New Winter Garden

Over the last couple of years since I got serious about gardening I started taking more notice of how the suns daily path changes throughout the seasons. This is quite important in my garden as it's surrounded by trees and during the winter when the sun's lower there's only 1 or 2 spots in the garden that gets any sun and even then for only part of the day.

I often escape to this part of the garden where I built a simple macrocarpa bench to sit on and take in the rays. I decided this would be the perfect spot to build yet another garden (a small one) where I might be able to grow a few vegetables over the winter. 

Using a few lengths of macrocarpa I still had lying around I worked out where the garden was going to go, then started digging up the soil to about a spades depth. As expected there were a few tree roots from the ti-tree right next to the garden but I wasn't too bothered about digging them up and getting rid of them. Ti-trees are pretty tough and can handle it.

I mixed in  some home made compost, plus a few bags of the bought stuff and then planted my seedlings. I made sure to add some all-purpose fertiliser. I put in a half dozen each of lettuces, brocollis and cauliflowers. I planted them a week or so before the shortest day, which fell this year on June 22.

Within a month they were doing really well – much better than the vegetables I tried growing elsewhere in the garden.

About a month after that and we had already eaten 5 out of 6 of the lettuces and I was starting again with more. By then the brocolli was beginning to flower.

About 10 days following this and I was picking the biggest brocolli I've ever grown. 

Look at that thing – it's almost as big as my head!

That was a proud moment, and it tasted great. Izumi steamed it. I smothered mine with cheese sauce.