The house my husband and I rent has a gorgeous little courtyard at the back, and in one corner is a raised bedded area which I've been trying to convert into a kitchen garden. So far it's been quite a lot of hardwork with no reward. Strawberries were uprooted by two excited puppies and carrots were eaten by woodlice as soon as they peeked through the soil. My tomatoes had too few nutrients, my capsicum too many. In all, it's taken a long time for anything vaguely resembling success to appear in my garden. However, the past few months have been a little more kind to me, and some veggies are getting themselves established in pots and planters across this small patch of land.
As a result of my gardening endeavours, I've been keeping a close watch for inspirational veggie patches - well, any garden which is actually yielding really. So when we visited Samudra on a recent trip to Dunsborough, I stopped to take a few snaps of the kitchen garden, the fruit of which they harvest and serve up in the cafe. I highly recommend the cafe - they do fantastic vegetarian meals, tasty coffee and the seating spills out next to the garden, making it a beautiful location to grab some breakfast.
Most of the plants were kept shaded from the harsh Western Australian sun, apart from some tomatoes towards the back. Then in various planters were bushes of basil, courgette, heads of lettuce, spinach and kale. Clearly they have much more room to play with than I do, but it was interesting to see a very functional kitchen garden all laid out.
Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll be able to share something from my own kitchen garden... green fingers crossed!
Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll be able to share something from my own kitchen garden... green fingers crossed!
I'm away for work at the moment, so I've let my weekly updates slide and I'll be playing 'catch-up' for a while when I get back. I'm spending 3 weeks away from home in total, spread across Hobart and Sydney, and while I'm enjoying seeing some new places here in Australia, I'm missing home quite a lot too! I've been lax in cooking for myself while I'm away, and what I have made is really not worth sharing. Instead I'll blog about some of the culinary highlights from my travels - so stay tuned!
You can grow lettuce and have it not eaten by insects? I thought that was impossible!
ReplyDeleteI was growing it inside at seedling stage, which made things much easier... however it turns out that Liam accidentally forgot to water them inside the seedlings while I was away so I'm back to square one!
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