Lovely Spring Weather

It's been lovely gardening weather lately, but before I show off the garden, I wanted to show you a picture of the inside of the chook pen as it is right now.



We knocked-up the ramp and platform pretty quickly from spare bed slats. The roosting table has pipes covering the sharp edges, and the front pipe comes off easily after removing the pins. The blackboard and poster still need to be hung on the walls. :)

Marty and I have spent most days out in the garden, weeding and planting seeds.



The front garden this winter has not been used much at all. The only area with any real activity has been this:



On the left, snowpeas. I meant to plant peas, but I think I got my seeds mixed up! Oh well. In the middle is the purple sprouting broccoli. Very interesting plant! I plucked a few caterpillars from it every now and then, but for the most part it looks like the white cabbage moth doesn't seem too interested in it. Under the broccoli is pyrethrum and nasturtium flowers and to the right of all that is Spartigus the Asparagus. He's done very nicely this spring and we've eaten a little asparagus already.

Also out in the front garden, the comfrey has made a comeback. It died back completely last year in the heat and this spring it surprised us by coming back to life again.



In an unused part of the garden, we've got some nettles growing happily. This is their second year, and although usually considered a weed, we like to keep some around just for the butterflies. The nettles are being eaten by caterpillars at the moment, and in return hopefully we'll see some Admiral butterflies.



Lastly, this is the sleeper bed in the back. (Made of railway sleepers.) Growing in here is some celery with the most wonderful flavour, the last beetroot (although I've planted more seeds), and a blackcurrant that is just starting to wake up. There are also carrots and broccoli and a flowering bok-choy that are not in the photo. The carrots are very small since this bed doesn't get much light over the winter months, and the bok-choy is huge and old but I can't get rid of it - the bees are still enjoying it!



You can also see behind everything the overgrown mass of weeds. It's the boggy area and the frogs are going crazy.. so I can't bring myself to scythe the whole lot down just yet. It'll be easier when the pond has dried up for the season anyway. Well, that's my excuse! I have a short video of the sounds the frogs are making (with a few ravens thrown in for good measure). In it, I'm sitting right on the edge of the sleeper bed. I recorded it for the sound, so forgive the very boring vision. :)



Until next time!

Catching up

We've had such a lovely day today after a few weeks of quite chilly weather. I was wondering if I've shown off my small area of flowers around the raised garden bed? It's slowly becoming what I had imagined when we first made it. It's lovely to see colour in the garden after a difficult Summer season!



The pumpkin vine I showed off earlier, too, has grown! It's starting to get a touch of powdery mildew as the weather has become wetter.



There are 4 really large butternut pumpkins hiding in there!



Free pumpkin! Yay! :)

Lastly I picked this today - it's an Egyption beetroot, slightly flatter on the bottom, and not really red inside. Quite tasty, but not as sweet as the Detroit variety.




(Edited to add pic of the inside of the Egyption beetroot)



Otherwise, I planted out some spinach today for the winter. Two varieties this year: Winter Giant and American Curled. Looking forward to plenty of baby spinach over the winter.

Until next time!

Potatoes and Plums in Pictures

The Russet Burbank potatoes have all died back, and we harvested the results today. Umm..



6 pretty good sized potatoes is better than last year at least! I put the small ones and the ones which were growing back into the raised garden bed. I hope they're happy this autumn/winter. The soil that we pulled out of the garden bed was lovely, filled with worms and rich. I started with a little of that - popped the potatoes on top, and then a layer of straw and sheep manure.



The purple Saphire potatoes are still going. Once they die off, I'll do the same with those.



I put all that lovely soil into a garden bed. You can see from this pic the tomatoes there are doing well. (The ones in the front garden have had it! hehe)



As I said before, most of the garden is suffering. This is the railway sleeper garden bed in the back garden behind the water tanks. I've used shadecloth to help protect the plants from the worst of the sun. I've planted carrots, bok choy, beetroot, and spinach in there - but there seems to also be pumpkin that's popped up too. I didn't plant it, and I've no idea if it could really produce any pumpkins, but it does look pretty! hehe.



We have a surplus of plums at the moment. We don't eat plums, so Marty has picked some of them and will try and offload them at work. Anyone for a plum? The tree is overloaded!



Lastly - Here's a sight for sore eyes. No, it's not earwig season anymore, so imagine our surprise when this guy came into the loungeroom one night! He's actually a native earwig. Not one that will eat our plants. We popped him back outside where he belongs - but it's certainly distinctive.



Until next time!

Morning garden

There's one nice thing about getting up early - especially now as the weather is starting to heat up - and that's the nice crisp smell as the sun rises in the morning.



The lettuce and carrot bed is being watered twice a day (at least until the carrots sprout), and the lettuce are sitting upright now, so I think they'll be ok after the transplanting.



The pond has gone, and all the grass that use to be there is long dead. It's a very difficult area with the heavy clay. We've planted 3 different plants there in hopes that something will take - but at least one of them is dead already, and another is well on the way.



In desperation, I threw down some sunflower seeds...



Wish them luck, they'll need it! :)

In the front garden bed, I planted out some corn the other day, as well as some beans. The beans have already been eaten by what are probably earwigs.. *sigh* So, if you see a heap of Nuttelex containers around, they're earwig traps. They work quite well, too!



We just cut holes in the sides, fill the container up with used cooking oil, pop the lid back on and put them into the garden. Nothing seems to enjoy used cooking oil like an earwig or few. ;)

This is my favourite garden bed at the moment. There are peas, snow peas, cabbage, rosemary, corn and beans too. The beetroot are flowering!



The biggest cabbage! The variety is called Sugarloaf, and I'm so looking forward to trying it! All the cabbage at the greengrocer and supermarkets are looking very sad lately.



The apple tree is looking lovely! I planted out some nasturtiums around the base. Unfortunately we don't have a second apple tree, so no apples for us this year!



Same goes for the pear tree. Still, it's looking healthier than last year, and (hopefully) next year we'll have another pear for it to pollinate with.



Lastly, I spent today cleaning a couple of old Kenwood Chef mixers that I picked up yesterday. The second one was "thrown in" to the deal, which was fantastic value at only $45! They should make light work of the bread mixing, now that we're baking at least twice a week.



Until next time!

Catch up from Saturday

Marty cut the water tank in 3, and we made use of the new garden beds. These two have potatoes in them. They were really overgrown in the bags, and were desperate to get out! The variety closest to the camera are Saphire. We grew them last year, although not very successfully thanks to the earwigs. The one further away in this picture are Russet Burbank. We havn't grown these before, but the description says "An American cultivar released in 1908, Russet Burbank is a multi-purpose potato suitable for baking and chips. It's a late maturing type with highly russetted tubers." Sounds interesting!



These are a bit of an experiment this year, as we used our compost which is a little (a lot!) too alkaline. To counter this, we've layered the compost with large amounts of pine needles, which are quite acidic. Potatoes prefer a slightly acidic soil, so hopefully things will work out in their favour. Good luck little taters!

The third one is the not-painted tank on the back-right in the picture below. Inside is growing lettuce and carrots. The carrots are only seeds at this stage, but the lettuce have been growing well in the cold frame, and we transplanted them to their new home on Saturday as well.



Again, we used a mixture of compost, horse manure and pine needles. The top layer is basic potting mix, purchased from the local nursery.

The garden bed at the front has lettuce and spring onions, and the one on the left has beetroot.

Otherwise, the garden is looking very weedy! The rain has settled down and everything is growing crazy. The bok choy here is about ready to harvest the seeds from, but even so, the celery is still in there, growing happily.



And next to the freezer is some broccoli that I threw in because I had nowhere else to put them. I honestly wasn't expecting them to survive, as the bed had pretty fresh horse manure in it at the time.



Oh, can you see them between all those weeds? Never mind!!

Last but not least, we havn't accomplished much with the chook pen lately - except we found a window for it! It's second hand, cheap and very dirty. I think it'll clean up well though!



Next post: an update on the house, finally!

Worms and such

I was almost right, the worm farm did take a little longer than we expected, but we did finish it before the week was out! 2 days ago, to be exact. :)



What do you think? We've fed them and they seem happy. It's amazing how much bath there is for them to fill up. The full "Worm Factory" didn't even quarter fill the bath.

Of the 3 raised garden beds we have in the backyard, the freezer (wicking bed) is the most productive at the moment. We've been picking bok choy from it almost daily, and now the bok choy is starting to flower.



Under the bok choy is spinach and celery. The spinach is only now starting to get large enough to eat as baby spinach (very tasty!), and I imagine the celery will take a little longer still.

Just to prove that we do eat from the garden, today's lunch (well, part of it, anyway!)



The purple leaves are from the beetroot (it was steaming at the time), and I only picked a few peas today. I frightened a Blackbird in the process of foraging today - it frightened me too! The broccoli are side-shoots from the remainder of the plant we'd harvested earlier. This was the first time we've eaten any of Spartagus the Asparagus though, and boy was he sweet and yummy!

So, now the worm farm is up and running (with worm juice aplenty), the next big task is getting the chook pen ready. We would like to do our part for the rare chook breeds, so we're thinking of getting Dorkings. Nothing is final yet, and finding them could be another matter entirely.. but we'll see! We still have a chook house to finish, and a very secure yard to build them.

Until next time!

Action and Activity!

It rained last night, which gives me enough time this morning to post a little update instead of watering the garden.

We're lucky enough to be eating from the garden a little! Well, little isn't what I'd call this beetroot (and the biggest is still in the ground!)...



The beans are quite flavourful and have a nice texture - as long as we keep picking them small! The large ones are not really edible. :p



Something we've been aiming towards for some time now, has been getting rid of our old inefficient fridge and replacing it with a chest-fridge instead. The power savings are suppose to be well worth a little inconvenience. Now, generally we can't just go out and buy chest-fridges from the local shop, so we had to convert a chest freezer.

The unit that controls the temperature is a Fridgemate, and we followed the assembly instructions given in Rob's blog. The unit is in the background, and the hobby box is in the fore.



While I cut the hobby box to fit the unit..



..Marty stripped the wires of an extension cord.



A fair amount of fiddling around later (it was all-consuming and we forgot to take pictures of the process!!), we ended up with this box sitting on the new fridge!! We attached it with velcro so it doesn't fall off when we open the lid.



That's the "pretty" shot, and this is how it looks like now we've been at it!



It looks like our old fridge, but squat! As well as the significant power savings, it also makes the kitchen seem bigger (which is always welcome!) and we're both very happy with it. I'm keeping tabs on the power usage, and I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes.

Other news in Stawell: Last night we attended a meeting by the Stawell Climate Action Group. They would like to get as many people within a 50km radius of Stawell to sign up for solar power before June 30th. (After June 30th the Australian Government rebate will change from offering upto $8,000 for installation for people earning under $100,000 a year, to a lesser rebate offered to everyone regardless of income - we would like to take advantage of the current scheme).

We expressed our interest along with quite a few others in town. We just hope that enough people sign up to make it happen! So, if anyone living around this area would like to be involved, send us an email and we'll give you the contact details to find out more information.

Until next time!

Plodding along..

Firstly, an updated picture of the front yard now the plumbing has been buried.



Of course, there's always another project on-the-go, so it never stays "nice" for long. ;) We are continuing making the garden bed using old roof tiles, but we needed to remove a concreted-in pole.



Lots of sweat and effort later, we finally removed it - and, not for the first time, curse concrete and everything it stands for. :p

Note to anyone considering using concrete to secure posts in the ground - PLEASE DON'T! (Unless it's a fence or a gate of course..)



So, we've nearly finished the garden bed. We're now adding lots of manure and compost to the poor quality sandy soil. It's now holding water and looking much better.. but there's more work to be done.

The vegetables are all doing well. These broccoli have had a few bites taken from the leaves - so I've put down some eggshells to help keep the white moths away. It seems to be helping.



The white inside the eggshells is suppose to make the moths think there is already a moth in the area, and being territorial, they won't bother landing. (Well, that's the idea.) I used it successfully with the beetroot, but I'm not sure if the beetroot were a big target anyway.

The peas and the snowpeas are up and at 'em. Marty keeps the weeds down.



The sunflowers are fully open, but they're not moving with the sun. One is "stuck" in an easterly direction while the other is "stuck" facing west.



This single carrot has survived the earwigs of spring and the ground being dug over for the beetroot.. it's our largest carrot, and it happens to be a Purple Dragon! They say beetroot and carrot don't get on well, but this one is proving them all wrong.



Speaking of beetroot.. check this out!



The corn is still flowering, and as you can see, the flower spikes are not much taller than I am. I don't think we'll get any corn kernels develop, but they still look great, and they'll add to the compost when their time is up.



The flowers make everything look 100 times nicer. We'll be growing these again next year for sure!



We've since removed the old and very ugly rose "tree" from the last of the garden beds out the front, and we're planning on planting a green manure crop there over winter, in preparation for all the spring veggies we have planned. :)

Until next time!