Garden Makeover & Vegetable Patch 2012

Our vegetable patch started with just a small area in our back garden in 2009 and 2010; then it expanded to just 2 small strips of ground at both sides of our back garden in 2011. After 3 years of experimenting, learning and enjoying the fruits of our love and labour, we’re ready to have our own little back garden “allotment” and dug up all the lawn, remove a giant oak tree, woodshed and uplevel the ground and existing garden shed. It was like this in 2011..

We had decided to invest in a good greenhouse and made the order for it to be delivered after I return from a visit to Malaysia in June 2012. In the meantime, Dunster had started work on the garden with the help of our wonderful neighbour. Dunster updated me with photos every few days on the progress of the makeover..

Setting up the greenhouse was sort of like a jigsaw puzzle and it took them sometime to figure it all out. But once it started, it progressed quite smoothly, except for installing the glass..
Luckily, a good friend of Dunster’s who’s an expert in glass setting came to help us out.

The overview from our kitchen window’s so heartwarming and I’m so proud of Dunster for what he and our neighbour have achieved. As well as our friend..
We are extremely grateful and thankful for the help of these guys.. 🙂

We’ve moved our old rainwater barrel from near the house to the greenhouse and we bought a new larger rainwater barrel. We get a lot of rain in the Netherlands and it’s not only cheaper but better to water the plants with rainwater rather than tapwater.

We had many nice sunny days during the makeover except the weekend where the glass was supposed to be placed into the greenhouse frame..
These are some pictures of our vegetables, herbs and harvest of 2012..

An overview of the patch

lettuce leaves, little gem romaine salad leaves, chinese choisum

chinese cabbage – this didn’t work – the leaves were totally eaten up by millions of caterpillars!!

brussel sprouts – this also didn’t work – the leaves were totally eaten up by millions of caterpillars!!

haricot verts given by a friend

various herbs

shark’s fin melon – it creep too quickly and fruits kept on dropping off and in the end, there was nothing..

courgettes

a row of leeks, cabbages and sprouts, courgettes

just a lovely plant.. 🙂

another overview..

it was supposed to be haricot verts but turned out to be french beans – given by a friend – and this just grew and grew and grew.. pretty good crop from just this 1 plant.. 🙂

another overview

tomatoes on both sides..

just a lovely and happy overview..

lemongrass (foreground) and chillies (no chillies tho)..

tomatoes

red cabbage leaves and rucola / rocket

leeks

everything growing well in the greenhouse

haricot verts growing well too

so are the green leaves – choisum

oh yes, lots of tomatoes with a red one!! 🙂

french beans still growing!!

nice crop of courgettes with some turning into marrows!!

small crop of carrots – not so good this year.. 🙁

just herbs.. 😛

Some of the results from our harvest of 2012.. 😀

choisum stirfry and noodles

lettuce and egg salad with shrimp couscous

hot & spicy rucola pasta soup

spinach and chard rice

courgettes and fried rice

little gem and smoked salmon couscous

french beans

a carrot

baked chicken with tomatoes, leeks, courgettes and carrotscourgettes and runnerbeans

tomatoes

runnerbeans

chinese fried ricevegetarian rice noodles with carrots and courgettesleeks, pear and mustard pork

oven-dried tomatoes

ragout for spaghetti

green and red tomato chutney

leeks and potato soup

rainbow chards

It’s been a busy but a wonderful year with an abundant harvest of crops. We hope that we can continue to learn, progress and grow more organic vegetables..

this is what this winter was like – lots of snow!!