• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Country Life Experiment

Simple Country Living

  • Home
  • About
    • Start Here
    • FAQs
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • Food
    • Mains
    • Desserts
    • Cakes & Biscuits
    • Jams & Preserves
    • Snacks & Treats
    • Drinks
    • Food Hacks
    • Recipe List
  • Simple Living
    • Organisation
  • Garden
  • Country Life
  • Family Time
    • Kid Wrangling
  • DIY
    • Farm House
    • Crochet
    • Christmas

{Questions Answered} All About The Garden

I’ve had several questions about how we keep track of the garden and plan for it. Let me be clear, Country Boy does all the garden stuff. He has a degree in Horticulture, and many years of experience growing plants commercially, so he knows what he is doing. He has always been into gardening. I’m really good at nodding my head and making encouraging noises.

Country Boy has a diagram of our gardens which he uses to note what is in each row. He uses a new one every six months (Summer and Winter), and keeps the old ones so that he can remember what was grown in which place in the previous year. That way he can rotate the crops around.

One of the advantages of living on the farm is that there is plenty of space for a large garden, which Country Boy has taken full advantage of. There are about 80 rows available in the garden. Each row is about four meters long, and all of them have drip irrigation.

He also keeps a diary where he notes when he planted different crop, what he has picked, and when he pulled out various plants. He also notes down anything else he did in the garden. Again, it helps in the following year to know what worked and what didn’t.

Generally we like to grow heirloom vegetables, that is varieties of vegetables that have been handed down for many generations. The seeds can be saved and grown again (unlike hybrid varieties which are found in most nurseries). We like the ethics associated these types of plants, and that you can get heaps of different colours, tastes, and shapes of each vegetable which you will never find in a supermarket because they don’t fit their narrow ideas of what a vegetable should be.

Each year we like to grow a few new types of vegetables just to see what they are like. Country Boy has planted 11 different types of tomatoes this year.

We also consider how much we grew last year and whether it was enough. For example, we had way too many cucumbers last year (over 2000!) so this year we have cut back a little. Also we didn’t have enough broad beans so this year we have planted more

I hope that this answers your questions. Got any other questions about our garden (or anything else)? Ask away!

Let everyone know:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit

You should also check out...

Previous Post: « An Easy Christmas Wreath And I Extol My Love Of Aldi
Next Post: Random Photo Thursday »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jodie says

    November 15, 2013 at 8:45 pm

    Wow – what an amazing garden with such a well thought out plan to go with it. How wonderful that your husband has the time to run the garden for you and your family, that is such a great help for you I bet!

    My girls and I work our vegetable plot as my husband is pretty flat strap with numerous farm jobs. Our farm is fairly large and during the Summer months it takes almost a week to do a proper water run – not to mention that we are also pushing scrub, daily, due to the drought. The joys of living and working the land I guess…

    Thanks for sharing your garden with me this morning… xx

    Reply
  2. Elisha Ross says

    November 13, 2013 at 9:12 am

    Wow thats impressive. Should get myself a gardening diary too and start recording stuff. What do you do with 2000 cucumbers?
    Im only a tiny gardener compared to your 80 rows but I love it and will continue to grow more as I get better at it. You are lucky you have a qualified man at hand for sure.
    Love your blog. Just stumbled by very recently and keep checking in.
    Cheers

    Reply
    • Jo says

      November 13, 2013 at 12:32 pm

      Thanks for following along Elisha. CB is a keeper.

      Reply
  3. My Yellow Heart says

    November 12, 2013 at 1:48 pm

    Your vegetable garden is amazing. Even for my own garden, which is very small compared to yours, I think I might also benefit from keeping a diagram plan of our Winter and Summer garden. 2000 cucumbers…..what did you do with them all?!

    Reply
    • Jo says

      November 13, 2013 at 12:31 pm

      The pigs were well fed.

      Reply

Have your say... Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I’m Jo

I'm a city girl turned farmer's wife, school teacher, ideas woman, and mum to three country kids. Country Life Experiment is all about simple country living, growing and making our own food, and life on our family farm in rural Australia. Join me as I give country living a try. Read more...
  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Search

Browse by month

INSTAGRAM

A lovely, easy Christmas with family, good food, a A lovely, easy Christmas with family, good food, a few presents, an afternoon swim and dinner on the veranda as the sun set. Time to stop and be thankful for the many blessings of the year. I hope you had a lovely Christmas too!
We have been mulling over how to fix up the drivew We have been mulling over how to fix up the driveway and lead up to our house for a while. Currently it’s just a dumping ground for old bits of metal and a big pile of mulch, but C would like to create a turning area and put in a garden. First up though, there’s a huge old stump that needs to go. What better excuse is there to have a fire on Sunday afternoon? C and the kids jumped on the quad bike and trailer, and hauled back a big pile of sticks and logs to help the stump burn. Once the fire was going, marshmallows were found and roasted. No better way to spend time together.
Team work makes the dream work. We were asked rec Team work makes the dream work. 
We were asked recently whether we “make” our kids work on the farm. The answer is of course not. Having said that, all three love to help out whenever they can. They all work hard because they want to; because they take pride in working hard and contributing in a meaningful way to our family life; because they love living on our farm and don’t remember life before we moved here. Whether it be planting trees or doing sheep work or feeding animals, they all want to be involved. As a parent, nothing is better than watching them grow in skill and confidence as they work along side you. We’re so glad that we get to spend time with our three, working together.
We’ve had an unexpected addition to the family ☘️🐑. She is a lot easier to look after than the other family members but she does try to escape her yard and head butt people. Poddy lambs are super cute but they tend to think they are a human. Clover the lamb is sure that Meg is her mum. Can’t think why… 🤔🤣
The perfect way to end a long winter weekend: toge The perfect way to end a long winter weekend: together, cooking damper around the remains of the bonfire.
It’s been a tough few weeks on the farm. We got It’s been a tough few weeks on the farm. We got through shearing without a hitch (thankfully 🙏) but we’ve had a run of the flu followed by Covid run through the family since then. The kids and I have tested positive (this is my second time getting it 🦠) though so far C has managed to avoid it. There has been a lot of lying on the couch feeling pretty ordinary. Han had to reschedule her driving test for a 4th time due to Covid, which is disappointing for her because she wants her freedom and for us because it would be so much more convenient if she could drive herself places. Just to add in to the mix, our hot water system has chosen now as a good time to die so we’re on cold showers until we’re all out of iso. This is not meant to be a whinging post but sometimes life just sucks a bit and it’s good to be real. Fortunately, the sight of the fire going with a stack of wood next to it cheers us up. Things will improve soon. Onwards we go…

Newsletter

Popular Posts

{Recipe} Spiced Plum Paste
Pickled Cucumbers
Pumpkin Fruit Cake
Home Made Ginger Beer
Honey Spice Biscuits
Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Salad

Categories

Footer

Hi, I’m Jo

City girl turned farmer's wife, school teacher, ideas woman, and mum to three country kids. Country Life Experiment is all about simple country living, growing and making our own food, and life on our family farm in rural Australia. Join me as I give country living a try. Read more...
  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

Copyright © 2023 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress