The Birthday Herb and Veggie Patch

My lovely little daughter and I made my darling wife a veggie/herb patch for her birthday. We had a patch of weeds where there was an old and quite unattractive plant struggling in an ancient raised bed. So with a little elbow grease and a small measure of spadework, we made a nice little bed, about 1.25m by 2m.

We turned the soil, removed the weeds and left it fallow for a couple of weeks.

This weekend, we went and bought some plants to go into the bed. My lovely wife was the chief selector for the plants to go in, along with some oohing and aahing from small daughter and myself, we ended up with:

• Lemon verbena;
• Leeks;
• Mint;
• Fennel;
• Coriander;
• Rosemary; and
• Lavender.

Plus there is still a bit of space for more stuff to go (although not much). At this time of year, seedlings are much better than seeds otherwise they won’t get out of the ground for the Tasmanian frosts. This garden bed is fairly close to the house so it doesn’t suffer much from frost.

The leeks were planted in three and a bit rows. This is one of the things that I really like about vegetable gardens. A leek in the shops costs you about $3.00 whereas a punnet containing about 40 leeks costs you $4.00. Go the economics of that!

They don’t look like much yet, but in a couple of weeks they should be getting to a decent size. Yum leek soup, bacon and leek, leek fried in butter with garlic and rosemary … oh so many nice warm things to eat.

Coriander has become more and more difficult to get. The punnet of coriander will make us lots of coriander for putting in jars and fresh coriander for yummy Asian soups.

The mint has a habit of escaping and taking over the garden, I’ve planted the mint in a pot with about an inch of the pot proud of the ground to make it harder for the mint to make it’s bid for freedom.

The fennel bulbs will just carry on nicely growing fat and waiting to be pulled up and cooked. At the back of the bed is the lemon verbena on the left and the rosemary on the right. You can see the lavender hiding at the back behind the garden.

All nice things to eat and cook with (with the exception of the lavender). Here’s hoping that the dogs don’t sleep on this garden bed … we may have to put a small fence around it.