Lots of Photos - New Project

Okay, where to begin....
I have convinced my mother to upgrade her side garden into a humungus vegie patch. We have always had fruit trees in there, but the old veg thing has never been our forte.
In times past this has been a pretty tropical garden, and in our childhood, it was referred to as the secret garden as no-one seemed to know it existed (probably as it is pretty much fenced in and back then we had bananas growing up to the entrance of the one side you could get in).
Anyway, gone are the rhodedendrons and tamarillos etc. (through age and plant death). Fruit wise there are still 2 big mangoes in there and around 4 avocados, an orange, a mandarin, a fig and macadamia.
So I thought I would do here a visual journey of our progress through to vegie patch galore. The pathways were laid down by my dad many many years ago, and we are retaining a lot of the trees (all the palms will eventually go), and the orchid area will stay.

We have been doing a bit of work before I remembered to bring my camera along .....

Ready for the journey?

The Mango at the entrance to the garden...she gives us big beautiful Kensington Prides (when the rats and bats dont get to them). The photo next to it is the main path into the garden.

Here is the other Kensington Pride Mango interwoven with the Macadamia tree. As CWM Goch has said, it is proably why the black parrots havent decimated the macadamia crops. They havent noticed it yet! The photo next to it is the same area but camera looking straight (not up), so you get an idea of the size. And thats one of our baby Mangoes (we have 5).

This is the other main path into the garden, runs adjacent to the other main path. Photo next to it is of one of the interconnecting "winding" paths. All the little green flecks are seedlings of miscellaneous vegies.

VEG BOX 2 & 3 On the left here we have the remains of 2 old vegie boxes that my dad made, that usually housed flowers, lol. We are in the process of dismantling them (they were made out of old jarrah floor boards), and getting the area ready for a huge vegie tank (3m x 1.5m). To the right is the Navel Orange tree. It had a severe pruning and is feeling sorry for itself. Uncle C has been busy topping the bed up with mulch and has been slowly planting it out with various things. Actually, just noticed that the 2 photos together like that give a pretty accurate interpretation of the area.

VEG BOX 1 Down here we have the lone veg box. Also in the process of being dismantled and replaced. They have lasted a long time (at least 15 years) but have started to bust now, or otherwise we would of used them to plant out. The area next to it is underneath our mandarin tree. Best tasting mandarins ever! It too has had a severe pruning and is feeling sorry for itself, but still managed to give out a bag of mandarins this year. The broadbeans dont like this spot methinks. I'll have to fish out an old photo I have of this spot, you wouldnt pick it as the same area with rhodedendrons and very tropical feel it used to have.

The orchid house. They are all pretty much starting to bust a bud at the moment. Very pretty. We picked up 2 new ones last week, but they havent made it here yet. We got naming rights on one, so it is now called Pumilow Caterina. Awww

Okay, now for some during work progress shots. After 2 hours we had dismantled VEGBOX 1, sifted all the soil - egads what a freaking nightmare that was (box was filled with some sort of rhizome grower and we had to get out every single opaque carrot like bulby thing and let me tell you, there were hundreds!). Anyway, we then flattened off where the new veg box will go, so that area is pretty much all ready. Im planning on putting in raspberries along the brick wall there.

And here are some photos of my bad, bad attempt at doing some edging to stop the soil run off when it rains. I hang my head in shame. I wil have to dig it all out and put it in like the rest of the garden, upright and overlap the roof tiles.

This weeks job is to mulch all the piles of crap that are laying around in the garden, and to sift the soil on VEG BOX 2 & 3 as one had ferns in it so the soil if full of those ball like ?tubers. Fun and games. I so cant wait until the tanks are in and ready to plant up. All my seedlings at home are begging for a new place to live.