February was an intense month weather wise. Tropical Cyclone Marcia paid a visit to the Queensland coast. This brought heavy rain and flooding our way. Flooding seems to happen here at least once a year.

 

 

The veggie plants in my patch haven’t been happy. What I have realised is the soil in my veggie garden needs to be nourished. I have been doing a bit of reading on improving soil. As a relative newcomer to growing veggies (3 years) I am now observing the effects of not providing nourishment to the soil and only focusing on nourishing the plants. It is a part of the gardening learning curve!

Also, my current veggie patch has a huge tree next to it. (This is on the other side of the fence). The ground is full of tree roots. However, the space were we have always grown veggies is in a handy location—right next to our back door. You can see it from our kitchen window. This provides a nice view while I’m washing the dishes. I love daydreaming about the garden while I’m doing the dishes!  Rather than move my veggie patch, I’m planning to create a no dig spiral garden on top of this space.

While I gather the materials for the no dig garden, I’m planting any new additions to my veggie patch in pots. In February, all of these additions have been herbs.

Mint – one of those herbs that can get out of control. It’s probably a good thing I’m growing this favourite herb of mine in a pot. Mint doesn’t mind shade either. I have heard that full sun can make the leaves taste bitter.

Sage and Parsley– With all the rain we had in February, I’m glad the sage and parsley were in pots. Once I had sage and parsley growing on the ground, really healthy looking plants as well. It only took a few days of heavy rain for it to die off.

Mushroom Plant – We had this interesting herb years ago when we were living in Coolum. While I was researching useful hardy plants to have in my garden, I had a lightbulb moment and remembered the mushroom plant we had in Coolum.

I wanted to have this plant. I had looked around for it at the local market. I jumped on the Green Harvest website to see if they had it for sale. They didn’t. Then one of those serendipitous moments happened. I had to pop into Big W. I normally have a quick squizz at their garden section. Guess what was there? Two mushrooms plants! I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in Big W before.

I munched on a leaf when I got home and yes, the leaves really do taste like mushrooms. These plants also dislike water logging so being in a pot during heavy rain was great.

Appearances can be deceptive. Lesson in this when I needed to prune some root stock growth on my lemonade tree. There were a number of caterpillars on the leaves. These caterpillars looked vicious. They had horns and were brightly coloured. I think I’m prejudiced against caterpillars because I still have primary school memories of my friends getting ‘stung’ by hairy caterpillars. And my little one gets the ‘ouchies’ as she calls them from the hairy caterpillars that are in the park.

However, I didn’t want to squish these caterpillars without finding out if they were the good guys. And they were – what I thought was going to grow into a citrus pest actually was going to grow into a Dainty Swallowtail butterfly!

What else happened in February? My sorrel died off due to water logging but I had some random lettuces pop up. Love letting some lettuce go to seed in my garden – you never know where they will pop up next!

There is a quick rundown of what has been happening in my veggie patch this past month. For more regular updates, don’t forget to Like our Facebook  page.

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR FEBRUARY HAPPENINGS IN YOUR VEGGIE PATCH? WE WOULD LOVE TO KNOW! PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.

Like to know more about Mushroom Plants? Check out Green Harvest for more information.