Alan's Garden Blog

One of the weird advantages of these gardens is they just don’t get waterlogged. They have vents so flooding rain first fills up the reservoir for free and then the rest drains away.

Now I am not saying my plants don’t suffer, but nowhere near as much as in a conventional garden and they recover much more quickly as you can see below. I thought I had lost everything in this garden (another experimental one) but it recovered!

I have been experimenting with new versions of my gardens which has meant I have had to put more in much to my wife’s disgust. I filled this garden with a range of seeds all in neat rows with lovely little markers. The flooding rains came and you would think that would be the end of that. But no, even though the seeds got washed around more than clothes in the washing machine many germinated over time. What a wonderful time bomb a seed is.

I am new to growing asparagus but this looks pretty good at this stage. The asparagus seems to like the constant water supply in a watersaver garden. This coming winter I can chop it off at ground level and in spring I will corner the market in fresh asparagus (hopefully).

Aunty Coriander is to me as important as old Basil. Obviously a must for asian dishes but can give anything a lift. I struggled getting enough of a harvest because it will go to seed in a flash. After having to buy bunches it finally dawned on me: that was the way to grow it.

I buy my seed in bulk from the Chinese grocer and plant about a dozen in each hole. This gives me a good supply although it doesn’t stay in the ground long enough to develop the beautiful roots required in some receipes.

I am flat out at the moment building gardens but thought I would show some photos of a couple of plants that do well in my gardens. I bought the eggplants as established seedlings but almost always use seeds for the carrots. Occasionally if I see a punnet stacked with carrots I snap It up. Just wash (swirl around) the seedlings in a bucket of water to separate them. I can get fifty carrots out of a punnet this way. Yes, I know I’m tight.