The Garden in June

The raspberry bed at Mum and Dad's has errupted into a small forest of orangy-red. These little toadstools are scattered throughout it, glistening from the rain.

The garden is looking a bit bedraggled and bare otherwise. Winter has a way of doing that I guess. We do grow crops year-round here, and the temperatures have not been all that chilly yet either. Mostly the garden looks sad from lack of attention. There have been other things taking our time lately (namely, one small boy who is amazingly a month old now!).

The raspberry canes are awaiting a prune. The ones on the right are Christmas fruiting canes, so we need to be sure to leave the long canes when we prune as they will fruit off that wood this year. The others on the left are standard autumn fruiting canes so will be cut back to 30cm or so above ground. Quite a number of runners have come up all over the place, so they will also need to be pulled out so we just keep the strong, main canes. It's a good thing that we put edging in this garden - I can imagine the raspberries taking over the rest of the lawn if they were not contained!

This garden held the tomatoes over summer. It is meant to have strawberry plants transferred into it, and their bed used for veges...hasn't happened yet though.

And here are the main growing beds at present - the main crops being lettuces and silverbeet. We've also got some small cabbage seedlings and some broccoli that is 'fruiting.'

I planted about 50 cloves of garlic. A dissappointingly small amount have come up. Perhaps it is because of the rain that we had soon after? We will need to get some more I guess, and fill in all the gaps. The 15 or so cloves that have sprouted will certainly not be nearly enough garlic for next year! Not that we are trying to grow enough for the whole year - that would take up an aweful lot of space...but I would be interested to work out just how much our two small households use each month. Last year's garlic (cloves bought from the garden centre) were very yummy. I used some of them to plant this year, trying to save costs...guess it didn't work out so well as I'll still need to buy some anyway, but it was worth a try.

Hopefully I will get to do more than just look at the garden soon. I should be ready to start digging in (in small increments!) in the next week or so. I am so looking forward to it. Gardening, I find is therapeutic. While the production of food is a noble and worthy cause, I must admit that the main reason I garden is because I enjoy it. It is food for the soul. I love the peace and quiet, watching things grow, being able to potter around in the sun or wind or even rain just to be outside and productive.

Why do you garden?

Amy