We thought that all that soil moving from last year was over, but we’re suckers for punishment and we’re going to do it all over again this year! 

We’ve had reasonable success with our wooden apple crate vegetable garden these past 10 or 11 months and we’ve been pleased with the way the experiment has gone. But because of the space restrictions in the crates, the garden hasn’t provided us with a steady supply of food. (Not that we expected it to, we had never grown a single vegetable in our lives before this!)

So we called up our apple farm guy from last year and asked him if he’s selling any more crates this year and it turns out we were in luck as he had just started selling again them the week before. So we hooked up the trailer and off we went. As the apple guy was stacking them in the trailer with his forklift the thought did cross my mind that geez they’re pretty high up and perhaps we weren’t going to be able to get these things out! 

With some sliding, jiggling and pushing (mostly on Tim’s part – I coudn’t make them budge) all six crates were on the ground.

With the addition of these 6 extra apple crates I should have enough space to dedicate a single apple crate to each vegetable, instead of having 2 or 3 different vegetables growing in the same crate . My goal this year with the apple crate garden is to start a succession system and pay closer attention to when I need to plant the next round of seeds for the next harvest, so that we can try and keep a constant supply of vegies.

To help me with this goal, I subscribed to the Gardenate email notifications which sends you out an email on the first day of each month to let you know which vegies can be planted that month and when they should be harvested. I also downloaded the Gardenate iPhone app which has a sort of planting diary where you can enter the day that each vegie was planted. The Gardenate iPhone app has a large database of vegetables and it has great planting notes for each vegetable. 

Last week I planted some seeds in punnets in the little greenhouse so they will be the first seedlings to be transplanted into the apple crate garden. I wonder if we will ever get to a stage where we no longer need to buy vegies from the supermarket …

PS: Why use apple crates to grow vegies in? Where we are, our soil doesn’t drain very well and it’s mostly clay. Vegies don’t like to grow in soil where there is poor drainage. So by getting these apple crates in and filling them with purchased soil (we buy soil called “special loam”), it means that the drainage will always be good and also it reduces the risk of weeds and grasses growing through the soil. I’ve weeded these crates once in the 11 months we’ve had them.

PPS: I was watching Gardening Australia a month or so ago and Stephanie Alexander was on the show. Stephanie said that she uses wooden apple crates in her own garden and she is growing silverbeet, beans, celery, peas and spinach in them. She has actually attached lockable castors to the bottom of them so that they can be moved around the garden. I thought that was a great idea.  Watch Stephanie Alexander on Gardening Australia.