Saturday, October 4, 2014

My Little Veggie Patch DIY

Good Morning all! 

Life has been pretty crazy lately, so on this beautiful Summers morning I shall sit upon my breakfast bench, drinking my morning smoothie and tell you all about the fruits of my labour (hehe, pun intended here). 

Joe and I were pretty lucky in the fact that we purchased our home virtually completely renovated - the only work we really need to do is on two bathrooms, the gardens and entertaining area. This weekend I jumped in little black (yes, my car has a name) - insert, 'ugh, she is one of those people' here - and went on my way to our local bunnings. 

I really like the thought of growing your own produce in a farm to table sort of way, it has always been a dream of mine to be able to walk out into my back yard and have produce just a harvested pick and cook now kind of way. In saying that I wanted to share some of my gardening tips and ideas with you all, and of course my personal finished product. 

1. Soil 

It is always good to find out the pH level, or if you're not into it that much the soil that you are going to be working with. Unfortunately we had major plumbing issues and had to dig up our whole back yard to fix the pipes so I knew i would be working with super crappy soil. I swear our soil is more like concrete/rock haha. Due to this I had to buy four bags of garden soil (25L each) to fill the small space below. Firstly I used the pick to loosen the soil i already had, then poured in the new garden soil and mixed it all together with the shovel. 

2. Location

You need to ensure you pick a location that gets plenty of sun, your veggie patch should get about 6-8 hours of sun per day. Of course, myself being difficult I chose to plant my veggie patch where there were existing hedges so had to do a LOT of hard work to trim back, remove and replant elsewhere just to get my location sorted. 

3. Plants 

There are many guides on pinterest like the one below that I found that gives you a good guide to plants and what works well with each other. I obviously chose items that we enjoy to eat a lot of and some fun other things that we can experiment with. I chose tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, chives, chilli, baby carrots and capsicum. Needless to say I'm sure the range will expand as it's never good to bite off more then you can chew at the beginning, not to mention initially veggie patches are expensive.


4. Planting - Nutrients - Water

Now for the fun part, planting your crops! For transplanting (moving from pot to garden) I use the Miracle-Gro MaxFeed Soluble Plant Food, these come in different varieties, I obviously chose the ones for tomatoes, fruits and vegetables. Follow the instructions on the back of the packet. Dig the hole for your plant and pour some MaxFeed in with a small amount of water to assist in the shock that your plants occur when moving them to the garden bed. Repeat this step for every plant you wish to put in, cover with soil and add mulch to the garden bed for Nutrients. Make sure you give the plants a VERY good water, they are going to need watering everyday for at least a week afterwards. Follow with fertiliser every 7 - 14 days. 

5. Enjoy your finished product!! 


Although this is just the first step to our garden reno, there is much much more to come so stay tuned. 

Until next time, stay fabulous. 

Jacqueline xxx