Veggie Patch Layout

September plantings are going well. All six bed are about to be fully occupied. The ground is warming up and everything is taking off. Looking at the picture above, we run the six beds in an anti-clockwise rotation.

Bottom Left (closest) - grew a crop of green manure over winter, now has corn and a few quick growing lettuce's, will fill the rest of the space with zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins shortly.

Bottom Right - grew a crop of green manure over winter, now filled with three varieties of potatoes. They've been in for about three weeks and are about to break through any day. If all goes well, we'll be digging new spuds for Christmas Lunch.

Centre Right - root bed. Growing four varieties of carrots, spring onions, beetroot and pak-choi. Finishing off a crop of lettuce's to make room for more carrots or pak-choi.

Top Right - Filled with broccoli, flat leaf parsley and a row of sugar snap peas climbing up a wire frame. The peas are taller than I am and producing a great crop. We’re lucky the birds haven’t discovered them yet.

Top Left - Filled with four varieties of onions. They all went in back in June and are coming along well. They should be ready to pull in January.

Centre Left - grew a crop of green manure over winter, that’s rotted down and I’ve just dug in a load of compost ready to plant tomatoes any day. I’ll also plant egg plant, capsicum and loads of basil in-between the tomatoes.

 

Along the northern side of our patch we've put a series of grape vines.  They protect our patch from the hot summer winds and gives the entire back yard a wonderful green backdrop all though the hot summer months.  There are two varieties of grapes, one red, one white and although they've only been in for about 4 years, they produce more than we can eat.  A few warm days over the last couple of weeks has seen all the buds burst open and the entire frame is covered with small green leaves.

 

 

 

At one end of the grape vine, in the back corner of our yard, we've partitioned off our compost bins.  They're hidden away behind a bamboo fence just in case they get a bit untidy.  They were very easy to make, I just used some old hardwood shipping pallets.  Just stood them up and used a few steal posted to hold them in place.  They allow plenty of air flow into the compost and are easy to get hold of.  I found 4 bins are ideal.  One (back corner) I use as a bulk holding bin for sheep poo, I can buy it locally by the trailer load.  The next bin (far left) I use as a holding bin for the finished compost.  The other two (right) I use for the fresh new compost that's still rotting down.  Rather than trying to flip or turn the material in a single bin, I find it's far easier to toss it from one bin to the other.  It does a better job of mixing it up and gets the air back into the entire load.

This load broke down over winter and is ready to start going out.  I've just put a few loads into the tomato bed.  The rest will go on over the next couple months as I finish off the planting.

  

This winter has been wet again after so many dry years.  So the compost rotted down really well without drying out too much.  The heats gone out of it now so the worms have moved in.  It's loaded with them and the soil is holding plenty of moisture.

The veggie patch is partitioned from the rest of our back yard by a large East/West garden bed.  It has a pathway thought it and a hedge along the back.  Although the patch is not hidden, it is excluded sufficiently, that you're drawn along the pathway to see what is beyond the hedge.  Once you move past it, the veggie patch opens up as a whole new area within the yard.  The Western end opens out onto the children's cubby area.  This is the only area of lawn we keep green over the summer months with gray water.  But that's a subject for another day.  

Peter W