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Imagine you are visiting the Farmlet: As you come through the gate into the house paddock and head for our front door, there is a narrow strip of garden running along to your left, between the concrete footpath and the side of the house. (There are now vegetable beds on the other side of the path.) When Kevin and I moved onto the Farmlet in March 2006, this was the only area of cultivated garden on the entire place. Through the first autumn and winter, while we worked on preparing more space for our vegetable gardens, we crammed as many vegetable plants as we could into that little strip of garden. It has produced all kinds of vegetables over the past year, from celery, collards, kale and swiss chard, to peppers, potatoes and garlic. By now, we have more space available elsewhere for planting vegetables, so we have started converting this strip of garden that runs along our entrance path for another purpose.

Path between “entrance” garden and veggie beds

Because this entrance garden is on the eastern side of the house, it gets plenty of sunlight, especially in the mornings. Also, because it is close against the downhill side of the house, it is protected from any cold currents of frosty air coming down the hill. It’s an excellent site for frost tender plants that might be marginal for our climate if grown in more exposed parts of the house paddock. We hope that one day the house will be lined with a row of perennial fruit trees (mostly frost-tender sub-tropicals), inter-planted with a few herbs and flowers for ground cover and extra colour.

At the moment, a few vestiges of the vegetable garden still remain — some swiss chard and the occasional potato. These will eventually be phased out, as the garden transforms. Already in the garden are a passionfruit vine (for which we need to erect a trellis on the fence next to the gate), a pepino, two young tamarillo plants, a red hibiscus and a couple of perennial chili peppers. A couple of days ago, I added a naranjilla to the mix. I’ve started all these plants from seed, except for the naranjilla, which we picked up from a local nursery. It’s fun to be on the lookout for more tasty morsels to propagate or plant in this sheltered garden.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.