The finished product

Of course when talking about the veggie garden there is never a finished product! However for this season I have planted all 6 beds out and added some seedlings to pots with other plants in them just to fill the space and now it's all feeding them, weeding the beds, will add some pea straw when the seeds grow and the seedling get bigger, keeping the snails off them and bugs and then of course harvesting them. Then the wonderful cycle begins again!

Before Easter I pulled out the yellow zucchini and the golden nugget pumpkin plants and split the 2 tier bed to create another bed for the onions, I added mushroom compost and cow manure to one bed for the leeks, white, red and brown onions and spring onions and then just added some lime and turned the soil for the parsnips, carrots, turnips and radish. I used seed for all those plants and have noticed the soil seems to be very water repellent and it was from the bottom of the 2 tier bed so it will be interesting to see if they come up ok.

Carrots do not like recent manure or mollycoddling but they do like fairly friable soil and mine seems a little too clayish but we shall see.

All plants discarded from last season are given to the chickens and while turning the soil and moving it to the new beds I found many cockchaffer larvae (no it isn't any sort of reference to male underwear) rather a turns into a beetle that chomps through plant roots and grass roots so I threw the lot to the chooks who were wrapped with a tasty morsel for afternoon tea! I still have some pots with coriander and endive coming up, but as the days are getting shorter the growth is really slowing, along with some garlic chives, might have to move them inside and see if some indoor heat keeps them alive for longer.

Hope you all had a great Easter, such great weather here in Victoria anyway for gardening!

While away camping the other week, Rocky the rougue escaping Hamburg managed to escape into the veggie garden and I am so pleased to say she did minimal damage due to the bamboo sticks! She really couldn't turn the soil at all, and I have found the black birds have stayed of the garden too!