Building the sustainable garden...

I had a strangely productive day yesterday after completely losing my motivation. The cold is getting to me this year, I think. Overnight we're falling to 0 degrees and the mornings are tough - hard to motivate oneself when it's a little on the cold side, I think! So I decided to go out in the afternoon and tick off some other goals we have.

A trip to the local nursery was in order - I wanted to start our strawberry patch and, as you can't buy strawberry seeds, we had to purchase the seedlings. We bought three lovely punnets of healthy seedlings - hurrah! While we were there we purchased other lovely things we needed for our sustainable garden:

A bag of disease free garlic to restart our garlic bed. We already had one but we ate all of the garlic instead of sowing it - so we need to start afresh!

We also got three huge, ugly-as-anything rhubard crowns. They are beauties and will certainly grow into large plants. We love stewed rhubard and rhubarb pies - and I want to try rhubard yoghurt now that I have mastered making my homemade yoghurt.

Lastly, we purchased two established blueberry plants. I must learn how to strike a plant from a cutting - I wanted more plants! But two is good to start with, I think...

And then it was a quick trip to the local farm supplies store for some fresh straw - we bought a bale for the chickens and to line the strawberry patch. If you line your strawberry patch in straw you'll get clean fruit...

So - even though I was completely unmotivated in other areas - for the garden, I achieved much! Everything shall be planted today...can't wait for the fruit!

A new beginning at the back shed

It's a fresh new start for the back quarter of our back yard today. We had it all cleared (apart from the apple and plum trees) to make way for brand new vegie beds, a large chicken coop and a large compost area. I took these shots at dusk.

This is the corner behind the old shed - a deceptively large space. We've decided to keep the shed instead of replacing it with a new steele thing - we're going to paint it and fix the roofing. All of the windows are in perfect nick and the wood is fine as it's raised on its own slab. This corner is where the raised chicken coop will be - and the compost area.

We'll clean the shed up - I am debating whether to paint it white with a retro trim. Don't know why I want white - white in the garden is a no no...but the space oozes a white quaintness. We'll see. I can also see it's own water tank somewhere - but just don't know where, yet!

This is the other side of the garden - this is where the raised vegie beds will be. We want to start slow but build up and plant as much as we can. I honestly can't wait to get stuck into it. I'll be covering most of the fences with railing for beans and peas and anything else that wants to grow!

Just found this magazine, too - Green. Does anyone read it? It looks fabulous on the site - I can't believe I haven't come across it before...