I do not think I have ever posted in the HiveGarden Community before. I love our garden but my knowledge and experience about growing plants is very limited. Plus the 500 words minimum post is enough to scare any year 11 schooled tradie lol. It is funny now, how I had wished I listened and paid more attention to my English teacher, instead of making paper planes, cracking bad jokes and day dreaming out the window.
We are lucky enough to have a little bit of land in sunny sub tropical Queensland, many of our neighbours grow different things, my excuse was I am too busy with work.
Recently thinks have started to change, though I am still full time employed, I have been able to get more time off than ever before, mainly because I used to chase all the overtime I could and partly because of me using some long over due entitlements, like long service leave as well as even testing some leave without pay options.
I suppose It is all leaning towards semi retirement or some sort of exit plan from the hustle and bustle of the full time work and the everyday grind.
So with a few days off I set about trying to workout how to turn a bit of our backyard into some sort of a growing area. The self seeded paw paw plant located up the side of the house seemed like as good as any place to start.
First up I had to get rid of a storage unit I used for scrap metal and rubbish. Knocking stuff down is almost as much fun as building stuff.
Next I had an idea to use some left over bricks I had picked up on site to build some raised garden beds.
Not really sure why but raised garden beds seem to be the go, maybe good drainage or just maybe it makes everythibg easy to access but it felt good to get rid of a pile of old bricks.
I tried a few different options but ended up with 3 small planter boxes. I did not cement or fix them together, just sat them in place for now as a test to see how things worked out. Sometimes I just like having a go and do not do all the proper research.
I had to get some garden soil from the local landscaping centre. The sales person looked at me weird when I said can you use your loader to dump 1/3 of a cubic metre of soil into the buckets in the back of my ute. It worked quite well, I was able to walk to buckets to the desired locate quickly and easily.
photo credit to @consciouscat
I did not have much of an idea of what I wanted to grown or what is best for around here but I thought carrots might be easy and I dried some pumpkin seeds out from a meal we had.
It took a couple of weeks but it looks like things are starting to happen. It might not look like much to some people who have been doing this sort of stuff for years but I suppose I need to start some where. It is a pretty big change from what the rest of the back yard looks like.
Carrots
pumpkins
The rest of the yard still looks like a construction site.
I have been at this house for more than 20 years and it is fun to look back and see how it has changed. It was just a house and grass at the start.
I probably feel more like a landscape gardener that a small crops grower but growing vegetables might be a new hobby to learn.
The front yard 20 years ago.
I had a lot of help along the way, He is just about to buy his own place now.
and now.
The backyard has changed a lot too. I had contactor build the pool but I did all the paving and rocks myself.