We are still awash with Courgette/Zucchinis - does anyone have any good recipes or know any good webistes which might be able to help me out? Thanks!

This has been an odd summer in Canada.  Here it is almost September and our cucumbers and tomatoes are just coming.  We have fruit but far from ripe.  The set backs have been far too much rain until two weeks ago and cold spells. The clean up for fall is going to be hard as I feel summer wasn't long enough!  Everyone in Oz will be starting their planning!!!  Happy planting!

Here are some pictures from my garden, so you can see how well it's growing this year in all this rain! At least I only have to water the hanging baskets and inside the greenhouse in this rain!

Here is a view across my garden yesterday. Fortunately you cant see all the weeds hiding amongst the veg!

Here's the greenhouse. A few of the tomatoes have ripened but all the capsicums/peppers are still green. Think they all need more sun - so do I!

And here is Emma eating a raw runner bean. I didnt realise how delicious they were raw til last year! Those are my enormous compost bins behind her BTW.

Here is the link for the school garden we've been working on, if you are interested...

So most of the fellow gardeners here are just getting into spring thoughts!  What are you planning?  Do you guys get the "Dream Over Me" seed books? Do you do straight flowers or a bit of vegetables?  What is the Oz soil type? I understand water is a problem. We basically have loom soil but new subdivisions have only clay as they strip the top soil.  Quite the busniness strip off everything sell the houses then the soil and even rocks back to you!

I lovingly bought my Hubby this trumpet vine about 5 years ago.  We waited for it to grow and bloom...well it did both. Crazy Lady (me) with pool pole batting the blessed thing off the eaves and hopefully I can get it under control this fall.  Son comes home and offers...yup that's really a weed!  Geeesss that was helpful!  Who knew the thing would become a monster?   It has gotten under the eave and is growing up across the roof.  Is there any way to keep it off of the soffit? It has send tenticles everywhere and is pulling the soffits off.  Monster plant ....be very careful where and what you plant....and wishing for growth is sometimes wrong.  However it has beautiful blooms.

One of our local schools is struggling for numbers this year, so in an effort to revamp their image they are adding a permaculture garden and sustainability emphasis to their curriculum.  I went to a talk on permaculture there a few weeks ago and last weekend we had a workshop where we did a compost heap, some seed planting, planning a garden and grafting fruit branches onto root stock.  There are three more workshops followed by a sustainability fair where the garden will be displayed. 

Anyway, in looking up info for this I came across these sites which are fascinating, so if you are interested perhaps you could suggest them to your children's school:

one from the UK: http://www.edibleplaygrounds.co.uk/

one from Aus: http://www.ngia.com.au/helping_your_business/kidsgrow_schools.asp

This is a great way to get kids interested in the world around them, in nature, in food and in understanding our environment.  Plus it encourages good health - good food, fresh air and exercise.  What more could you want?

This is just a quick recommendation for a kids book about gardening. DH has been away this week and so unusually I got to do the bedtime story with Emma (while Sophie dismantled Emma's train track, much to the formers joy & the latters ire!). Last night we read "Eddie's Garden, and how to make things grow" by Sarah Garland. It's an absolutely WONDERFUL book for inspiring kids and adults alike into growing your own veg, and it even has an instruction section in the back telling you the basics about how to grow the veg shown in the wonderful illustrations. I found it on Amazon, and here is a link to the sample bit, so you can get an idea what it's like. I particularly like Eddie's little sister Lily, who always pipes up with "me too" or "worms for me" and other toddler phrases.

This is turning out to be one cool wet summer so far, so the crops arent growing much. However, I ate my first courgette last night (zucchini), and tonight I munched my way through my first "autumn" raspberries - yummy! Squirrels (bain of my life) dont seem to realise that raspberries are edible - yet! They have been running off with strawberries and have nibbled the unripe corn and apples. I have netted the pear tree to try & stop them running off with all the unripe pears as at this time last year.

Emma and Sophie have been enjoying the large strawberries, and I have also been filling Sophie up with "fairy strawberries" - Emma isnt so impressed, even with my marketting of them, but Sophie loves them. They're really called Alpine Straberries, and are the size of peas, very sweet and take absolutely no care at all - practically a weed in my garden. Anyway, Sophie recommends them!

The first of my much-neglected tomatoes are ripening in the hanging baskets by the front door now, so we should be eating them on the way to school about the time Emma breaks up next week. The pepper (capsicum) plants in the greenhouse are sulking away under attack from greenfly but are starting to flower, so we may get something there by the autumn!

The cucumber plants, well... some of them curled up and died but others are starting to flower, so maybe I'll get a couple of outdoor cucumbers after all. Up until last year I had no problem growing them, but now they hate me!

And the lettuce - we are in danger of looking like them. I tried really hard not to sow too many this year, but they just sat there and sulked and then they all ended up the same size so now they're all ready to eat at once!

So, what are you eating out of your garden right now?

Roses are starting to bloom! Yah! Poppy's are already out and the iris are past as are the lilacs!  The trees are out now even the locus so we are finally looking like late spring,very late season this year.  The farmers fields are up to several inches so the chill is out of the soil. Hummm...reporting from Canada! LOL!!!

I'm always straining at the leash by the end of May as I have a full greenhouse and want to plant out my tender stuff but know in this part of England I must wait for June. Last year it seemed so warm with a week to go that I planted out my courgettes and cucumbers, and then a late frost came on almost this day last year - the courgettes somehow recovered fromthe damage, but I lost every cucumber! Well, Em & I planted out 2 courgettes, 1 cue and one pumpkin today. Hows that for brave? Well, I still have about 8 courgettes in the greenhouse and 6 cucumbers and one pumpkin, so I'm only taking a tiny risk. I wanted to plant out on Bank Holiday Monday but although it was mild it was so windy they'd have been damaged by that rather than the frost! Now it's just a question of whether they'll get washed away in all this rain - it's been a soggy week! I shall try to plant out the rest, plus the corn and sunflowers next week, unless the forecast is bad. Should be safe by then!

This year I have started a wormery for the first time. It seems to be going well. Emma is excited as the level of "liquid feed" in the base is almost up to the tap. I shall have to make sure she dilutes it well before giving it to my plants! Here is a pic from the start and one from this week before I added the last box to the stack. By the time it is full I should have a box of nice fine stuff in the bottom to use on my garden! Or I shall conclude that I needed to buy a bigger one!

The second photo was before I stacked them back together, in case you wondered! As you see, we are eating lots of bananas at the moment - these are well fed worms! And the wormery is great for adding shredded private documents. Even CSI would struggle to piece my identity back together after the worms have eaten the documents LOL!

i have grown beans and strawberrys in there and this just shot up i had three of them this is the biggest one

Well, a month on from my pics below and I thought I'd just show you two pics from today:

Sophie decided to summon me upstairs before I could write any explanation last night. Above is mostly lettuce, which the slugs always decimate if I direct-sow, so we'll see how the gutter sowing experiment works, now the rains have come and the slimy things can venture out again. In this part of England we can get frosts right up to the end of May, so it's not safe to plant tender stuff out (like sweetcorn, tomatoes, courgettes) until the start of June. I got caught last year, planting out a week early, and the courgettes were damaged but recovered, but the cucumbers just shrivelled up. What is it with cues - they look so sad this year?!

Below is my neglected veggie patch. I did 4 hours clearing yesterday - feeling tired out but not too achey today  so I will be able to put the new plants in next bank holiday, if the weather is ok (and if we dont go visiting family). Thanks Matthew for saying it looks great, but really I have soooo much to do in 2 weeks, so all I see are weeds!

Well...love gardening..started as a kid when I dug my own garden and started potatoes,beans,carrots and peas. Largest garden,about 2 acres. Now scaled way back. We have lots of roses,a challenge with these hungry bunnies and grow container crops. Hubby has worked with renouned gardeners and has tons of knowledge so that is handy!  This is a  neat group Kseers!

I have just planted some spinach and beetroot seeds for winter.  What are some other good things to be planting at this time of year?

Hi,

We have a small garden out the back that dosen't get much sun and we have an even smaller one out the front that gets loads of sun.

I would like to plant some potatos, how far deep to they have to be?  do they need a lot of room and lots of sun?

Thanks

Wow, I didnt realise I'd inspire a group!

Well, to introduce myself a bit, gardening has always been my hobby even as a kid. Im lucky in having a dad who's a professional gardener, and I followed him into horticulture, but the "ornamental" side (flowers & stuff). So I didnt really get into veg til I got my own unrented garden ten years ago. Then I was constrained by space & time, until I purchased a bit extra 3 years ago. As a child I grew tomatoes and cucumbers on my bedroom windowsill (who needs curtains anyway) but with everything else Im on a steep learning curve!

I grow my veggies on the new bit of garden, mostly because it was previously a railway allotment and so is quite nice soil (the rest of my garden is full of sand & stones - concrete anyone?). Im mostly costrained by a severe lack of time as I can only garden when Soph is asleep, and she's not very reliable at that! If Im out there with her, she's at the "cant take my eyes off you" stage - she will either fall over or end up plastered in mud!

Below are a few pictures of my garden, including my main pest - squirrels - nick all sorts of produce!

Well, I'm a keen gardener, but not so brilliant.  I love gardening and I'm learning lots as I go, but not everything I do is successful, so I wouldn't say I've got a green thumb!  We are moving slowly on our garden.  We've been here six months and only done a few things, but I work as I have the time (and the money) so nothing earth shattering has happened.

I am learning about organic gardening and permaculture and would love to have a full earth friendly garden with chooks and everything.  So far we have a compost heap,  a vege patch in progress and some herbs and insect friendly plants growing.  We have grown tomatoes, potatoes and have a pumpkin proliferating all over our lawn (but whether we get any pumpkins is a different story).  I would love to do more but am always constrained by time, water (we are on rainwater) and money (and little people).

Here is a picture of our garden from my computer.  I have a lawn close to the house - which is always covered in toys (I love the kids being outside).  The roses, lavender and herbs are near the verandah, the veges round the side (where my clothes line is) and we have half a yard as yet untouched (aside from fruit trees and native trees).

So, I know there are some prolific green thumbs out there, maybe you could come and give me some tips!