The border of Mondo grass has been an excellent choice and is growing really well across the entire side of the house. It should thicken up stand out more by next summer. The Clivias are shooting new leaves and Im hoping for more flowers next Spring.
I planted a few Sedums in early Spring which were from Aroona and I think the garden could use a lot more of these as they have taken off and Im hoping they self seed as the flowers are lovely and they fill the spaces really well. They will look good growing in and amongst the Clivias to thicken up the border.

I tidied up a fair bit of the weeds, pulled out some of the native violets which grow really well in this garden, cut back the Hellebores and de-headed the Hydrangeas which has revealed a lot of gaps and spaces. Already I am being rewarded with new hellebore shoots. One of the Hydrangeas (below) hasn't faired very well which I transplanted from our old place so Im hoping that if I give it a good prune and feed it well as it cools down it'll come good.


































Cam pulled out a huge shrubby bush which was growing on the corner of the garden bed below by the front door and this has left a huge space to fill including huge craters courtesy of the dogs. I dont think Ned was too happy that we removed his hiding canopy.

I kept the Weigela which has pretty pink flowers in Spring and I will tidy this up and am now researching ideas of a smallish feature tree that will cope with the hot western afternoon sun here in summer. Its a double story high wall so something 3-5 meters tall would be suffice here. Im thinking ill also put in some Roses here too for some colour and blooms to pick for inside.

As you can see below I have my work cut out to beautify the front of the house.


As I mentioned before the round-about in the driveway has been the most successful garden here over the summer. The Dahlias and Salvias have been amazing and at their peak have filled the spaces really well, however as they have died off and become messy I have pulled them out and this has left plenty of gaps. I will be digging up the Dahlia tubers when they die off and will be setting them back into the middle of the garden bed rather than the front. This will leave plenty of room for more plants and Roses next Spring and Summer. There will be lots of colour!
The Salvias also took up a heap of space and though spectacular with their purple flowers, I will be moving the one amongst the Roses to give them some more room next Spring and Summer.

The Acacia and ground covers underneath have also been lovely and I love the different colours and foliage it brings to the garden.










There is much planning and scheming to do here to get a bit of an Autumn garden going but my aim will be for a spectacular Spring and Summer show.

Have you got a favourite garden bed growing at yours?

Thanks for visiting today
Elisha xx

As you can see from the above picture there was plenty of work to be done. We pulled out the cucumber vines, beans, zucchini plants, pumpkin vines, spent annual flowers. the corn stalks and a myriad of weeds. 

As with all gardening adventures and this my biggest veggie patch attempt to date, there are plenty of things that I have learnt as well as what I would do differently for the next Summer patch. Here is a summary of sorts...

-Plants need lots of space to grow. A single Zucchini seedling in particular needs at least a squared meter to grow for the summer and I will be allowing for this next year. We were stepping on the leaves every time we went to harvest cucumbers and tomatoes. Thankfully Zucchinis are hardy plants.
- A few plants were smothered in the patch like my Rose cuttings for example. Thankfully they were still alive and growing beneath the cucumber and eggplants and two even flowered. The Coriander and Dill also didn't have enough room to grow properly, and I couldn't even tell if the Asparagus was ok for all the cucumber vine growing around it. I will definitely plan for this much better next year and might even move some herbs to other garden beds around the house. I will also be relocating the Strawberries to their own garden bed so they can't send runners all through the patch and so we don't stand on them to get around part of the patch. 

-Tomatoes never stop growing. Initially I did well to string up the tomatoes and had them growing up through a third string line of support about 1.5m high and this was not high enough. The vines are now cascading and hanging over the sides of the string support with the weight of the tomatoes. Whilst this hasn't affected the tomatoes, it just makes for messy vines and not so easy picking. I think I will tie them each to a single stake again next Summer and I will make an effort to train them better next year. Thankfully we didn't have too much humid weather as I think I would have had a fair bit of disease for all the crowding. 

- Flowers are a veggie patches best friend. I had Zinnias, Cosmos, Roses, Calendula and Marigolds flowering all Summer and the bees loved them. Including plenty of Blue-Banded bees. The are so amazing to watch. 
Im also certain the flowers are the reason why I didn't have many issues with pests eating holes in and damaging the produce. Even better was that we didn't have evidence of a single fruit fly. 

-The only 'treatments' of a chemical kind that were applied to the veggie patch was some tomato dust on the tomatoes very early on in the growing season when I noticed a bit of yellowing of leaves at the bottom of the plants and Cam sprayed part of the patch with some leftovers from the vineyard to treat powdery mildew very early on in the season as well. We also applied a couple of doses of complete fertiliser that Cam found in the old shed when he knocked it down. 

- Damage that did present itself was powdery mildew on the cucumbers and zucchinis just the last few weeks, which I probably should have removed earlier but it didn't seem to be affecting the fruit so I left it until this weekend. I also had a few tomatoes split after we had some big rains following prolonged stints of warm, dry weather. 
Codling moths also wrecked havoc on the apples early in the season and upon research I apparently have to get onto prevention methods right now. Has anyone got any advice for this?

- Cow manure is a great addition to the soil to help everything grow. Thankfully we have plenty of it here at the farm.

- When do you pick pears? They are still hanging strong on the trees so Im just waiting until they easily come off. I know they probably need to ripen inside but what is the consensus here? Tips please!

- Weeds are a menace and make the patch look quite unsightly. Most of the weeds here were actually around the fruit trees and I had a watermelon vine growing in and amongst it all which didn't help my cause. I definitely need to make more of an effort with the weeds next year.

-I had way to many cucumbers from four vines. Whilst I made a few batches of pickles using this recipe, there was still too many to eat and give away. Also too, some of them grew much to big so I know now to be checking them everyday and I probably will only need one vine next year. I will also only be planting three Cherry Tomato plants and not five seedlings. One can only eat so many tomatoes. I was happy with the six seedlings of the bigger varieties though. This was the perfect amount for us for pickles, relish, sharing and eating of course! The tomatoes look to be good for fruit for a few weeks yet too. 
I will also stagger my planting of Sweet Corn. Whilst I enjoy eating it and it was a beautiful crop, I didn't enjoy eating it everyday for the two weeks we had it ripening. I must say I do get sick of eating the same thing over and over again.




How did your summer veggie patch fair? 
What was your best crop and tips? Do share away.

Thanks for visiting today.
Elisha xx
SaveSave

Its harvest time again here at the farm and yesterday things were in full swing with a 6am start.

We had our winemaker Rob Ellis visit last Thursday to inspect the grapes and he decided that the sugar levels were spot on and so The Riesling and the Sauvignon Blanc were ready to come off. 

Our little plot of 8 rows of Sauvignon Blanc returned a huge harvest, at least 2 tonne more than last year and the Riesling was looking and tasting very good too. In fact, we are even leaving a couple of rows of the Riesling to ripen and sweeten up a little more for our Dessert Riesling. These rows were netted shortly after the harvest and they will be picked with the Reds in a few weeks. The cockatoos are having a field day out in the vineyard.






I went for a drive over to the vineyard with my dad and Ollie to have a look just after 8am and it was pretty much all done. The tractors were humming along with bins full to the brim of juicy grapes and everything seemed to be running as smooth as silk.










Just before we came back to the house, Ollie and I went for a stroll down the first row of the Sauvignon Blanc to pick some Red Globe grapes that we have growing amongst the vines and as you can see below the machine doesn't get all the grapes off which leaves plenty of food for the cockies and the bees and a pretty picture.

They love it!

























In other good wine news around here, the Shiraz is coming along a real treat which is fantastic after all the work over the last three years to get the grafts growing and producing. We even have some Sparkling Shiraz in the pipeline for 2019. Now that really is exciting!!!!


We have some rain and storms scheduled for this afternoon which I hope is just enough to wet the ground and not spoil the rest of the grapes. We need another good stretch of warm, sunny days yet to ripen the reds to perfection.

I hope everything is humming along just fine at your place too.
Just out of curiosity what is your favourite wine variety to enjoy? Do tell.
Thanks for visiting today.

Elisha
xX