a learning process

Well here I am again, let me tell you this gardening business is new to me. i have never grown a thing successfully in my life, not that i haven't tried. But here i am giving it a go once again and touch wood I can manage to keep these gardens alive :)
Above are my tomato plants, there are 17 - one didn't make it. We got the seedlings from Bunnings, punnets of 6 marked down to $2, because they didn't look so crash hot but ever the optimist I thought I could rescue them and so far so good. Because I am new to this area I am not sure when to plant what and what will survive the frosts that are coming from what I am told but its all learning.

this is another lesson learned here - I had no idea how big zucchini plants grow, if I did I would have given them a row to themselves but hey live and learn, in this row there are zucchini (obviously), carrot, onions and some cauliflower.

in this sad looking area are my cabbage and baby beets, as you can see the garden is not finished its just baby steps.

I discovered the other day that my cabbage and cauli were being eaten by cabbage moth so I googled ( as you do) for a natural pesticide that I could make myself and here is the recipe I came up with

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tsn veg oil

let these steep for about 24 hours and then drain the garlic off and mix the oil with 2 tsn dishwashing liquid and 1 lt of water

i then liberally sprayed said plants with this mix and will keep you posted with the results

Also on a side note just to show how I am getting the hang of this simple waste not want not way of life, I then used the garlic that I drained off the oil in a herb and garlic loaf that we ate with plenty of butter for lunch mmmmmm - it was good :)

peas and beans here, which are all doing well. Darren built a trellis type thing above them out of some metal we had lying around. Gotta love a handy man.

And this slapped up chicken coup is very very temporary - these girls and boys are getting the ground ready for stage 2 of the vegie patch. I think I will wait the winter out before planting anything here though - I am hoping for some pretty special things from this patch of well turned and fertilised dirt

thanks for looking

Cheers