Final Front Garden Bed

Last weekend Dave and I put together the final raised bed for the front yard, and this weekend will be the leveling and filling. After this last bed is in then it's onto irrigation and laying down the pebbles in between the raised beds, then the picket fence and the front yard will be all done! Yay!
Once the front yard is all finished I'll have some more time to work on my back garden beds and fruit trees, and also to work on other things like canning, cheese making and fun stuff like that!
But for now here's some photos of the building and placement of the newest bed.

Herb spiral growing steadily

Top to bottom: Lettuce, tomatoes, chives, parsley & coriander

Top to bottom: Fennel, carrots, parsnip, beetroot & rainbow chard

Top to bottom: Kohl rabi, cabbage, broccolini, radish, kale

Peas, beans & hot peppers

Newest garden bed placed but not yet leveled or filled

Front yard ramblings

 After losing my dedicated staff of slave labour (mostly my parents) back to Canada, I have been forced to toil away in the garden day after day alone. Woe is me... *insert dramatic arm gesturing to forehead here* but alas I have been making slow but steady progress towards total front yard domination. Since their departure I've managed to pot and hang my three strawberry hanging baskets along the front porch, and Dave and I acquired a nice cafe setting to arrange on our front verandah so I can watch my plants grow. Another new addition is the front flower bed consisting of a couple of hibiscus plants and a variety of ...colourful flowers. Flowers really aren't my thing, so don't ask me what they're called other than purple (which Dave's mom seemed a bit taken aback when I didn't know all the botanical names for them all, apparently 'ones with flowers?' didn't quite cut it). But I'm hoping they will attract more bees into the veggie gardens which is always a good thing.
I also just finished making the little bed at the back of the herb spiral to hopefully disguise the ugly fencing in time with creeping mandavilla (hah! I do know some flowery names, although apparently not how to spell them as my spell check keeps whinging at me no matter how I spell the damn thing). Anywhoo... that's what's been happening in the great land of my front yard. The great dump truck full of soil is nearly gone and I haven't even started building my last raised bed, so another trip to the soil company at some point may be required. Dave will be so pleased. My blueberry tree is steadily coming back from the dead now that it has been moved up onto the deck so I shall name him frankenberry!
Now for the photos...

Cafe setting, hanging strawberries and frankenberry looming in the corner

Front flower bed under construction

Finished with flowers aplenty

Start of back flower bed behind the herb spiral

Finished back flower bed with plants in place. More to be added as it looks a bit sparse still

Herb Spiral & Pond

While my parents were down visiting us this summer we got up to a little garden DIY'ing to create a herb spiral and pond in an unused area around the side of our front deck. First thing first we had to clear all the garbage and junk that had accumulated along the side of the house we never used. Then once it was clean(ish) we pulled up all the bricks that looked to have been half layed and then forgotten about by previous owners. (see pile in first shot behind me)
Dad had done a bit of planning on his computer ahead of time and worked out how to lay the bricks down, how big it needed to be around etc, and then it was time to start a buildin'! It actually went much faster than I was expecting, with it being completely built by afternoon of day two. Once the bricks had been finished we piled some sand and crappy soil to build up the level in the middle where it was highest, and then filled the top layer with our nice soil we got from the Good Soil Co. in Midvale. Once we had everything in place mom and I planted all our herbs and pond plants we got for around the edge of the water feature. The very last shot is what it looks like as of today. Filling in nicely I think!!
Enjoy the photos. :)

First row of spiral, figuring out the spacing

Dad and me digging the hole for the pond

Placed!

Proud daddy filling the pond

Dave approves!

Progress so far.

...aaaaaand we're back!

Sorry about the long pause in posting. These last seven weeks have been hectic to say the least. A very brief catchup of happenings:
1. Family came down to visit for the first time :)
2. Celebrated my moms birthday
3. Celebrated my nephews 5th birthday
4. Got married!
5. Had a very merry christmas
6. Quiet New Year with family
7. Went down to Margaret River
8. Many many evenings of good food and good company
9. Got lots of help working on trnasforming my front yard into a wonderful sustainable vegetable garden! (more on that in the next post)

But here a few photos from the wedding for those of you who haven't seen any of the shots yet. :) 

Parents and I about to leave for the ceremony

Vintage Holden ride to the ceremony

First kiss

My favourite photo from the ceremony. Dave telling me it'll all be ok when I was a bit nervous before reading my vows. He's a good boy. :)

One afternoon, two garden beds

After working to create a brand new veggie garden for Men of the Trees yesterday it inspired me to get working on my own garden here! Earlier in the week Miles and I staked out where all the raised beds will go in the front yeard, but one bed placement was being impeded by my kaffir lime tree (the little tree in between the two shrubs in the top photo). So I decided to reuse one of the square raised garden beds I had at the old Yokine rental house, to fit in between the kaffir lime and where the other raised bed in planned to go.

Here are some photos of the process...

Before I started. Ground slopes up in two directions so some shoveling was required

First attempt of leveling the bed by raising up one corner to be higher, but I was worried soil would leak out the bottom over time, so I decided to dig in the one corner into the hillside instead.

Final bed placement properly leveled, and filled with soil.

Seedlings planted! Spaghetti squash & pumpkins

I had a few too many seedlings for just the front yard, so I planted the leftovers in the second square bed that Dave filled up with soil round the side of the house that was just sitting there. So there, everything planted!! Time for a drink.

MOTT Community Garden

Today some of the members from kitchen gardeners society went to Men of the Trees nursery in Henley Brook to work on making a community garden part of their existing native seedling nursery. Along with some City of Swan volunteers and Adele from MOTT we had a super force to get down and dirty to transform a patch of unused lawn into a edible work of art! I'm not exactly sure who came up with the wagon wheel design for the garden, but it looked amazing when finished and much more interesting than standard box shaped garden beds. 

Along with getting a heap of work done, we also got lots of excitement by being chased by bees housed nearby with poor Steve getting the majority of the bees wrath. We got up to planting seedlings into the center corrugated iron raised bed and some herbs in the giant tractor tire wheel. The main wagon wheel beds still need some additional soil improvement before plants can go in, but we were running low on soil improver so those were left for another day. Here's hoping the crew at MOTT take what was started today and run with it into a productive, edible plot!

How things looked when I first arrived, work already in progress.

Digging trenches for the wooden beams to go into to create the garden edges

Wooden garden edges finished going in

The girls hard at work!

Soil and mulch being added to the main raised bed

Steve and Pete pre-bee attack looking happy and unstung.

Happy gardeners!

Soil going in

Some of the MOTT volunteers having a sticky beak shortly before the bee attack!

Moving tire into position

Seedlings!

Garden paths after gravelling

Kitchen gardeners after a great effort!

The crew!