Back to Update 4 and new chickies!

Its been a while since I last put a post up, the weeks have really been flying by and I didn't realise it's almost a month since the last post! Slack me.

We have been busy in this time and alot has been going on, nothing too exciting but busy, busy, busy!
These are 2 of our 4 new young chooks, we had to cull a couple of our old girls who got really sick, so it was time to bring some new life into the chook house, hopefully these little cuties will boost our egg production in Spring when they get a bit older.
The chookie above is a very inquisitive girl who was intrigued with the camera and I thought it was funny how 'in my face' she was. ( Shame she is not in focus - sorry)
The kids are really happy with our new arrivals and they seem to have all settled in ok, not much harassment from the old girls.

Back to basics update 4

Harvesting
Tomatoes
Chinese greens
Beans
Carrots
Lettuce


Sowing
Broccoli -4 different types
Cauliflower
Red Cabbage
Kale - 2 types
Pak Choy
Savoy Cabbage
Silverbeet
Lettuce - Cos
Lettuce - Australian Yellow Leaf
Kohl Rabi - Green and Purple
Sweetpeas
Snowpeas
Stocks
Calendulas
Broadbeans
Spring onions
Onions - Barletta


Maintenance
Cleaned out hot house (in photo below) ready for big sowing session (see above)
Removed golden robinia from front garden in preparation for new edible borders
Had black wattle that was taking all the moisture from vegie patch taken out , this area is now much lighter and hopefully things will grow alot better without the competition from the tree.
Also planted 200 garlic corms saved from last year's harvest (saved the biggest fattest corms for replanting) after preparing a bed with compost and horse poo and dolomite.




Planning for future
Some friends and I are starting a "buying group" for our fruit and vege, buying in bulk from our local green grocer and dividing the produce between us. Hopefully will save some money and also get really fresh top quality produce to supplement the harvest from my garden and the Community garden.
Have been reassessing our financial situation, looking for ways to economize so we have some money left at the end of the year for a holiday.

Working for future
Have been trying to complete lots of little things around the house and garden eg. tidy up around 'derelict' areas of backyard, keep Kikuyu under control around vegie patches(an on going job!)
Have knitted a doll for my nieces 4 birthday, and actually finished it 6 weeks in advance, a rare achievement with me! ( see photo, I have also made a little jacket to go with it since the photo was taken) I hope she likes it. I am trying to make more of the gifts I give people this year, so this is a start.




Building Community
Worked in Community Garden.
Had group of girlfriends and their kids over for catch up on school holidays. Good fun for all.

New skills.
Learnt more advanced knitting techniques
Made hot cross buns from scratch (see photo - they were very yummy )
Made homemade marshmallows - Kids loved them.









What else has been happening?
It has been school holidays here for the past 2 weeks , so I have been doing things with the boys and seeing alot of their cousins and friends. It has been a nice quiet holiday , Gary was home for the Easter break so it was good to just hang out and work around the house.


I just picked these vegies for our dinner tonight , we are having a nice chicken stir fry with all these Chinese greens and tatsoi, beans, broccoli and snowpeas. I will use the tomatoes to make a batch of tomato sauce, as I have another basket full of ripe ones waiting to be cooked.
They look delicious don't they? I love seeing the garden bounty like this!



Cheers everyone!

Check out these potatoes!

Spent some time in the garden today, I tried to start getting the front garden beds under control - quite a big job as it turned out! I have been very slack and the weeds have pretty much taken over, so I've decided to pull out most of the plants in the bed and start again. It will probably take a week or so to get it organised, but I think I will try and create an edible border, one that is beautiful and productive!
I also cleared an empty vegie bed to plant my extra bean, melon and cucumber seedlings. It was dry as a chip so I hope I can moisten it enough to get them off to a good start.

I thought these potatoes were pretty impressive! They weighed 900grs just the 2 of them! We had them for dinner - very delicious. Not bad for a self sown spud left from last year.
Actually dinner tonight was a very local affair - we had roast beef from my friends cattle (about 2km away), and potatoes, beetroot, carrots, beans, snowpeas and lettuce from our backyard and my community garden. The boys gave it the thumbs up, which is always nice.

These are the vegies we had for dinner tonight (the potatoes and beetroot were already in the oven)


The Growing Challenge rules are that you need to grow something that you haven't grown before from seed. With that in mind, I bought some seeds on the weekend - quinoa ( a high protein grain, I thought might be good for the chooks), and several types of kale (scotch, tuscan, siberian and red russian) . I know it is a bit early to sow kale, but I thought I would get organised. Anyway, I can never resist a seed stall, I can always find something new to try!

I had my regular stall at the Red Hill Market on Saturday - it was flat out! There were people everywhere, and I sold more seedlings than I expected which was great. It was lovely weather and there is always a great atmosphere at Red Hill so everyone had a good day I think. There are some really fantastic stalls at this market, I love going there! Mum came up to give me a hand so I even got to have a little look around (even though you could hardly move there were so many people).

Beans,beans and more beans!

Yesterday I picked our first meals worth of beans- woo hoo! Got about 230 grams of delicious Rattlesnake beans, they are growing up this teepee, one side seems to be doing better than the other, no idea why.I love the purple flecks through this bean, they look so exotic and are totally tender and have a juicy beany flavour. The boys eat theirs raw straight from the vine, I cook them briefly for us and the purple streaks dissappear leaving beautiful jade green beans.

I am growing other bean varieties as well - Frederico(climber), Lazy Housewife(climber), Giant of Stuttgart(climber) and Violet Queen, Tendergreen, Banjo, Dragons Tongue, Brown Beauty and Gourmet Delight(all Bush Type). TheViolet Queen and Tendergreen are looking really good, lots of flowers already so I'm hopeful of a great crop this year.
I have staggered the planting of the other varieties, just because I'm never organised enough to get everything done at once, but it could work better in the long run, if the harvest can be stretched out longer.

I also went down to our community garden yesterday (Crib Point Community Garden, known affectionately as 'The Crib"), I can't believe how well everything is growing! I collected a basket of goodies - potatoes, silverbeet, beetroot, radish, lettuce and,yes, more beans!
Our garden is run slightly differently to a lot of community gardens around here, we do have some individual plots, but mostly the site is worked communally; which means that if you come and do a bit of work ,you are able to take some of whatever is ready to eat! This is usually heaps of stuff as we don't have many members and it is a pretty big garden (10 vegie beds +orchard + rambling beds). Luckily there are quite a few older members who have amazing knowledge and experience growing food, so we all try and soak up information and learn lots of new techniques and little tricks to enhance the health of our garden. I will try to post some pictures of the garden if anyone is interested

On a slightly sad and guilty note, we had to "get rid' of our rooster yesterday. Poor old( actually young) Randy the Rooster was taken care of by my brother in law very quickly, and I'm sure he didn't know anything about it. Randy had decided that allnight crowing was his thing. The last few weeks we've been woken up at 1am, 2.30am, 3.00am, 4.32am, etc, by his raucous cock-a- doodle-dooooooooooooooo, It has been worse than when the boys were little and waking at night. I was also stressing about the neighbours; being very non confrontational I have been dreading a knock on the door from a sleep deprived neighbour! It is amazing how far sound travels at night around here, and how LOUD one bird can be!
We bought him as a pullet from a local farm and were told he/she was a hen, but time proved otherwise. I was going to try and make chicken stock from him, but having never gutted an animal or bird before, I chickened out (pardon the pun) and we buried him under the comfrey patch where he can feed the leaves that make our compost.

I was looking at another blog One Green Generation, and they are doing this 'Growing Challenge' thing where you have to grow something that you have never grown before, from seed. It sounds like fun so I am going to join in. I am still very low tech, so it will be interesting to see if I can figure out how to link to their site, etc. ( I'm sure one of the men in my home will be able to help, being the severe techno heads that they are). Anyway, I will post more about this later.