Hooray! I manged to get a little bit of gardening stuff done last week. Just in time too, because guess what? It's raining again!

We had some really nice (I could almost say warm) days early last week, so I chucked the baby up on my back, tied him on with a piece of sari fabric and headed out to enjoy it. Honestly, I looked like one of those ladies in India who pick the tea leaves! I wonder what the neighbours think when they peek over the fence ... ?!

I weeded the little vege patch. The layers are breaking down down nicely, and the soil is starting to become more friable and black, instead of the clay that I started with. I left the tomato plant in there, sprawling all over the place ... who knows, we might get a little bit of fruit off it. It's the warmest spot in the yard and a couple of homegrown tomatoes are better than nothing at all.



I also managed to turn the compost heap by myself, which is hard work believe me. Not the actual turning, but emptying it all out of the bin. It is very heavy! I made the compost bin from our council green bin ... not sure that the council would be really impressed with the bin-defacement, but i'll be buggered if I'm sending all my garden waste to their depot to sit and turn into beautiful rich compost, that they then sell back to me at an inflated price. And my other 'proper' compost bin is still in storage. I'd prefer to just have a pile on the ground in a corner somewhere, but the dogs take a liking to it and it gets spread everywhere.
The bin works pretty well considering it doesn't have a great deal of air flow. I got some awesome compost out of it in the summer, but it's a little slow in the winter which is to be expected I guess. Plus I haven't put any manure in there to keep it warm (besides the guinea pigs bedding, but thats not really enough to heat it up).
The pile on the right is from the bottom of the bin, and the pile on the left is the fresher stuff off the top, so it's not doing a bad job. It smells a bit sour, so I'll have to get some lime this week or maybe some blood and bone to sprinkle in there.

Anyway, it's coming along slowly, which is better than not at all!
Now I need to make a list of what we eat the most of, so I know what to plant first. I need to start buying a punnet of seedlings a week, or a packet of seeds. I've been saving the milk cartons so I can raise some seedlings ready to plant out as soon as it's warm enough.