Providing for Ourselves.

Whilst the renovations were ongoing, we started to transform our garden. Because both my son and I have back problems, we decided to start making our vegetable garden into raised sections where possible, with the view to growing as much of our own fruit and vegetables as possible. From the hardware store I bought two kits to make raised gardens 90 cm x 90 cm (3 foot x 3 foot). My mother had an old plastic corrugated compost bin which we cut in half horizontally, screwed together, and made into two other small raised gardens. A selection of plants were planted in pots. Our old laundry tub also became a raised garden!

We already had lemon, lime, and grapefruit trees. New trees were planted – grafted apples (more than one together on the one base), and a dwarf washington orange tree. A new bed was set up which had an arch with two passionfruit vines, and hanging from the arch 4 pots holding strawberries. Underneath we planted asparagus and mini-cauliflowers. Also set up were 4 hessian bags holding potatoes. We look forward to harvesting these just before Christmas.

Before his death, my father had purchased two water tanks (900 litres each). We set these up, one at the side of the house, and the other at the rear of our garage, and had the plumber connect these for us. Our original vegetable patch is to be raised once the current crop is harvested.