herb box

How do you like my herb patch?

Our neighbours were discarding their corrugated iron raised garden bed so I asked if I could adopt it as my own.

I bought the most basic dirt soil from the nursery and filled it with freshly laid chook manure, worm wee, a worm farm layer from our Can O' Worms and the stinking contents of our Bokashi. I let it rest for a couple of weeks and turned it occasionally. J bought a couple of bendy (the official name for them) lengths of irrigation pipe and secured them in the corners. Possums and rodents (if you don't think they live in Sydney then you have your head in the clouds) love a good herb patch so we covered the pipe in bird netting and secured and weighted down around the edges with (portable) rocks so we can still access the garden.

And in my garden went the seedlings ... mint, Vietnamese mint, parsley and some basil (that I transplanted from another part of our garden) and an avocado from our worm farm. There's a fruiting avocado growing a couple of streets away so I'm hopeful (but doubtful) it will thrive. In went the seeds - snowpeas and coriander.

The Vietnamese mint is so different to any other mint I've tasted. It's pungent and rich in flavour and take me back to eating phở at Phở Hòa Pasteur in Saigon city!

We have half a dozen tomato plants coming up from the Bokashi and worm farm contents too.

Already I've harvested plenty of the herbs and I'm louring the snowpeas to grow against a trellis. Watch this space.