Springtime Gardening: Growing Vegetables in Your Backyard
This post is by regular contributor Kyrstie Barcak of A Fresh Legacy.
My vegetable garden is my sanity. I get a great feeling of achievement and satisfaction when I pick produce from my garden for dinner. I love to feed my family from our garden. I also love to spend time with my two children in the garden watching things grow, caring for the plants and talking about the smell, look, feel and growing habits. I have found that having my children involved in the garden pays great dividends at the dinner table. My 4 year old will eat anything that has come from the garden. Being outdoors also helps my boys to burn off the excess energy they seem to have an abundance of! Some of the activities we have enjoyed in the garden together include: making a worm farm, scarecrow, and garden markers.
I encourage you to take advantage of any space available, no matter how small, to grow fresh vegetables for your family. If you do not have room for a defined vegetable garden you can easily plant vegetables between regular plants in your garden or in pots, anywhere you have some space.
Despite having decent space in my yard and great sized raised beds, I am also slowly taking over the backyard to squeeze in more and more vegetables! The picture below shows onions in a pot amongst ranunculi flowers. Last year I made some Onion and Chilli Chutney and this year I want to make at least double the amount as it ran out way too quickly! I have onions squeezed into every spare pot and space I could find.
When deciding what to plant in my garden I take into consideration:
- Will my family eat it when it grows? There is no point planting cabbage in my garden as I don’t like to eat it.
- How did that vegetable yield last year? Do I need to plant more or less?
The plan below outlines what I am planting this season (Spring in Australia). Use it as a guide if you are at a loss for what to plant at the moment. You do need to get started NOW if you have not yet done so, in order to reap the rewards in the coming warmer months.
There are so many variables that influence how successful your crop is (or isn’t) such as:
- Climate
- Position of the garden beds or pots
- Quality of the plants and soil, and amount of water received
- What you had planted in the space in the previous season
Take notes each time you plant something and make your own adjustments next year based on the results. Take note of what worked well and what did not. You can also reference this useful site that outlines a planting guide for the different climate zones in Australia.
In my garden we are currently growing;
All year: Lettuce, rocket, spinach. Carrots can be grown in all seasons except Winter.
Spring:
Plant: Beetroot, carrot, peas and beans. Mid to end of spring plant – tomatoes, capsicum, chilli, sage, chives, mint, pak choy, potatoes and pumpkin.
Activities: Plant as many seeds and plants as you can find space for as it is perfect growing conditions at this time of year – not too hot and not too cold. Fertilise at the start of spring as everything has a growth spurt and then again at the end of Spring. At the end of Spring also weed and mulch in preparation for the hot days.
Get out into your garden and plant as much as you can to ensure that you and your family reap the rewards in the coming months.
Have you started planting yet? What have you planted?
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We currently have carrots (half already picked – yum!), corn (not doing so well), eggplant (3 picked, about 16 on the plant in various stages of growth!), tomatoes and the ubiquitous basil (just pulled out 5 plants that had gone to seed – plenty more germinating off the existing plants) we also have in pots oregano, rosemary and a tiny lemon tree. PLans to plant soon lettuces, more tomatoes, beans and perhaps strawberries and broccoli. BTW we are in SE Qld, where it is already getting quite warm…
Hi Michelle, I am a little jealous of the Queensland weather. My garden has progressed significantly over the past couple of weeks since these images were captured but the eggplants are just seedlings still and I am yet to plant my corn. You have a great variety of delicious produce planted, well done 🙂
I just love the vegies and so do my kids. We don’t have any produce yet as we are in Canberra but our seeds are just starting to shoot.
I just love the collage at the start of the post. Did you use an app to create it. I’ve just started using Muzy but I’m not getting collages at a high res.
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca, I used a program called Pic Monkey it is a free photo editing tool that I am a little addicted to!! Happy gardening 🙂
I can’t wait to start growing vegies in my garden with my daugther! Great post!
Thanks Sam. Your daughter will enjoy watching things grow I am sure, and the bounty of produce from her work. I find it a great time to chat to my boys. I am so pleased to have the weather getting warmer so we can get out more. Good luck with your planting.
We planted tomatoes a few weeks ago and we are all loving watching them become big and bushy. Now for the tomatoes to come!! x