I’ve had these photos sitting on my camera since I took them in September. The section of the garden near the water feature has really bushed up, filling in a lot of the gaps, although there are some spaces where Riley dug some big holes that we might need to look at.

I planted several native orchids in this section and at least one has survived and flowered this year. The flowers only last a short time but it made me happy seeing them there.

The section of the garden above still has a bit of growing to do to fill in the gaps but it’s getting there. I’ve cleaned out most of the winter veggies, ready to plant the summer veggie garden. As I did, I noted the things that worked and things that didn’t.

Some important lessons learned from this winter’s veggie garden:

• The flowers on the new variety of broad bean I grew this year were stunning but I’ve still had no broad beans and pretty soon I’ll need to pull the plants out to make way for the cornichons I want to grow over the summer. Next year I’ll go back to the trusty Broad Bean ‘Aquadulce’.
• I need more robust support for peas than the tomato cages. They became very top-heavy and then kept blowing over. I also need to address the powdery mildew early in the season so that it doesn’t get out of hand.
• I’ve always had trouble getting a good harvest from broccoli, so this year I went for various types of sprouting broccoli. Unfortunately one was already flowering when we got home from Queensland. We got a bit of produce but not enough to justify taking up space in my small garden beds.
• Kale grows very slowly. I probably needed a few more plants to keep us in a steady stream of kale over winter.
• I grew Lettuce ‘Tango’ over winter and it was a winner. I have one still in the ground growing strongly and some seedlings that will be ready to plant in the summer garden.

How about you? Do you try to grow some food? What worked or didn’t over your summer/winter?