Organically Aussie

Hello friends,

As the weather here in regional Queensland starts to cool down, its time to start our gardens for the coming seasons. Here in my little part of Australia, our best growing seasons are autumn, winter and spring. Summer here is far too hot for anything to grow well. Summer here frequently gets upwards of 45C (113F) and even higher. The sun is extreme and makes it hard to even get outside to care for the garden. On top of the plants not growing well because of the extreme heat, the pests come in droves. I didn’t realise this when I planted my summer garden last year. It was the first time planting a garden since moving into this house, so I didn’t realise how extreme the summer would be. My tomatoes and silverbeet were ravaged with mealybugs, caterpillars and grasshoppers, my zucchini, watermelons and eggplants were destroyed by the 28 bug lady beetle, the squash bugs and what I believe, after lots of Googling, red pumpkin beetle. I am very much against using chemical pesticides, so I never sprayed them. I tried the method of just squashing then when I see them, but they just multiplied far quicker than I could make a difference. I had never encountered some of these pests before and was at a complete loss at what to do. We also have very hard, rocky, clay heavy soil that impacted the health of the plants, but, I have a plan for this year.

After doing a lot of research, I have decided to try companion planting, accompanied by using raised garden begs rather than planted direct into the ground level beds that were already at the house. My wonderful husband is helping me plan the beds and will be building them for me. I enjoy growing a good variety of herbs and vegetables. Last year, I was unable to grow many due to the issues I have discussed above, but this year, I am broadening my scope of what I am planting. So, heres the plan of what I am planting this year…

This is not a comprehensive list, and I may not even do all of these, but I really love gardening and planting food. It’s a labour of love and I enjoy being able to feed my family things I have grown with my own hands. I do however need to be conscience of the space I have and how best to utilise it. i would love to plant fruit trees too, but at this point, we don’t have the space without removing existing trees, which we are considering for the future. We do have a lime tree that is just a baby at the moment and won’t produce any fruit for quite some time yet, and we have two blueberry bushes, two strawberry pants and one raspberry vine. All the berry plants were scorched by the sun this summer, and I am hoping they will come back, but honestly, I’m not too sure they will.

Also coming, hopefully, this year, is some chickens. We are planning on getting a very small flock of chickens, probably around 8-10. We are going to get dual purpose chicken breeds so we can have the eggs and the meat. We believe very strongly in children learning where meat comes from. Our 5 year son knows that meat comes from animals, eggs are from chickens and bacon is from pigs, dairy comes from cows and vegetables come from the earth. We need to build a enclosure for the chickens first, and it is a few places down on the list of priorities.

I will post an update late this year on how the garden goes this year with the changes we are planning on trying.

Thanks for being here

Ashlee xx