Trying to be an eco-mum on a budget

This was not supposed to turn into a gardening blog, but at the moment it is one of the main things I am doing actively on the sustainability front – apart from work of course! It is also one of the most satisfying as day after day I go and manage to harvest some goodies. As my last post showed, my zucchinis are growing wild. I cannot keep up with Zucchini recipes. I have been making stuffed zucchinis and zucchini flowers, and putting zucchinis in almost every dish I make! And as I have read and observed, you have to watch carefully and harvest regularly before they become mega zucchinis or cucumbers – like these two zucchinis.

They then turned into this! They were not the most tasty stuffed zucchini. The flesh was a little mushy, but they were nice and at least I used them up.

Of course part of the joy of having this garden and investing all this time into is, is to share it with my kids. To get them involved. While my son is kind of interested, my daughter is definitely a bit of a dirt girl and loves joining me in the garden. I even bought her her own gardening kit for Christmas.

While I have had some bugs get into my garden, I have managed to still harvest lots of goodness, though I now check my rocket (that is a favourite) regularly to make sure I get in before the caterpillars, and I bring in my basil from outside every night to keep them away from the possums that are brazen and lurk all over my garden at night. I am also managing to get my tomatoes as they go red, but just before an attack from something. Now I have to say and I dont know if it is totally becuase of the marigolds and nasturtium, and my attempts at companion planting, but my organic garden is going well (knock on wood!). I thought I would not be able to get any tomatoes as previous attempts were failures with most tomatoes damaged by caterpillars. In this instance, some are damaged, but not many.

I do admit to one failure and any advice is appreciated – my corn are really quite pathetic. They have about 20 kernels on them and then only on one side….don’t know when went wrong there, but they are not looking particularly happy right now and the yield is low.

Apart from that though things are going well. I’m looking forward to my winter crops now!

Happpy gardening.