It’s been a little over a month now since we moved in at Axedale, and although we pretty much fell in love with the place straight away, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that we’d like to change. So these last few weeks we have set about making our own mark on the place, with a number of adjustments and improvements here and there.

Old sign, new home

The sign that used to reside on our front gate at Mount Dandenong has had a fresh spray of paint and now sits proudly beside our front doors. Unfortunately it was a little too narrow to sit perfectly across the fence railings outside the front gate where we’d originally intended it to go, so we’ll look to get a new sign made for there.

Seedling production

One of the first additions we made to the property was this polycarbonate greenhouse, from Maze Products. This had actually been provided to us as part of the insurance settlement after the June 2021 storms at Mount Dandenong had brought a large stringybark down on our previous one. By the time the replacement arrived, we had made the decision to move house, so it spent several months in storage before it arrived here at Axedale.

These greenhouses are really tough (it took an entire messmate to bring down the last one), and they are relatively easy to assemble – this one went up in an hour or so with very few issues, and hardly a curse word uttered. The location is perfect – plenty of sun all day and only a few steps away from our compost bins and vegetable beds.

Inside we have already started to grow plenty of vegetable seedlings. There are a number of trays of brassicas such as cabbage, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts, as well as a few different lettuces – these will all be grown to a size slightly larger than the standard vegetable seedlings you buy at the nurseries, before being planted out into our new raised garden beds once the current crop is done.

There are also 4 different types of tomatoes being grown in here – we’re getting a frost here on most nights at the moment, so it will still be months before we will be able to grow crops like tomatoes outside in the garden. The plan for now is to select the biggest and best plants from this current crop and grow a few to maturity in pots that will remain in the greenhouse.

The previous owners left behind a raised self-watering garden bed that just so happens to fit perfectly across the back wall of the greenhouse – with lettuce prices currently as crazy as $10 a lettuce, and prices on many other vegetables also skyrocketing, our plan is to be as self-sufficient as possible this season by growing as much of our own veggies as we can.

When we set the greenhouse up, we gave it a very slight fall towards the rear, which allowed us to hook up a 100 litre water tank, also from Maze, on each side to collect any water run-off from the roof. Eventually they will sit on their own custom stands, however for the time being a couple of milk crates will have to suffice.

Composting

Just outside of the greenhouse we have started a composting production line. At the moment we only have a couple of these 240 litre bins, made in Australia by Tumbleweed, but the plan is to have a whole chain of them going to take all of our kitchen scraps and garden waste. Compost is an essential ingredient in building and maintaining a healthy and productive vegetable garden, and the more we can make of it onsite, the better it will be.

Raised vegetable garden beds

We were lucky enough to inherit a number of raised timber garden beds with the property, and we’ve added to these with a number of raised metal garden beds from Australian manufacturer Birdies Garden Products. These beds are a lot more durable than the timber ones and should last us many years – eventually we will look to replace all of the timber beds with more of these.

With it currently being the middle of winter here, we are limited as to what we can grow, given that most nights we get a decent frost. At this stage we’ve concentrated on the brassicas, planting several types of cabbages and cauliflower, along with beets, peas, onions and carrots.

The beds do take a bit of assembling, as they come flat packed and each section needs to be bolted to the next, plus there was a fair bit of work involved in filling them all, but in the long run we hope that all the effort was worth it – we should be able to produce enough vegetables to be reasonably self-sufficient in coming years.

We’ve also just received our first order from The Seed Collection, a Melbourne based supplier with plenty of great varieties. I’ve never used these guys before, so I’m not sure how they will go, but our initial interaction has been positive – the order was packed, sent and received within a few days and everything ordered was supplied. As you can see, the packaging looks to be very well done as well. Time will tell how we go with germination and cropping.

New gardens

Grevillea Garden

There are a lot of honeyeaters and other nectar-feeding birds in this neck of the woods, and with this section of garden within the main view of the kitchen and dining room windows, I felt it lent itself well to low(ish) growing Grevilleas and other natives. As the Silver Birch grow we will trim their trunks so that they emerge out of a thicket of Grevilleas, Banksias and Correas that the birds will absolutely love.

Memorial Garden

The “formal garden” (we’re choosing to call it the Memorial Garden) is a beautiful spot to come and soak in the peace and quiet of country life. The centrepiece is this magnificent pedestal and urn, but unfortunately it was obscured by a planting of Hebes that had grown so tall and thick, it was hard to imagine that anything actually lurked beneath them. While the Hebes were beautiful in their own right, they were out of place, so we have removed them and replaced them instead with Mother’s Love roses.

Gardenia Beds

In the large circular driveway at the front of the house there are two triangular garden beds that had been planted out with a row of Bay Laurels in each. I assume that the intention here was to create a medium height hedge. The front two thirds of each bed had been left empty, so we’ve lined the edges with low growing Gardenias, and we’ll eventually fill the centres in with Orange Blossoms