen summer produce. My mum grew up on a dairy farm and my dad grew up on a lifestyle block where my grandfather had a native tree business. So growing things and working the land is kind of in my blood!
We moved to our current property 7 1/2 years ago and are blessed to have 1100m2 in suburban West Auckland. The only downside is the clay soil!
When we first moved in there was no garden and the neighbours told us the previous owners only moved the lawn a couple of times a year! Everything was overgrown.
I dug up the strip (with my dad & hubby's help) down the side of our concrete parking area and this became my main garden. It is about 2 metres wide and 10 metres long. At end is my greenhouse with a strawberry patch on the other side of the greenhouse.
[The photo on this post is me standing at the top of my main garden with the greenhouse in the background]
I have another bit of garden I call the "top patch" which is at the top of our section. It doesn't get much sun in winter due to the shaddow of the house but over summer it is quite a good spot and I rotate between planting corn & tomatoes in that patch.
Over summer my two main crops are tomatoes and corn. I usually plant about 15 tomato plants plus some cherry tomatoes. I use these fresh and also to make sauces, passata, relish etc as well as freezing some whole tomatoes.
I usually plant about 50 odd corn plants and most of those cobs go in the freezer to use throughout the year. I haven't bought tinned corn for some time now! There are still a few cobs in the freezer from last season.
As well as that I usually try and grow a reasonable amount of pumpkins (butternuts mainly) to store for winter. And then other veges like cucumber, gherkins, lettuce, lots of basil for pesto, beans, peas, zucchini etc.
After I won the competition a few years back I made my own facebook page so I wasn't spamming my friends with all my gardening pictures. If you want to see what I'm up to search for Gardening Mummy and you should be able to find me.
Happy gardening everyone!
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