Sprouts

Mum recently bought me a sprouter from The Diggers Club so I thought I would document my progress with it. I decided to used a mixed seed mix consisting of Adzuki Beans, Mung Beans, Lentils and Fenugreek that I picked up from Bunnings. The whole process sounded a bit labor intensive, but it really wasn't that bad. You start off by soaking about a tablespoon of seeds in water over night to loosen the exterior shells. Over the next 5-7 days you rinse the sprouts 3 times a day and tilt the jar so the water drains away. After that you have about half a cup of sprouts to use. We decided to use them in a couscous and chicken salad, they added a nice texture and crunch.

Here are the daily photos of the sprouts:

 

The Finished Product:

Garden Update

The weather's been horrible the last couple of weeks and today it was finally sunny so I decided to take some pictures of whats been happening in the garden. Everything is growing really slowly at the moment because of the lack of light so there's not much to show.

We've already picked 2 snow peas and there's 3 developing at the moment, very exciting! The newest plantings of dwarf snow peas are taking a lot longer than the first two, but they are getting there.

The two veggie beds with clever clover have started sprouting. They will eventually be dug throw to add nutrients to the soil.

The lettuce in the tub is coming along nicely. As you can see Mum helped me plant the rosemary and thyme along the side ally way.

Garden Face Lift

When Dan and I first moved into this house 9 months ago the majority of the garden was taken over by 8 big coastal rosemary shrubs. They were taken out when we had to replace the back fence and because I didn't do anything with the vacant land straight away the weeds took over. We've been blessed with the very annoying Sour Sob which is very hard to get rid of and continues to re-appear. Over the last week when the weather has been surprisingly good Dan and I dug out every sour sob by hand and then placed wet newspaper down and 10cm of mulch on top of that. Hopefully this will smother the weeds and we won't see them again, fingers crossed.

 To divide the space up we've put 3 square meter veggie patches in. As its half way through winter and there isn't much we can plant in them that will be ready to harvest in time to plant the summer veggie crops. To make sure the weeds don't take over in the empty beds I've sewn some clever clover seeds that will be dug through just before we plant the spring crops. Clever clover acts as a green manure adding nitrogen to the soil. The middle patch has 10 golden shallots and 10 red shallots in it which will be ready around December.

Down the side of the fence in between the garage is a bit of a dead spot at the moment, there were agapanthus there but they didn't make it through the fence replacement. I've just mulched it for the mean time until mum comes down to help me choose shade loving plants to go there as it doesn't get any sun.