Winter Vegie Gardens

Regular readers of my blog will know that at the end of last year we moved into our new house. In February we completed our front garden, but as yet haven't started on the back yard.

I took two weeks off after Easter and spent the time doing some odd jobs around the house. When moving into a newly built place there's 1000's of small jobs to do. (I know, I've already completed one large white board of such tasks, and have another one on the go!)

Whilst we've drawn up what we want to do out the backyard, we are starting getting our planter boxes up and running, so we can enjoy some great winter vegies as soon as possible. Around late Winter/prior to the start of Spring I'll also be planting a series of fruit trees as well to help complement the vegetables. We'll also be planting a range of herbs amongst the vegetables, as many such herbs work as natural pesticides to keep the creepy crawlies out of our lovely green leafy vegies. Much better letting nature fight it then introducing a range of chemicals.

A quick visit to see Trevor and Glenda (thanks guys -- we really appreciate it!) resulted in getting some great red gum fence posts that we were able to convert in to free-standing planter boxes. By using red gum and some galvanised bolts, these boxes will last us years and hopefully return us some fantastic home grown produce!

We've built one box so far, and plan to build one more in the upcoming weeks (in between birthdays, and an over-flowing social calendar!). A big thanks also to our fathers for helping with the building process.

So how did it turn out?! Well, we're certainly happy with the results!
Now to get planting and enjoying some home-grown goodness in the next few months.

The raw material.	Front On View.
Front profile.	Rear profile.

Once the 2^nd planter box is completed, we'll be gravelling around the boxes (so it's easy to move in gardening equipment (like wheel-barrows, etc). I'm considering whether we need to put up a short fence to keep the dogs out... still be determined at this stage.

We'll also have a heap of composting/chip-barking to do under the proposed fruit tree locations. Slowly but surely the back yard is starting to take shape. I'm finding working in the garden is a great way to get away from the computer and a good outlet that isn't 'electronic'.