Last year I moved flats in late spring and the new flat that I’m in has some small garden beds. Sadly they had plants already growing in them but my landlord said I could have free reign over them as long as I left their cumquat tree alone. So I went at it!

First things first, I had to get rid of the stuff already in the gardens. One garden had a trellis with this plant, Nasturtium, in it. I just discovered that Nasturtium is an invasive plant while searching for this image. Anyway, it was pretty easy to pull of the trellis but it left heaps of seeds behind and I’m still pulling out the seedlings today when they sprout after it rains.

The other garden had a daisy-like bush and a broadleaf bush in it with heaps of grass. It was overgrown and the broadleaf bush looked like it was dying. Since this was a woody garden I didn’t know how I was going to clear it but one weekend I just started snapping off branches. The half dead bush was pretty easy as the branches just snapped but the daisy thing was still green so breaking off the branches took more effort. I persevered and was eventually left with two stumps which my landlord allowed me to borrow his pickaxe to remove.

THAT WAS SO CATHARTIC!

It was a Friday evening after a long week of work and I had some pent up frustration. After taking a few tentative swings to get the feel of its weight and how to direct it, I was swinging this pick axe with vigor (and in bare feet might I add). I discovered that by swinging it just at the base of the roots I could sink the tip deep into the soil, potentially severing some roots in the process, and then use the shape of the pickaxe as a lever to get underneath the stump. Using this method I eventually got the largest pieces out of the soil that night and was rewarded with quite sore shoulders for the rest of the weekend.

Next I got compost and mixed it through the soil in both gardens, planted my carrot seeds and set up some other seeds that I got from the New World Little Garden promotion to germinate inside: lettuce, spring onion, tomato and basil seeds. Over the next two weeks my seeds sprouted and I decided to plant them, bad idea. Some just died from being planted while so little. Some got blown over in the wind and died. Some got chewed down by something in the garden. And some survived.

The survivors were five spring onions, three lettuces, two basil plants and one tomato. My carrot rows produced three carrots and a whole bunch of weeds which produced leaves that looked a bit like carrot leaves, only slightly rounder, and I was fooled until they started growing purple flowers.

For my trellis garden I also bought some seed peas and saved the pumpkin seeds out of a particularly tasty pumpkin I’d eaten. The peas popped up no problem (and are really tasty), however the weather was quite cold and damp when I planted the pumpkins so they took ages to sprout and I don’t think that the fruits which are growing now will be able to get to their full size before the autumn weather sets in.

As long as my landlord allows us to renew our tenancy I’ll have another go at growing all of these plants, and maybe I’ll try some others too. I now know to let my seedlings get a bit bigger before planting them and I have some ideas about rearranging where I plant things to maximise garden space. Experimenting with my garden has had heaps of ups and downs, but overall I’m pretty satisfied with what I have growing at the moment. Its pretty neat to be able to pick pea pods to add to my stir-fries or spring onions to add to the Japanese style dishes I enjoy cooking (see my miso ramen recipe).