The Big Picture – Part three

Finally we have reached the last part of the tour.  I do love having a large garden and eating the fruits of my labour, but I do have to say at times there is a lot of labour!  I am blessed enough to have this incredible space and want to do my best to encourage others to pick up a spade.  Normal people don’t need gardens as big as mine though.  Just a small patch in a sunny corner of the yard will reap rewards.

So where were we….  Halfway down the soft fruit row.

21      GOOSEBERRY & BOYSENBERRY

Several gooseberries have met there end in my garden.  But I haven’t given up and have another one ready to go in the bed, although I am going to share it with a boysenberry that somehow made it into my car after a trip to the garden centre.  This is going to need some kind of frame to grow up so I’ve put my thinking cap on.  Goodness knows what I’ll come up with.

22     BLUE BERRY

These are looking the healthiest they ever have.  I’m not sure what I’ve done, but I’ll take it as a victory.  Bring on the blueberries!!

23     CAPE GOOSEBERRY & GUAVA

I love Cape Gooseberries and they are a superfood so they really should have a space in my garden.  But they do have a habit of coming back again and again as they self seed everywhere.  So it just make sense to give them a space of their own.  They were over by the greenhouse but the new compost system caused them to be homeless, so now I have to fill their bed with soil so they have a home to go to.  They will also be sharing it with a Chilean guava – another one of those unexpected garden centre things.  I really should stop going to these places.

24     POTATOES

The spuds are in and doing great, except I haven’t mounded them up yet…. Hopefully better late than never is good enough.  They just grew so quickly.  One moment they were tiny babies waiting to be buried up to their necks and now they are towering above the garden and attempting to put out their first flowers.

25     LIVE PLANTS GARDEN

This is my teaching garden where I grow alongside my learner friends and grow standard veggies in an average sized garden that a normal person would be happy with.  Not everyone wants to be crazy like me and try to grow it all!

26     AUTUMN RASPBERRIES

Because raspberries are good.  I am still mastering the fine art of growing these, but I’m getting there. This is especially important to me to get the hang of as my Grandfather used to have a raspberry farm.  I wish I was into gardening when he was around so I could have learnt all I could have.

27     SUMMER RASPBERRIES

These are almost better than autumn raspberries because they are nearly ready now!  Yummo!

28     FLOWERS

This is my big experiment at growing cut flowers.  It doesn’t seem to have the same priority as everything else because it is not edible – but I am determined to not let this defeat me again this year.  However there is a lot of digging to be done to get this ready.  I sense some procrastination coming on.

29     PUMPKIN

This is where I encourage all my pumpkins to grow in an orderly line out towards the big field.  They are surprisingly open to being told where to go. This is also the venue for the Giant Pumpkin competition where the Joeyosaurus remains undefeated.  Goodness knows how that happens, because these pumpkins mostly survive of neglect and disinterest from their owners and wouldn’t even stay alive if I didn’t step in and feed and water them!

30     STRAWBERRIES

We have more than enough strawberries for jam, vodka, desserts, greedy gorging and for the birds to have some too.  I love sun warm strawberries.

31      YAMS

I have done a lot of research around these guys, to find out how to improve on the tiddly little ones I normally get.  This year it will be different.  Hopefully.

32     JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE

These are only of those ‘look at me’ crops.  They are so impressive that people can’t help notice them, and so I say “oh those – that’s just the Jerusalem Artichoke” and folk think my garden is impressive to have them in it.  But in reality once you have them you’ll always have them – so I might as well embrace that fact and actually eat them!

And that is the state of my garden at this point, but a garden without plants in it is just a giant dirt box or kitty litter box depending on how you want to look at it.  So I must get on – my seedlings need me.

Come again – I’ll do this again at some point through the growing season so you can get the big picture.

Sarah the Gardener : o )