Autumn happenings....

Hello there!
Long time no post!
I know it is over a year since my last post, shame on me, but I have decided to start posting here again, maybe once a week will be a good aim to start with.

The garden has been going great guns over the year I have been away from this blog, and I feel we are eating a far larger proportion of home grown and local produce, which I am very happy with. This is largely due to the super productivity of the Crib Point Community Garden, the communal beds and my own personal plot just have such abundance and variety that I can usually find what I need there or in my own vege garden.
Finding the time to actually get down there and help is the big challenge, as my home garden really needs my attention badly!!
Oh well, you can only do what you can do I guess, and i try to get down there once a week at the moment, so it is better than nothing.

At home, I have planted a heap of seeds for Autumn, lots of brassicas ( chinese cabbage, sugarloaf cabbage, purple broccoli, green broccoli, cauliflower, lime green cauliflower, kohl rabi, pak choy, kale)
and other things (sugar peas, podding peas, snow peas, celeriac, florence fennel, spinach beet)

As you can see from the photos above the germination has been pretty good, with only the kale not coming up( I think the seed was old), so I have lots to plant out very soon!
Forgot to sow onions, so might just direct sow those into the garden.

I have been busy clearing out the summer stuff that has finished and preparing for the Autumn planting, Max has discovered that it is quite fun helping me, so I've had some company, which has been nice.



The chooks are still here, although not laying too many eggs, grrrrrr, I think they are getting old and worn out, it doesn't bother me too much, I think they have earned a nice easy retirement under the fruit trees.
We might have a day trip out over the holidays and get some nice new young girls to refresh the flock and get some good egg layers again.


My little golden chook is the only one who likes to go wandering out of their run, into the rest of the garden. She has a lovely time foraging around, eating the left over tomatoes and other stuff. (She is also one of the only ones still laying, so the extra protein and goodies she finds must be of benefit to her)



OK, I'm off to do some work in the garden instead of talking about it!
Have a great weekend, and it's nice to be back!!

No chooks for us!!!!!

Yesterday, Gary, Andre and Max drove out to Bacchus Marsh to attend a poultry auction with the hope of purchasing some lovely chooks. I was looking forward to seeing 4 or 6 interesting rare breed hens when I got home from work. Barnevelders, Orphingtons, White Sussex and Wyandottes were top of my wish list, and Andre was keen to get a couple of Frizzles.
However, it seems that you need to know a bit about the whole poultry auction scene to be successful in your bidding. Being auction newbies, my boys didn't really stand a chance, they were pipped at the post by a few dollars on all the chickens they were interested in. I think Gary was a bit intimidated by the person who outbid him and then just hovered over the form to discourage any more bids - it worked perfectly!
They had a great day anyway, and couldn't believe how many people are into chickens, the place was packed with chook fanatics and lots of serious chicken people who knew what they were doing when it came to buying at auction. I think next time we will be a lot better prepared, with a stratagy to bid and protect our bid, and we might even be successful!
Meanwhile I think I'll investigate a few local breeders and see if I can find some of the hens on our list, I'll just have to buy them the old fashion way!

Summer gardening - so much good stuff!

I went down to the Community Garden (The Crib) yesterday, and look what I came home with! I think membership definitely has it's priveledges! I have had enough tomatoes to preserve a big batch, and there are plenty more to come. The Crib Point Community Garden is run on a communal model, so there is plenty of produce to share with members who go and help with the garden, it is really great knowing all this food is super fresh, delicious, local and organically grown. It doesn't get much better than that!



I thought I would show you the view of my oldest vegie garden from our back window. This garden was started about 12 years ago, not long after we moved here. I still love this garden, it is quite a big area and can produce a lot of food when I'm organised, but generally there is always a bit that is doing nothing, just crying out for something to grow. I have expanded over the years and now have several other growing areas as well, and am in the process of converting most of my garden to productive plants , with beautiful edible borders and lush cutting gardens (mostly in my head, but slowly becoming reality).



These are some of our chooks, the tough survivors of The Great Christmas Night Massacre, it was not a pretty sight on Boxing Day finding the fox had been busy while we were away for the night. Eight of our girls were dead, including our 3 very cute frizzles and my favourite White Sussex, the ones that escaped (7 chooks) were very distressed. It was really horrible. I am planning to get a few more chooks soon, maybe some rare breeds, I'll have to look into it. Meanwhile we have a very strict locking up at night routine so Fox can't have a second go.



It has been a good summer for the apples. These are Snow Apples (they have a French name I can't remember right now), and they have been great this year. They are not a big apple, but the flesh is bright white and fairly crisp, and they shine up beautifully. We hardly had any codling moth damage this year, I think having the chooks foraging through the fruit trees has helped, and there was lots of nice cobwebby spider action that must have helped keep the populations down. The Granny Smiths are still ripening, but look a bit small, I think I should have given them more water.



These are a patch of "Banjo"bush beans, zucchinis and capsicums (hidden at the back) with the odd stray potato coming up as well. These grew really well until we got a week of super hot weather and the beans just shrivelled up. Luckily I had already picked over a kilo from them, but they were promising so much more to come. Sigh. They have ended up producing another flush of beans, but they are kind of soft and limp, not that fantastic.



These are some of our climbing beans a bit earlier in the year. They are Rattlesnake beans, which are a favourite of mine - good producers and really delicious! Also a bit battered by the heat, but still produced well.

Anyway, I hope all your gardens are growing well and giving you lots of tasty treats wherever you are in this world!

cheers Jules

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!

Happy New Year Chooks!

I hope everyone had a great new year!We had lots of fun at a friends place and I'm feeling pretty tired tonight, so I 'm going to hit the hay soon, but I thought I would post these pictures of some of our chookies. They are real characters, these girls, and we get a lot of enjoyment (and eggs!) from them. We currently have 8 chooks and 2 babies, they are very cute.

Here are the hens scratching around in their yard.

I will post a longer piece about the Growing Challenge and how my garden is going at the moment very soon!

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.