WHAT'S GROWING | What I'm GROWING & SOWING in my SMALL BACKYARD VEGETABLE GARDEN VICTORIA AUSTRALIA
Hi and Welcome to Utility Jane.
My name is Tanya, Thanks for stopping by!
It's the 9th of February let's see what's growing in my small backyard vegetable garden here in Central Victoria Australia.
Its time to do a harvest video...there are bits and pieces harvested out of the vegetable garden daily but finally its feels like there is enough to start preserving. The grade is wild and overgrown and is such a joy to be working in. So much is growing and yet to be harvested, it's hard to think about autumn seed sowing, hopefully there won't be too many vegetables that will have to be sacrificed for autumn/winter space.
The joys of a small vegetable garden. So happy with tonights harvest.
There has been a lot of growth from the pumpkins, zucchinis, cucumbers and melons, purple beans, tomatoes are ripening and so many capsicums!
Let's harvest some produce and see how much food can be grown in a small backyard garden.
I am very happy with how the new raised beds are settling into the space, and like all gardeners I keep extending the growing space, well until I get the next 2 beds and glasshouse in place!
At the start of October I invested in 4 large raised steel garden beds for my 55th birthday, to replace an area of lawn that the previous year I had laid cardboard, mulched and started growing in a couple months later, I had mixed feelings about how the extended vegetable garden had gone but thought I would continue with it again this season until I started thinking about raised beds.
There is never a good time to change over to raised beds when they need to go where your cropping winter garden is so I just went for it, ordered my raised beds which were custom made so I had some time to either eat the veg I had been growing or move it.
After a few doubts along the way I am so glad I didn't wait any longer, the first vegetables I've planted in them are thriving, the down side of it was that it has taken a lot of dirt, compost, straw and mushroom compost to fill them, they are just over 3m long and 1.2m wide and .60m high and extremely heavy to move around and position.
But apart from topping up the beds with compost before planting each season until all the organic matter inside them has broken down and compacted I think they will be low maintenance.
In total the 4 beds I purchased will equal the same amount of space I had been planting into and with the addition of a secondhand glasshouse I found on Facebook market place 2 years ago I will be able to extend our growing season for tomatoes, cucumbers and raise lots of seeds.
In addition I have changed what used to be my whole veg garden into a perennial vegetable garden bed that has a new asparagus patch, dwarf apple trees, rhubarb, dwarf lemon tree and an area for herbs.
It isn't a big area but looking to the future I hope to challenge my growing area and just see ow much food I can grow in the small footprint and hopefully I will grow enough for us and some of our neighbours.
With the cost of living crisis everywhere pairing back pantry items so multiple recipes can be cooked with the same basic items is a necessity, along with growing a garden that is any size, big or just a pot with your favourite herbs or leafy greens, after all they can be the most expensive items in the fruit and veg section at the supermarket and usually the things that never get used up and are thrown out.
Cooking from scratch can feel overwhelming but with a few prepped ingredients from my freezer, a pantry and our fridge stocked with simple staples, scratch made meals flow from our kitchen.
I cook with gluten free ingredients and a budget friendly mind set always.
I would really love you to join me cooking budget friendly gluten free meals in my tiny kitchen and appreciate you spending your time with me, please consider subscribing so you don't miss my next upload.
Have a great day and I hope to see you in my next video.
Bye for now...
PS….I post on my community tab in real time, things I am cooking in my kitchen, vegetable garden updates and thrifting finds, often after filming it can take me a couple weeks to edit and voice over my videos so it gives you a sneak peak at what’s coming up.
#vegetablegardening #nodiggardening ##UtilityJane #gardentour #thediggersclub #garden
Hi my name is Tanya and welcome to my small backyard vegetable garden here in central Victoria.
I have a few things here on the potting bench that really need to go out and get planted.
These purple climbing beans never cease to amaze me.
Just three days ago they were sitting under the soil and all of a sudden they're this big.
With roots coming out the bottom these have gone from nothing to this in three days.
That is quite amazing.
The beetroot also needs to go out and I'm hoping these tomato cuttings hurry along
so that I can get them planted into the glasshouse at the primary school.
I'm removing all the flowers that are coming on them as an experiment.
I am hoping for late tomatoes for the kids at the primary school.
After trimming leaves off the tromboncino and the pumpkin and the zucchini they've just been
sitting on the grass where I dropped them because they lose a lot of moisture out of them and it
makes them much easier to compost.
So I'm going to go around pick them all up and then do some tidying.
The grass has got a little out of control around the beds in places.
A few more leaves need to come off this zucchini and then I am going to get and tidy this grass.
The grass around the beds have soaked up the water that has gone through the beds
but it is time to tidy this up.
It's all feeling a little snaky.
I've been watching these for a couple of days and they've got bigger and we are due for some
warm weather so we're going to get some picking done tonight in the garden.
The tomatoes are slowly ripening.
At the moment we can eat the amount that is coming out of the garden
so there is nothing getting put in the freezer just yet.
The Thai pink egg are ripening and these are one of our favorites.
Just seeing a pink tomato brings a smile to anybody's face I think.
The romas right in deep are ripening and some were previously attacked by birds.
This one looks like a Halloween face.
These were my first tomatoes to ripen last summer.
They were planted over where I have the Tasmanian chocolate tomatoes.
I've not grown tigerella before but this does not look very stripy to me
compared to the fruit that is green.
Maybe that's what it does, I'm not quite sure.
But I do love the look of that green fruit.
This Japanese climbing cucumber is very giving and looking quite lush
but the fruit does get a little hidden so sometimes you have to go hunting.
There is enough purple climbing beans now to be able to pick a whole heap
and get them in the freezer.
So that is what I am going to do with the beans that I pick tonight.
There is heaps in under the leaves but where they are the best is under the arch
where they are so much easier to pick.
Look at all of these beans.
This has really started producing once it got over the high temp days we had.
We are due for another quite warm day so it will be good to get all of this picked.
So many cucumbers on the way and within days they will be ready.
These are the brown beauty bush beans.
I'm picking these and then I'm going to pull them out.
I decided that it's not my favourite bean so I'm going to pull them out
and plant the pots of beetroot I have ready to go into the garden.
I've got a couple of aromas in underneath that are ripening.
Now moving on to the tender green beans.
Other than tasting the odd one I have not picked any of these beans yet.
Whereas the brown beauty and the purple we've had some meals from them.
So this will be interesting to see how many are in underneath all these leaves.
And that's not bad.
I probably missed a heap due to trying to hurry this along.
There is less beans coming out of this gun bed due to the shade that it gets
from the corn and the arch.
Now on to the muncher burpless.
This is quite a jumble and although it is fun to go searching for cucumbers
it's not the easiest way to pick.
Which makes things a little time consuming and ones often get missed.
These are also quite light in colour because they have so much shade.
These are delicious, they do have seeds in the larger ones but they are very soft.
On to the rhubarb.
I haven't picked this in a couple of weeks so there is a lot here.
I wanted to leave plenty of leaves for all that hot weather.
Just making sure that I watered them and they had the leaves to shade their own crowns.
But I'm going to get on and pick a few because it is quite cluttered in here with leaves.
And I think they could do with a few stalks being picked.
I've picked the Russian Giant, the first one, and these two are the Red Dragon.
To think that this is only its first year for these plants that I have just picked is quite amazing.
And the colour, even though you can tell one is glossy and one is more of a matte colour,
is beautiful.
The Capsicums, yeah, I lifted the net on these and forgot to put it down
for a couple of nights straight and Mrs Possum was straight into it.
