Garden

I'd like to be able to grow food in my garden. But I'm a really terrible gardener, up to now motivation has been an issue ;-)

My dad is a good gardener but he is finding it hard to keep his little garden going with working full time and heat/lack of water etc. When we were kids he had a huge garden and it was amazing. The house we are building is right next door to them so yesterday I offered to help him out when we move in, but I can foresee problems, he is happy to use seeds and plants from the local shops etc, whereas I'd like to get heirloom plants, he is happy to use bug preventatives and fertilisers that I would want to keep away from. I'm slowly starting to convert him, I bought him a heap of seeds from Diggers Club. Right now he has the corn and a mixture of tomato's in the garden. I got him a bag of mixed heirloom tomato seeds so its a real 'pot luck'. Hopefully these two foods which are always much more tasty from the garden anyway will help to convert him a bit more. Plus I'll keep buying seeds.

So back to me, right now I have 4 plants which I've successfully kept alive for a year, which is a record for me. A Lemon and a Mandarin tree, both dwarf in pots, and two strawberry plants in pots. I'm going to re-pot the strawberry plants into a bigger pot together I think, mum made them up for the girls from off shoots of her plants but the girls have lost interest and I'm looking after them now anyway so one pot might be better plus it will be a lot bigger. My mandarin tree has gotten all of about a cm bigger since I bought it over a year ago, but its still lush and green so... who knows.

Now the lemon tree, is supposed to be a meyer from the tag still hanging off it, which is supposed to bare fruit in early winter, and have a few thorns. However my plant has no thorns and never has had and its baring fruit right now in the middle of summer. Here is some pictures

I have 10 'lemons' on it but once they get to this size they get no bigger, the plant is now getting more flowers. This is the first time its produced so I'm in no mans world, mum actually asked me the other day if I was growing limes. What to do?? I don't know. I suppose I'll just have to sit and wait.

But seeing one of my wishes would be to grow food, and I've successfully kept 4 plants alive all at the same time for some time I think now is the time to expand. I did a bit of research on no dig gardens but hubby has pretty much said a garden wouldn't be a good idea for a while cause the house will be being built for atleast another year and all available space is storing material or is needed for cars, tools, etc. So another pot is the way to go. What should I grow next?? We eat alot of carrots but they can't be great in pots, the guinea pigs love spinach and bok choy which could be grown in pots surely?

My mission for the next few weeks is to research some plants which meet various different purposes, or like different conditions and when hubby wants to talk landscaping I can suggest plants which serve a purpose like produce food, but still work like his wants them too, surely fruit trees can be used a privacy screening from the neighbours??