Open Garden Tour - Keith's - East Coast of NSW Australia

Every garden is unique, each with its own set of conditions creating all sorts of unique consequences. Mine sure has its own, making it interesting to work with.  There are two conditions that stand out creating a bit of a challenge - sun and light! The small piece of garden I rescued from the surrounding tropical garden with its tall palms and lush, dense vegitation is facing SE to about NE and as such is really borderline so far as the minimum amount of sunlight needed to produce food

You can see by the above photo that the rich tropical vegetation builds an impressive barrier preventing much of the sun from penetrating through to the garden once the sun is past the northerly point during the day. The strawberry patch you see here is not good for growing anything over winter because the sun is lower in the sky and the garden shed shades it too much. However back under the overhanging palms I can grow summer crops over the autumn, winter and spring ( lettuces, zucchini, sweet potato, tomatoes etc) because that area of the garden the plants are tricked into thinking  it is actually spring, summer and autumn. From the summer solstice onward the sun reaches far back in the garden and as the summer approaches that part of the garden gets less sunlight each day as the sun moves back toward the south, so to speak, so the plants think it is coming on to Autumn and start to mature or head up.


In the next photo the retaining walls of the strawberries in the foreground and main garden beds all face the North East. The fences run North/South and East/West so you can imagine the direct sun is very limited. For you Gurus in the northern hemisphere this is the same as a garden facing South east. Basically I get the early sun till about midday or a bit earlier and this combined with having a small area to grow means I have to grow things intensively. I do not have the luxury of room to have small beds with wide paths to make access to the plants easy or push wheelbarrows about. Those bricks and bits of wood are my paths - I even utilise that rickety retaining wall as a path. I have to balance my way around on these carrying whatever or balancing as I tend to the plants.


Anyway here are some other photos for you to see what I have in the small area dedicated to the vegetables. The first one is to show you how I garden intensely. notice the small area between the wooden path and the fence line which has peas growing up it. What I have done is planted some bean seeds there on the open soil which will grow to about half a meter more or less and produce beans. The peas behind do not produce flowers and peas till they are about 1 meter high and also the bean plants will not block their sun nor interfere with harvesting. Note too the bk Choy plant which is now in flower - this I will leave in the soil to collect seeds while harvesting the beans and peas. So in such a small area - so much is happening and as long as they have enough water and food they are happy and produce healthy produce.




































See too how the cat enjoys overlooking the garden and that chook (chicken) sneaks in from time to time to pick at the fresh vegetables and visit the bunnies. In this photo you see my composts that I have built - there is actually two there and a third is in the shaded part of the photo - each at a different stage of composting. The other photo is the bunny enclosure - the manure producer for the garden. every now and then I collect up the straw from the cage and use as a mulch for the garden. it is full of urea and manure so perfect for fertilization of the garden as well as a mulch to keep weeds down and moisture up to the plants. It is worth noting that with a good mulch the moisture stays at least 40% longer in the soil - in fact more depending on the depth of the mulch another great advantage to mulch while we are on the subject is that it stops soil splattering on your crops when it rains and so needs less cleaning.


























Anyway that's it for now - How about a look at all your gardens and its personality and needs - would love top see them all as I know you all would too
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