WHAT’S GROWING | What I’m GROWING & SOWING in my SMALL BACKYARD VEGETABLE GARDEN VICTORIA AUSTRALIA

WHAT’S GROWING | What I’m GROWING & SOWING in my SMALL BACKYARD VEGETABLE GARDEN VICTORIA AUSTRALIA

Hi and Welcome to Utility Jane.
My name is Tanya, Thanks for stopping by!

It’s the 18th September let’s see what’s growing in my small backyard vegetable garden here in Central Victoria Australia.
Some of my seeds are germinating, I have them in plastic storage tubs sitting on my gas hot water tank, during warm sunny days I shift them out to sit on the terrace wall and if its warm enough I remove the lids so they get a little breeze. The tubs are working out really well not sure if they would have done this well if they didn’t have the hot water tank but it has meant I could start sowing early. I plant out a few more perennials in the garden and check on the beetroot and kohl rabi I sowed in my last video, I top dress the red cos lettuce as they are starting to germinate. I pick my first handful of asparagus, and I finally get around to repotting the blueberry bush, thankfully the snow peas are really producing and we are picking them everyday.
There has been a lot of growth from the pumpkins, zucchinis, cucumbers and melons, purple beans, tomatoes are ripening and so many capsicums!
Let’s harvest some produce and see how much food can be grown in a small backyard garden.
I am very happy with how the new raised beds are settling into the space, and like all gardeners I keep extending the growing space, well until I get the next 2 beds and glasshouse in place!
At the start of October I invested in 4 large raised steel garden beds for my 55th birthday, to replace an area of lawn that the previous year I had laid cardboard, mulched and started growing in a couple months later, I had mixed feelings about how the extended vegetable garden had gone but thought I would continue with it again this season until I started thinking about raised beds.
There is never a good time to change over to raised beds when they need to go where your cropping winter garden is so I just went for it, ordered my raised beds which were custom made so I had some time to either eat the veg I had been growing or move it.
After a few doubts along the way I am so glad I didn’t wait any longer, the first vegetables I’ve planted in them are thriving, the down side of it was that it has taken a lot of dirt, compost, straw and mushroom compost to fill them, they are just over 3m long and 1.2m wide and .60m high and extremely heavy to move around and position.
But apart from topping up the beds with compost before planting each season until all the organic matter inside them has broken down and compacted I think they will be low maintenance.
In total the 4 beds I purchased will equal the same amount of space I had been planting into and with the addition of a secondhand glasshouse I found on Facebook market place 2 years ago I will be able to extend our growing season for tomatoes, cucumbers and raise lots of seeds.
In addition I have changed what used to be my whole veg garden into a perennial vegetable garden bed that has a new asparagus patch, dwarf apple trees, rhubarb, dwarf lemon tree and an area for herbs.
It isn’t a big area but looking to the future I hope to challenge my growing area and just see ow much food I can grow in the small footprint and hopefully I will grow enough for us and some of our neighbours.

With the cost of living crisis everywhere pairing back pantry items so multiple recipes can be cooked with the same basic items is a necessity, along with growing a garden that is any size, big or just a pot with your favourite herbs or leafy greens, after all they can be the most expensive items in the fruit and veg section at the supermarket and usually the things that never get used up and are thrown out.
Cooking from scratch can feel overwhelming but with a few prepped ingredients from my freezer, a pantry and our fridge stocked with simple staples, scratch made meals flow from our kitchen. 
I cook with gluten free ingredients and a budget friendly mind set always.

I would really love you to join me cooking budget friendly gluten free meals in my tiny kitchen and appreciate you spending your time with me, please consider subscribing so you don’t miss my next upload.
Have a great day and I hope to see you in my next video.
Bye for now…

PS….I post on my community tab in real time, things I am cooking in my kitchen, vegetable garden updates and thrifting finds, often after filming it can take me a couple weeks to edit and voice over my videos so it gives you a sneak peak at what’s coming up.

#vegetablegardening #nodiggardening ##UtilityJane #gardentour #thediggersclub

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hi, my name is Tanya and welcome to my small backyard vegetable garden here in central Victoria. I have been sewing some seeds and using these plastic tubs and placing them on top of my gas hot water to get them to germinate. So far so good. So, I’m pretty happy about that. I will run into trouble when there is no room left and things aren’t going as fast so I can keep sewing, but hopefully the weather will warm up by then. These cos lettuce have just started to germinate. There’s one little one there and a few others that are just poking through the soil like this one. So, I’ve got some mushroom compost here and I’m just going to put a little bit of top dress on because this soil was previously in my dalia pots. I added a bag of cow manure to it and coming back to do a bit of top dress. Now the the seeds are germinating. [Music] And I’m also going to add a little bit of dynamic lifter. water that in and get the wool back on so that when they start growing all of this will be in the soil and hopefully it can boost them along. I’m loving this wool. It’s like playing with fairy floss and wrapping them in a little wool blanket. It is such a novelty. Anyway, I’m going to push on and get this mushroom compost put out around the perennials here. A bit of a top dress. And I’m going to put out some dynamic lifter. I’ve got a few more plants that I’d like to put in here. And then I will mulch it ready for the hot weather. [Music] Now, speaking of more plants, I have been online at Seedscape and ordered some perennial seeds. those peach double holly hawks. They were two for the price of one. Now, I only went on there to get this clatus and the verbina, but you know what it’s like when you get on and be looking at seeds. So, I have some here. Some of these geraniums I absolutely love. So, keen to try and grow them from seed. That will be coming up. I’ll get some of those in and just see how I go. I really want to get some of the clatus in. But for now, I have this sage. It’s a purple sage. And it was a cutting that I just put in an old bucket. And it has grown. It’s got such a good root ball. And I’m going to put it in the garden here with the other three. Just digging a hole into the lemon balm and then it can grow up around it. I do love the lemon balm with the purple sage. And over this other side, I have another pineapple sage that I dug up out of the perennial bed. And I had planned to put it somewhere else, but I think I’m going to squeeze it in behind here so that I have a big sort of fill-in spot of the sage. Now I’m just going to get everything watered in. I don’t think I’ve damaged my lemon balm too much by just cutting a hole in it. It is very well fed there. gets a lot of runoff from my compost bins. Now, I did put out some of the new dynamic lifter, the complete dynamic lifter that I got the other week on here. I just didn’t film it, but that’s why I’m watering things in. I still need to get on and get my walking onions planted. I think that will be the next thing I get on with. But look at this asparagus. I am very happy to see most of the crowns are producing and also new purple crowns that I bought just a month ago or so. The bedding day is there’s one little shoot. Now I need to be careful with snails. So I’ll need to do a bit more top dress and work out some snail protection for them. These are the red pack choy. They’ve sort of put out little shoots. I’m not sure if anything’s going to come of it, but I am enjoying some of the leaves. And this green pack choy is looking so beautiful coming up through all the cane. The yellow flowers are just a beautiful little pop of color. And I’m minimizing the pots along here. All those copper tubs are going to go elsewhere so that they are in a bit more shade for summer and I can have lettuce planted in them. Now, let’s see if there is any beetroot coming up. It’s still a little soon, but this radikio is taking off. And my 50 cent markdown purple sprouting broccololis are producing, which is wonderful. And I’m hoping that these mini cauliflowers take off. Also, just going to check the karabi in the little glass houses. This is the purple Vienna. and nothing as yet. But these are so beautiful to look at. The color is beautiful. The little rainbow chard that I put in so tiny are now starting to take off. The soil is warming up and plus with the jars over them is moving them along. This celery has been beautiful. I just bought a punet from Bunnings Tender Crisp. I just break it off the sides. It’s been very good investment for $4.90. I’ve cut off the Brussels sprouts. I am going to add these to dinner tonight. And I don’t think there was much more use of them being in the garden. They’re starting to go to seed, a few of the top ones. And the rhubarb is shooting. These are the two that I shifted from down the other end. And they are looking beautiful. And then I have the four markdown red dragon crowns that I got. And all of those are shooting as well. And that’s the fourth one. The giant Russian rhubarb has settled in and the red vein sorrel has not had a problem. I think it grows a bit weedy. Anyway, the strawberries are loving it here in this little tank. It gets lots of sun here and they’re growing and there’s a lot of flowers on them. So, we have our fingers crossed for strawberries. Now, because I chopped out the Brussels sprouts, I threw on a bag of cow manure and topped it with some wool. I’m trying to get ready so that these beds, even though they’ve got things in it, there will be parts of it ready to go for tomato season. This purple sprouting broccoli is producing really well. And I got the wool on this bed here that I had fully top dressed and the spinach is absolutely loving it. I moved a few things around here [Music] and the raspberries are really pushing out leaves. It is so beautiful. And I’m very happy to see that the broad beans and the peas are kicking on here. This gets a fair bit more shade than the garden beds. So, this is a good area for snow peas that goes later into the season. I’m trying to make use of this bed because the raspberries are only there for spring summer and to be able to make use of it in winter would be very nice. And I’m hoping to get some more flowers in there as well. Found these salvas at Bunnings. And this is the one that I took the cutings off previously. And I put the last three merry golds in this bucket that had the sage in it. These peas are just so good. They’re now really picking up with a bit of warm weather and some rain. These are the only few kale that haven’t ran to seed. They’re looking pretty and the broad beans here. This purple one has gone to seed, but we’ll see if Hunter wants a snow bee. And I think that was a yes. And I had been wondering why some of the peas had been pulled off the wire. And I think that explains exactly what had happened. He is just as keen for them as me. It’s kind of nice to come out here in the morning or in the afternoon and graze our way through the snow peas or the sugar snap peas. And um this is just a little cheeky. Hey Hop off the gun. Hop up. Hey, now I’m under pressure to find more, but he is not happy with that. He is going to help himself chewing on any pee that he can get to. I mean, it’s hard to be mad with him when he wants to eat his veggies. Because who can blame him for wanting to snack on snow peas, [Music] gentle uh gentle and now this is the sumo strawberry that I got from diggers back at the start of winter. And this is the echgonatia that I had bought last summer, I think it was. And I had a planted in the garden. And before I did all the work, I dug it up and put it in the pot hoping that it would reshoot the Nisa and the culinary sage. and all the selfsewn sweet peas. I had worried that because I didn’t sew any that I might not have enough, but I think I am going to have plenty. And I will need to make some sort of trellis. I think this geranium is very pretty. Now, I’m going to get this blueberry potted up. that’s been sitting here waiting to get done. And I want to make sure I get onto it. I got the pot all ready. I don’t know if it’ll stay here, but it will stay here for now. [Music] I made a guard up for the potatoes because they are shooting up through the soil. I’ve topped it right up to the top. I want to extend it, put some hessen around it and extend it up. So, I’m working on that. But I have some wins and some losses in the capsicans, but I think probably half made it through. The eggplant I’m thinking hasn’t. That is one of the Anaheim chilies. And that is the bell pepper. I’ve lost one of those. These royal blue potatoes haven’t come up through the soil yet, but they are a couple of weeks behind the imperial blue down the other end. So, I think I can go through and pull out a few capsicans and the eggplant. And then I will have a couple of big pots along there that are free. But for now, I’m going to get some of these put in this garden bed along here. I am probably putting too many of these perennial plants in here, but it’s hard to judge before the leaves are out as to how much you’re going to see of them. So, I mean, everything can be shifted. So, I’m just putting things in there that I would like. When things grow, if they’re too close or overshadowed by the apple trees for a while, then I can always shift them. That is the joy of perennials and just moving them wherever you want to go. Dividing and spreading them around. So I think this purple salvia will look very pretty with the light pink fine pens and the rhubarb behind it. [Music] And I’ve got one left. So I’m going to put that in a pot. And I’m going to pick the asparagus. I’m going to add to the Brussels sprouts and they can be for dinner tonight. I am looking forward to asparagus season. They are one of my favorite snacks out in the garden. And I’m very happy to have even been able to pick any Brussels sprouts. And to be able to clean these off the stems and enjoy them tonight for dinner is very much a treat that I’m looking forward to. I will be planning my Brussels sprout planting come January. And I think if I’m going to grow my own seeds, I need to be thinking about it before then.