Autumn in the Vegie Garden - Big Clean Up

It's that time. All the summer crops are spent, done. They all need to be cleared out, and the ground dug over, and built up with compost and manure, to make way for autumn/winter plantings. I've been meaning to get out and do this for weeks, but the heat of summer just kept coming, and I stayed inside. Now the season has changed, and it's happening. Here are some snippets of our vegie garden as it stands this autumn. Grateful for the abundance this garden has provided us with over the summer - tomatoes, potatoes, silverbeet, broad beans, rocket, parsley, basil, sage, squash, carrots, beetroot, chilli, red onions, leeks and zucchini. Learned some things about the crops that didn't go so well - beans, broccoli, cauliflower and celery. I've already got lots of ideas for next summer. 

The sage is still going strong, it should survive the winter. Maybe not in its current location, I would like to build a dedicated herb garden somewhere, but I'm yet to make any inroads into that project. I'm loving sage at the moment. It looks so pretty to keep some in a vase of water in the house [and seems to last for ages that way] and is yummy in lots of meals [like this].

The tomatoes are completely done. You can see that we're in the process of adding gravel pathways between the rows of garden beds. We started this just after Christmas, then stalled - first our garden shop ran out of gravel, and on top of that, we had no rain at all, for months, so the ground was like concrete. Not good for building garden borders, we could barely hammer the stakes holding everything in place into the soil. So we've been waiting for rain and gravel. Maybe this weekend! The black area is weed mat that we put down under the gravel.

The overall garden view. It's about to go from looking like a used up, spent summer garden to a fresh, new plot for autumn planting. Complete with finished gravel pathways and garden borders. Oh yes. I keep the vision of what it will be like in 5 years from now in mind as I work too. Sometimes progress feels frustrating slow, but that is the nature of building gardens. It forces me to slow down, in a good way. I also dream of a fully fenced [read: private] yard...

Chickens. At least they're on the correct side of the vegie garden fence. George the rooster hops into the vegie garden most evenings and helps himself to the last of the tomatoes. The girls stay out at least, and I pick the older looking tomatoes and lob them over the fence for them to eat. Little rituals. In the background you can see the chook house and our compost bays. Another project we have is to add an outdoor enclosed area on the left hand side of the chook house. Once the rain comes and the ground is soft enough to dig in [not that I am doing any digging, that is Charles' department!].

I've got a list of things to try growing over the coming winter, including spinach, asian greens, silverbeet, lettuce, turnips, parsnips, shallots, leeks, onions and peas. For years I've been a summer gardener, but I've not yet tried to grow much over the winter months. Usually because I was never in one place long enough to worry about it. So it's very experimental for me. We do get frosts here, so I may need to get into the habit of covering some garden beds overnight to protect the plants. We shall see. It will also depend a lot on how much time I can put in - having no idea what life with a new baby will be like, I don't know how much I will be outside in the garden. Hopefully still enough to grow some crops.

It really is a labour of love, vegie gardening! How's your garden going at the moment?