WE'VE GOLDEN SOIL

The vegie patch has been alive and kicking for a couple of years now. I don't need to pay too much attention to it but it had reached that scraggly stage when the plants grow out. For instance, that big green bush in the back left corner is Italian parsley. Little garnish for your spag bol anyone?!

Yesterday we spent a couple of hours topping up the soil, tidying, repotting and planting new seeds. The garden fairies – of which I have two – literally, helped us out yesterday with a mild and cloudy day, perfect for a bit of garden work.

First thing on the agenda was a trip to Condell Park Pet and Saddlery Supplies. We picked up 8 bags of regular potting soil and 2 bags of mixed fertiliser (mushroom and banana leaf compost and cow poops). I turned the soil with the pitchfork, working carefully around the couple of plants I kept in situ.

Look at the size of this fatso! The garden was absolutely teaming with huge healthy earthworms, just like him.

I relined the garden edges with the newspaper to help stop the grass from coming through the bricks. 

Salvaged a few things for lunch. 

Replanting marigold seeds. Having some flowers like these in the garden is supposed to attract insects away from the other plants. I just like having some pretty flowers in the garden. I had some snapdragons last time.

Spinach seeds. I love seeing what the seeds look like when you open the little packets, they're all so different. 

Here's the end result of the day's work. A tomato plant had recently sprung up by itself  behind the compost bin in the corner. The plants that choose their own growing spaces, no matter how inconvenient for us, always seem to be the happiest ones, so we moved the compost and made some space for it.

One day I would like to just "plant" some of our vegetable compost and see what surprises grow up out of the soil! 

For the past few crops I've waited til the plants were at the end of their productive stage before replanting the seeds, but this time I'd like to do what you're meant to do, and remove half of each section and replant some seeds so there's a constant supply. In this relatively small space, and using a few extra pots, we have twenty staples:

lettuce

spinach

oregano

sage

red chili

curly parsley

flat-leaf parsley

coriander

dill

mini capsicums

shallots

chives

tomatoes

strawberries

rosemary

basil

mint

peas

string beans

broad beans

I just love going to the garden to pick a couple of spring onions and a couple of basil leaves for recipes, without having to buy an entire bunch that costs $2.50 but lasts less than a week. We pick what we need, it's fresh, pesticide free, and grown under the supervision of two glow-in-the-dark fairies. What more could you really want.