Photographs of the Garden.... June to October 2013

Heirloom seedlings I started in April in the top flat

We had to remove weeds and weeds and literally metres of roots from the staghorn sumac from the soil before we started any kind of planting

Bamboo cane supports for peas

Small area I marked out for onions and carrots - this ended up being smothered by the tomatoes, galeuse d'eysines pumpkin and butternut squash

Staghorn suckers - these sprouted along every single root in the garden, the trees had been cut just before we moved in, and as it turns out, the trees respond to a "trauma" by sprouting vigorously along all root lines.... 

Minnesota Midget - this had really small yellow flowers, but didn't get nearly enough sun as they ended up hidden behind the tomatoes and courgette, so unfortunately, we didn't get any melons

The tomatoes take off

Crookneck Summer Squash

Courgette - we got about three nice sized courgettes from this plant, which was perfect, we had so many summer squash to use up!

Cheyenne bush pumpkin

Cleo investigates, while I try to measure the growth of the galeuse d'esyines pumpkin

Hidden under the wide leaves - growing crookneck summer squash. I'd no idea these would do so well and ended up giving a lot of them away to friends and work colleagues, and still had plenty left over for ourselves...

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Pumpkin and squash patch - the galeuse d'eysines is taking over the patio in the back left of the photo

More Crookneck Summer squash

The bright yellow flowers on the squash and pumpkins attracted lots of bees, it was lovely to be able to hear the buzzing from the backdoor and we plan on planting a lot more bee friendly plants and flowers in 2014

Some of the harvest, heirloom tomatoes and crookneck summer squash

Galeuse d'eysines - this weighed about 7lb when it was finished growing

Mix of Gardeners Delight - cherry vine tomato, Millefleur - yellow vine tomato and Jen's Tangerine - cherry vine tomato 

Little butternut squash, which I discovered after I pulled the plant from the tangle of tomatoes, strawberries and nasturtiums

Almost ripe - Cheyenne bush pumpkin

Bush pumpkin and galeuse d'eysines curing in the glass house

I got all of my heirloom seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue

Guerrilla Gardening Perth

October/November '11 - March/April '12 - Perth WA

Although we had a very small patio-ed yard behind our little "two up, two down" townhouse in Perth, there wasn't much earth that we could use for planting.

M built some raised beds in patches of the yard where there weren't any bricks - using other bricks that we'd found on walks around the neighbourhood (skip-diving) - and we managed to grow some (tiny) vegetables and a huge watermelon plant...no melons ever appeared through, I think the roots may have been too confined in the small space, the plant really flourished though and it had small yellow flowers for about a month of Summer.

We noticed the area behind the townhouse - just behind our parking bay - seemed to be all scrub and weedy wasteland, it was pretty much out of sight from the path and we were the only people (apart from friends) who came up that way..... and we realised we could reclaim a patch of it and extend our small garden, it was close enough to water and pretty much hidden from view 

Guerrilla Garden - somewhere in Mount Lawley

cherry tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, butternut squash, courgette

We started by clearing the weeds and assessing the soil - mostly sandy - and as the area was in a suntrap with little shade, it got really hot up there, hmmmmm...

We weren't deterred and within a week or two - after weeding and digging some bags of manure compost through the sand - we'd planted some cherry tomatoes, potatoes (from sprouting potatoes we had in the kitchen), beetroot, onions as well as baby sweetcorn, butternut squash and a courgette. This small space was the biggest space I'd ever had for a garden and our local garden centre had a nice selection of seedlings and seeds - carrots and peas we grew from seed and the rest of our experimental seedlings were mostly vegetables that we liked the sound of and really wanted to try

The tomatoes really took off in the Summer sun and in a matter of weeks they were 3ft tall and still growing, the butternut squash spread itself liberally across the small patch we'd cleared and started wandering down the slope towards the car bay. 

                  

After a slow start, our potatoes did well for a few weeks - we had about six plants in total, from a variety of potatoes - but they got ravaged by a infestation of black furry caterpillars that devoured chunks of the plants overnight. I caught and disposed of as many of the caterpillars as I could, but unfortunately a lot of the plants died and after harvesting, we ended up with a small selection of baby potatoes, just enough for a meal for two

Harvest

We ended up with a nice selection of (small) vegetables; beetroot, carrots, lots of cherry tomatoes, potatoes and a few baby sweetcorn. The courgette flowered but didn't produce any fruit and the butternut squash had lots of beautiful yellow flowers, but no fruit either... I think the full sun combined with the poor nutrient sandy soil was just too much for the plants.

Baby carrots and beetroot

Fantastic guerrilla gardening website here