As we are now in summer, I thought it wise to look at my garden and see what’s worked and what hasn’t. There is always something to learn, even if you have been gardening for years.

What have I been doing in my garden?

I had two main goals in my garden this year. The first was to grow my own veg, the second being to grow some flowers in my garden. All have been from seed, apart from dahlias which have been grown from tubers or I bought the small plants. I have had mixed success so far, but generally more success with my vegetables than flowers.

The failures

I will start with my failures so far so I can get them out of the way and there are several! I do have to say that I am not the most experienced in growing my own vegetables, I’m still learning every day-especially as the little experience I do have is from northern England were the climate is completely different to Sydney.

I have tried growing some cacti and echeverias from seed a couple of times since the end of winter. So far, I have one cactus and no echeverias. I am still hoping that I see something else as the advice given on the seed packets says that even if you don’t see anything after three months, it could be that the seeds are waiting for the right conditions (so leave a while longer). To rectify this, I need to do more reading on the specifics of growing succulents from seed and try again.

I have had an annoying snail problem over the spring this year. They have eaten the vast majority of my brassicas, along with chillies, peppers, one of my dalia plants (aided by Cuddles the cat) and most flower seedlings that I managed to grow. I will have to get better at going out on slug patrol once it gets dark and remove any slugs that I find.

I also tried growing some Australian native plants, including:

• Carpobrotus virescens-pig face
• Passiflora herbertiana-an Australian native edible passionfruit
• Anigozanthos manglesii-a species of kangaroo paw
• Hardenbergia violaceae ‘Purple’-my favourite climber/ground-cover depending on how you want to use it

The reason why I didn’t do well with these is because I thought I could just give it a go without following the instructions. I will have to follow the instructions for these seeds-I purposely didn’t use them all so I could try again. Sometimes it’s worth following those instructions!

I did think that dahlias would be a great thing to grow this year. Of course, this is for the flowers. Originally, I bought three tubers-of these three tubers, only one has grown. This one is growing fabulously well so far-there are no signs of flowers yet though. I then bought two plants. One got mostly eaten by slugs, but had enough energy to re-sprout and grow and is now doing really well. The other was sat on by the cat (who didn’t care as she was warming her belly) and was then eaten by slugs. At least I have two that will give me flowers, I hope!

The successes

Now that the failures have been discussed, I can finally mention the things that I’m having success with.

I’ll start with the tomatoes. Most of my tomatoes now have flowers opening up, with at least two tomato plants having actual tomatoes on. Fabulous.

A lot of the brassicas (sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage) got eaten by snails, I have one that is growing back really well after getting a fair amount of its old growth eaten off by the pesky molluscs! I can’t say that I know what sort of brassica it is that is now growing happily, but I’ll take any that I have growing and enjoy the end result.

 

My sweetcorn is all growing well too. I’m hoping to see more than just leafy growth soon as sweetcorn is another family favourite. You can’t beat fresh, homegrown corn on the cob-it’s one of those foods that reminds me of being at my grandparents farm as a kid in the summer holidays.

I have one borage plant that is growing really well. as this plant is great for bees I’m hoping to encourage them into my garden more. I’ve already seen plenty of butterflies and a couple of ladybirds about, so that is another success. The more critters I have in my garden, the better (except snails).

Onions, one pumpkin and a couple of melon seedlings are growing well, as are my two remaining dahlias. I am hoping it stays that way. My beans even have flower buds on them-I didn’t think I’d get any bean flowers at all at one point!

What have I learnt or will do differently?

Follow the instructions on seed packets for plants that are new. Read a bit more information if needed too. That way, you are more likely to get new plants to germinate than I did with the natives I tried growing.

Next spring, I am going to keep all my seedlings indoors for longer. This will mean ensuring I have plenty of space and organisation to do so, but this should ensure that I have more, and larger, plants that can survive the snail onslaught! I will also do more ‘snail patrols’ in the evenings to remove any of the little blighters to another area completely!

With a lot of my plant, I have got different types of plants growing together in the same pots. I have sweetcorn with beans and, in another pot with borage, tomatoes and beetroot. These plants seem to be the healthiest and happiest of everything that I’m growing. I will continue to do this growing forward too.

Final thoughts

While I have had a lot of failures over the last few months, I am happy with what is growing. This year is a lot better than lasts years efforts for all sorts of reasons, so I cannot complain. I have some food and flowers growing and that makes me smile now, and I’ll enjoy the final results a lot too.

Tomorrow, I will write about what my plans for the summer in my garden are, along with a few other of my garden related plans over the same few months.