The garden, just like our blog has been a little neglected lately. As some of you may already know, one half of the Nan's garden team is expecting (not nan...... I don't think she or I could cope with that eventuality!) so I have been a little slack with updates. But it is the start of June and time to plant all those wintery goodies.
Suptropical and Tropical gardens love.......
Seedlings into the garden.
Chinese cabbage
cauliflower
celery
chives
asparagus

Seeds into the garden
broad beans
climbing beans
dwarf beans
beetroot
carrot
cucumber
garlic
lettuce
melon
peas
seed potatoes
pumpkin
radish
rhubarb crowns
shallots
sweet potato
zucchini

Cooler places love.....
Seedlings into the garden.
cauliflower
celery
leek
silverbeet
artichoke
asparagus


Seeds into the garden
broad beans
lettuce
melon
peas
seed potatoes
rhubarb crowns


Its also time to plant deciduous tress and prune existing trees.

Time to refresh

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break. This year our tradition Christmas had a small face-lift; still spent with wonderful family but in slightly different locations. A bit more travel but nice for a change. This year we continued our tradition of baking a Christmas goody basket for the adults in our family group. Thanks to the ladies at Details Details for the packaging!


It is also time to refresh the garden. With all the rain and more rain and more rain, most things in the vege garden are looking a little tired or at worst rotten. This morning, before the rain, we spent time pulling out celery, trimming rhubarb, picking eggplant and planting the heads of our seeded lettuces. It is now time to choose some new things to plant in the garden for the coming months. If you are in the subtropical and tropical areas, some great things to plant in the garden are
SEEDLINGS
broccoli - YUM
brussel sprouts - Nan's favourite ( although I'm not sure why - each to their own Nan)
cabbage
artichoke - but don't talk to me about it as ours hasn't flowered in 2 1/2 years!

SEEDS
climbing beans
cucumber
lettuce - check
sweetcorn
sweet potato - remind me to tell you a great way to cook this which is soooooooo easy and we learnt in China.

This year we would like to make some changes in Nan's Garden too. We would love to bring you products that you have been searching for or dreaming about. We would love to hear your product ideas. What you want, what you love and even what you don't like! Please comment below, on facebook or email us at info@nansgarden.com. One lucky person will even receive their product suggestion for free!

Off to Sydney we go

Although I am beginning to believe that someone doesn't want me to get to Sydney, we are jetting off tomorrow to set up for the Baby and Toddler Show. Hopefully!
It has been a really interesting experience preparing for something so large. It was impossible to bring all the clothes with us so we are bringing what we can and you can order the other items on the day and we will ship them to you for free! All of our dresses and overalls we are making to your measurements as we know little ones don't always fit into nice 1, 2, 3 size brackets! As we are so new to this process, we hope we can answer all your questions and requests but please be patient with us as we find our way. We are just so excited to be coming and visiting some of our Sydney fans! Please be sure to come and let us know if you already know who we are. We will be having a competition running for the 4 days to win a $150 voucher to spend in our online store. All you need to do is visit us at the stall, fill in your name and email address and you go in the draw. How easy is that! The winner will be drawn at random when we finish the show and return to Brissy.

If you would like to come and visit us at the stall here is some money you can bring with you! simply print out this post and bring it along with you to receive $10 off for the day. Only one voucher per customer per day.

We look forward to meeting you all there!

Vege Garden Update

My blog has been so poorly tendered the last couple of months. I must admit that trying to tend to all other areas of life has meant it has been sadly neglected. Thankfully not the same can be said for the vege garden! It has been loving the rainy, cold then hot, sunny weather and everything is thriving.There is nothing quite like eating veges that have just been picked and are still covered in morning dew. My favourite at the moment has to be the sugar snap peas. Miss S does love to pick the peas out of the middle and carry them around but the crunch is sensational. Yum.

The big news though........... Our chicken have started laying. A discovery in the back corner of the garden of three eggs was a welcome find after months of an egg famine. We initially thought it might have been all three laying but it was sadly only the one. After threatening them with the dinner table and placing them under house arrest for a couple of days, the others have finally come to the party. Although they are not consistent yet, we will take as many wonderfully vibrant yokes as we can get.

Are you wondering what to do on the weekend?

Why not come and see us at one of these fabulous markets on the weekend.

On Saturday we will be at the BrisStyle Eco Markets.

This is our first market with BrisStyle and we are really excited to meet all the wonderful retailers that will be trading their EcoWares on the weekend.

On Sunday we will be at the

Boutique Markets

at Portside Wharf in Hamilton. They have lots of new retailers this month so we are looking forward to checking out what they have to offer.

We will be launching our new Summer Range very shortly so stay tuned for more information.

If you are our mystery shopper who left their shopping at Mathilda's Market in June - We have you bag and would love to give it back to you. Just send us an email with what you bought and we will talk about how to get it back to you.

Look forward to seeing you on the weekend!

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Big Market Weekend

As the mushrooms continue to grow - 60kg so far, we have been preparing for a very busy time ahead. This weekend we will be attending two markets. On Saturday we will be going a group of really inspired Eco Friendly independent designers for the BrisStyle Eco market. Reading all the blog posts about their really exciting and passionate crafts has got me thinking about trying to reduce wastage in everything that we produce. Our lovely Eco Elles provide us with wonderful pieces of woollen blanket, too cute to waste but most too small to use. Sitting on the couch this afternoon in the cold and overcast weather, and really not wanting to tackle cleaning the sewing room, I got to thinking........ and this is what came of that. Our new hair clips. These will be debuting at the market on Saturday and then on Sunday when we are at the Boutique markets at Portside. Unfortunately that means its time to go and keep cleaning. Next job on the agenda - pattern sorting. :(

Textile Show Brisbane

I had such a fantastic time at the Textile Art Festival in Brisbane. Not only was it a wonderful chance to do something just for me, but I learnt such fantastic techniques in the classes I attended. On Saturday I attended Screen Printing with Procion Dyes by Louise Snook. She was a wonderful presenter and had such fabulous things to show us. I came away all inspired to incorporate some procion dye screen printing in our next range.

Sunday was the immensely talented Ken Smith for Machine Embroidery. Never having done any before I was a little apprehensive but had such a fantastic time. Although a time consuming venture, I can't wait to try out a few sections on our next range of clothes.

A very brief chance passing of Jacinta Leishman's demonstration of felting also inspired the desire to try out some felting.

A big thank-you to all the presenters for being so patient with me and the lovely people who sat next to me and helped me out.

Now I just need some time to put all these wonderful new skills into practice!