What's been happening in my garden...and my life

I was prompted today, by someone who saw my blog and sent me an email, to give everyone a little update. I was amazed when I logged on to see that it has been two years since I have updated my blog! My how time flies! In that time I had another child, so have been too busy chasing my 1 1/2 year old and almost 5 year old around to have time to sit on the computer. My old computer was pretty slow, which also made updating my blog hard. Never mind that, some amazing things have been happening in my garden. In 2012 my garden reaped 104kg, and I was impressed! I figured that at an average of fresh produce costing $3.99/kg, my garden had made about $400, and only cost about half of that to set up (compost, manure, reticulation, seedlings to plant, mulch). So I was pretty excited to get 120kg in 2013. And am jumping out of my skin with 2014 total to date being a staggering 180kg! And there's still 4 months of the year to go! I estimate that I still only spend about $150 to $200 on manure, mulch and seedlings each year, so the profit margin is getting better. Some of the things I planted in 2012 have grown bigger and producing more, while other annuals self seed and pop up all over the garden the following year...just like my lettuce plants. The pumpkin season has just finished, and this year I reaped about 60kg of pumpkins. The last 3 pumpkins are sitting on my kitchen bench waiting to be made into pumpkin soup and go into the freezer for those quick meals on busy nights. Also doing well in my garden at the moment are my lemon tree and cos lettuce. Last spring I planted rockmelons and we did really well out of them. So this spring I will be planting rockies again. I also plant zucchini's every spring as we always do well out of them. I have used the peel from my oranges to make candied peel and am planning to do the same with lemon peel so I can be ready to make the Christmas cake in a few months. I tried making preserved lemons but don't really see myself using them much so probably won't be doing them again. Unfortunately the big winds we had a few months ago knocked all our olives off the tree, so I only got one jar of olives off the tree this year! I am running out of preserved olives from previous seasons, so may have to resort to buying olives until the tree bears fruit again! I hope to update this blog soon with more recipes, tips for making clothes, preserving fruits, etc over the coming months. I have a great Christmas Advent calendar that I made last year to put on here to show everyone. Your kids will love it as the pockets for each day are big enough to put a small toy or activity in. Much better than the shop bought ones that only have a small chocolate in.