My Vegetable Garden

Hi friends! Lets start by reconnecting as it’s been a long long time since I’ve added anything to this little online space of mine. What better way than to update you on my vegetable garden. 

So, shall we start with our big life change? We’ve moved cities! Immigrating is one thing, but moving cities after you’ve immigrated and been in one for 6 years is a whole different kettle of fish.

Nick and I moved further down the South Island of New Zealand, to beautiful Christchurch. You may have heard of this humble city from it’s shadow of a massive M6.2 earthquake that crippled it and it’s people to their knees on 22 Feb 2011.

It was an event that truly rocked the whole country, and to this day I remember exactly where I was in South Africa when I heard about that earthquake.

So far, the city and it’s people have been amazing! Our very good friends from South Africa live just down the road, which is so comforting to share the same heritage and have so much to relate to! We are truly blessed! 

Not to say that I don’t miss Nelson, in some ways I do but others – not so much. I miss living right next to the ocean. I miss having nature on our door step. But in all honesty, Christchurch is wonderful and in some ways reminds me of a lot of SA – the good parts that is!

Along with moving cities, comes a new house – and my goodness were we lucky to find the gem we’re in now! Our new house came with an existing raised vegetable garden bed, which is where the inspiration for this blog post has come from. So grab a cuppa tea and let me share with you the journey of my vegetable garden so far.

The Beginning

The raised bed initially had heaps of soil in it and a rather succulent and thriving lone strawberry plant. Although the strawberries that the plant was growing looked absolutely delicious – there was just one problem that I could not get out of my mind.

You see – our friendly neighbourhood cats had discovered that this beautiful big spacious predominately empty vegetable garden bed was the IDEAL massive kitty litter box.

And you see, I could not bring myself to eat food that had grown in cat poop – don’t get me wrong I love the cats but you see how this could be a problem moving forward with my hopes in creating a thriving abundant edible veggie patch. 

The Soil

So first thing was first, ALL the existing soil had to go and I needed to start fresh. I researched the best prices in town and found an amazing local place that supplied organic compost – Intelligro. I went back to the drawing board and measured my bed and calculated how much soil roughly I’d need to fill it.

I got my figures and ended up getting the 35l bags of Organic Compost along with a few bags of Garden Soil Mix and a few bags of Veggie Garden Mix for good measure. In hind sight, this is when I should have done a bit more research – but we’ll get to that a bit later on.

Next began the manual labour of removing the soil, into bags to spread out getting rid of it in our green waste bins. Turns out soil is VERY heavy – and so I had to get it into the green bin in increments. Nonetheless I got it done – cleared out the bed and added the new compost, soil and garden mix – spreading it and mixing it all evenly. It was now time to plant the babies!

The Seedling Selection

This is the exciting part – where Nick and I sat down and discussed what veggies and herbs we’d like in our vegetable garden. List in hand – off we went to the garden centre to pick our crop, and we came home car boot full of babies eager to grow!

I must add, that when I was researching which plants to grow, I found this incredibly helpful Growing Guide on the Tui Garden website. Here I was able to pop in my location and the month of the year and it gave me all the info I needed on the plants that would be suitable to grow at that time. Incredibly handy for an amateur like myself.

We ended up getting:

• Swiss Chard
• Pumpkin
• Zucchini (Yellow)
• Bell Peppers
• Carrots
• Beetroot
• Lettuce
• Rocket
• Spring Onion
• Garlic Chives
• Oregano
• Lemon Thyme
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Basil
• Broccoli
• Mint
• Chilli’s from our neighbour
• Gem Squash – seeds I already had

The Irrigation System 

Luckily for us, the lawn irrigation system was relatively easy to plug into – to be able to extend a pipe over to the veggie bed and install an irrigation system to feed the thirsty plant children.

Nick had such fun planning and figuring this all out and the many trips to the garden centre – aka Mitre 10 here in NZ, were all to exciting for us both! We looked at different irrigation heads to maximise water usage and limit water wastage.

We did try a mister set that our kind neighbour helped us out with, but with the wind we often experience here – without a shelter it just wasn’t reaching all the plants, so we opted for 90 degree sprinkler heads on either side of the bed, facing each other which turned out so well. 

We did have to raise the poly risers during the growth of the bed, as the plants just became too tall for the water to reach over them. A quick and easy fix with another trip to the Garden Centre.

Garden Growth

All the seedlings did so well, and I truly could not believe that everything was growing so quickly! The heat of summer really supercharged each and every plant cell into maximum output and my garden came to life.

I literally was shocked than in as little as one month, my vegetable garden had exploded and I was even starting to see zucchini and bell pepper flowers forming which was so incredibly exciting and rewarding for me.

The dream of having a flat raised bed has been one of mine for a very long time, and the gratitude I was feeling was immense to say the least.

So Where Did Things Go Wrong?

Even though the garden did so well, I did start to see a decline in growth and an addition of pests that began to annihilate the leaves of certain plants. White moths had set in and I did every natural remedy I could to try fend them away from my broccoli plants.

From making a garlic water spray to sprinkling diatomaceous earth over the whole bed to try stop the slugs, moths and moth eggs. None too successful, which meant I had to pull my broccoli’s out, which was very sad. 

Along the time line I had also decided to scatter some edible flower mix as you see my zucchini flowers would grow and get big but then fall off before any fruit was able to form. Google advised this could mean a lack of pollination – so my thought was if I plant lots of beautiful colourful edible flowers – the bees would come in their masses and save my pollination woes. 

The edible flowers thrived – and possibly a little too much because they began to take over and I think thats when my bed became too overcrowded. There was minimal space now for sunlight to hit the soil with all the green growth above which meant my soil because very wet and soggy.

I was careful not overwater and had no leaks with the irrigation system, which led me to the conclusion that the overcrowding and also possibly the mulch I had added, could have caused more damage than good. 

You see I experimented with using a thin layer of grass clippings from the lawn to cover the base of the plants, because mulch is good for a vegetable garden, right?

Well, maybe grass clippings weren’t the best choice because I think it worked a bit too well in keeping in too much moisture. But hey, you live and you learn and that what this life experience is all about.

My Results So Far

While my herbs are doing exceptionally well and not being affected by slugs or bugs, a lot of the other plants did not end up doing so well.

I had a huge pumpkin creeping alongside of the bed which was doing so well, but unfortunately the slugs got to it and ate all the leaves and although I can’t bear to pull it out just yet (as in my mind, after elevating it I’m hoping it’ll make a comeback), I think it’s seen better days. 

The Zucchini plant developed a fungus on it’s leaves – almost like a mold, which I just could not get rid of. It did produce some zucchinis, and I managed to harvest and eat one big one, but the rest were way too moist and watery and ended up rotting before I could pick them. Even the ones I did pick did not last long and were just too moisture full.

Nevertheless I did enjoy seeing their beautiful blooms come to life. 

Our bell pepper plants yielded 3 tiny green peppers in total, and didn’t really grow much after reaching around 40cm high. 

The carrots did not do well at all, and were so malformed. Which lead me to learn that possibly my soils pH was right at all.

My beetroots were very very small, and although I did try a few, most had been eaten by something and had tiny little bugs on them which unfortunately totally put me off. They did not look very healthy at all. 

Besides those, my herbs, spring onions and chives did very very well, and I have an abundance of edible flowers which has made me, many bees and bumblebees very happy. I see that as a win for sure!

What Have I Learnt

Basically that I have so much to learn when I sow my next round of crops, especially when it comes to soil pH and the health of plants. I’ve learnt not to overcrowd my beds and to not use any mulch – or maybe try a different type.

Our next plan is to make some of our own narrow raised beds to line the fence and the garden shed, where we can try our hand at tomatoes along the trellis. I’m looking forward to our future projects and excited to bring you all along. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and I’d gladly take any recommendations or advice when it comes to growing our own food – just drop me a comment below.

This whole practice has been incredibly rewarding, even if I didn’t have the best yield. The healing power of connecting with nature and growing your own food is so powerful! I implore you to try, even if it’s one pot on a window sill.

Happy planting friends 🙂