Getting started on the garden

I've just posted some tips on a forum I hang out at and I thought I would extend them to here.

Here are some earlier entries - ME GARDEN
You will also see the reason why I haven't done anything with mine lately...

Anyhoo - so you have made yourself a space for some herbs and vegies, and not sure what to plant? Head over to Gardening Australia website - it's awesome. They have a magazine too.

I also HIGHLY recommend Diggers Garden Club they do excellent books and mail order, have the most PERFECT gardens you can visit. The catalogues are insane and you can go a bit nuts. I had about 8 different tomato varieties at one stage....

Op Shops are a great source of old magazines with advice on what to plant in the area you are in without spending a bucketload on the new ones...I arrange them into month order to avoid confusion (easily done these days).

Plant what you eat/buy most of.

When you buy your seedlings, always grab a couple flower punnets too. When planted out the patch can look a little bare and rather underwhelming and some colour always looks good.

If you have grown from seed, like I did here or if the seedlings look a little floppy you can stick the plastic drink bottles over the top for extra protection till they find their feet.

Crushed up eggshells can be a great way of keeping slugs and snails off the seedlings...but it never worked for me.

To keep stinking bloody cats away (they can sniff out freshly turned soil a mile away), buy some wooden kebab skewers and put them all over the place, pushed about halfway down. Keeps them from planting THEIR arses and digging to conceal the evidence. Mesh can be a PITA.

Happy planting. Will update on how to keep away the bastard that will EAT all your produce before you do.

Oh - and if you don't want to sacrifice your fingernails - scrape them over a bar of soap before you head to the backyard.