A start in the patch and beyond

My food producing garden has been stagnating over the winter and needs some serious attention.  The only thing I did recently was to plant some broad beans (my fav veg alongside asparagus, mmmmm) and peas a couple of months ago.  They sprouted and were promptly dug out by blackbirds (they think that the growing seeds are worms moving) and eaten by either snails, earwigs or slaters (encouraged by the excess debris from the summer).  I've taken some pics to show my starting point and will document the changes over the coming months.

To get your bearings, here's the overall plan of our (my hubby's and mine!), semi-detached house in Carnegie in the south east of Melbourne, and the garden at the moment. 

This is the view of The Patch and the side of the The Workroom taken from the step of the back door.  I'll be tracking changes here in the coming months, this will be the pic that I'll be taking before every "patch" session.

I'll include more detail in coming posts, but the one other part of the garden relevant to the house n garden map is the avocado's in the front garden.  These are inspired by Jackie French who advocates growing avocado hedges in suburbia, here when talking about growing avo's to feed the chooks, but I've also read it somewhere in one of her many inspiring gardening books.  I planted these grafted avocado's last year in late spring, and really didn't water them enough for them to do very well, but then they take a while to establish and I'm planning on putting a water tank at the front of the house to make it easier this summer.  The intention is to keep them cut to the height of the fence to create a hedge.  They look very sad, but hopefully we will see an improvement soon!