Birds, Bees, Butterflies, Blooms and Buds

It is now Spring here in Perth and our garden is full of birds, bees, butterflies, blooms, buds and food. All four grape vines are covered in small bunches of grapes and the apple and pear trees are covered in blossoms.

 The lavender and nasturtiums are clustered below some dwarf pear trees that are espaliered against an old fence and buzzing with bees which will increase our pollination rates and is lovely to see.

The vines that we use to shade the house are also filling out now and it will soon be time to put the shade sail up over these raised beds. Meanwhile we are still using water from the rainwater tanks at the moment and these veggie/herbs beds are flourishing. As we use Permaculture techniques it is now a lot less work than traditional gardens which is lucky as we also have work, family and voluntary commitments to fulfill. For more information on Permaculture click on this link.

Lemongrass on the Verge

We have learnt that Lemongrass is a great barrier plant to stop other grasses invading gardens so split up and trimmed one of our large clumps. We ended up with nearly fifty stems which is great!  There is a great article here on how to propagate and other uses for Lemongrass. So I have planted it along the edge of our verge, leaving room for the postie and for pedestrians at the edge. I have also transplanted a small Lavender and Perennial Basil that I had recently planted in the back garden. Hopefully they will assist the bees and give some colour to this area as well. Meanwhile the Pomegranate and Sweet Potato vine that I was given have established themselves now.

Our Herb Spiral

Here is the finished herb spiral. I have placed a lavender on the top to attract bees and the spiral is planted with strawberries, parsley, coriander and sage. I am now planning on planting some thyme in the gaps of the actual wall as I have realised that would probably work and would expand the production space and provide more nectar for bees etc. I have spent about 14 hours making this at a total cost of $75 for the plants, compost and straw. I am really pleased with it and now just hope that it works! If you start from the bottom of the post you can see the steps that I took to end up here.

Then I added the straw and watered that in and then made pockets of compost and added the plants, watering it all in at the end. There were two lizards living in these pavers when they were a stack beside the fence so I am hoping that they will find their way to this, as well as other lizards.

 Then I added a layer of nasturtiums and comfrey leaves and under that is a layer of worm castings as I cleaned out the worm farm to use that too. Once again I watered the layer in the same way that each layer is watered in a no- dig garden.

 Some of the herb spiral demos I have watched on You Tube use all soil, and some use all straw, whilst others use a combination and layers. So I decided to add sand  first, then some wood, then cardboard and newspaper, watering between each layer.

 Because it is built on concrete I decided that I should have a layer of rubble in the bottom to assist drainage. I spent three hours smashing up broken pavers with a hammer to get a layer that I was happy with.

 Once I was getting down to the last few pavers I needed to make sure that there were going to be enough to make the centre higher and taper it down. It took a few readjustments but is almost finished here.

Once I had worked out my spiral, based on the size of the pavers and the shape that it needed to fit into, I started building it layer by layer. We have had a pile of pavers for a long time and as we do not want to put more pavers down this seemed like a good use of them. The concrete underneath is old and ugly so it will have to look better than that.

Lavender and Honey Cake

I was lucky enough to have this made for my birthday recently, using ingredients from the garden, our daughter baked a Lavender and Honey Cake, with a Lemongrass infused cream and Basil flowers sprinkled across the top- beautiful.