Raining and picking

I have certainly found empathy for the poor farmers at the moment. They just can't win. I have bloated and rotting strawberries thanks to the rain and I assume they taste.... well tasteless!

While our farmers are having troubles with their grain crops, damaged bloated cherries and stone fruit, the rain is exacerbating many of the issues I have eg Apple Scab (which is on both my quince and my apple).

On a brighter note, I do have some tasty things that have been coming out of the garden and onto my table. Lettuce galore! The chooks have also been feasting on this very productive stem lettuce. I also have some delicately flavoured celery. The two most productive things in my garden have started their travels to my table - silverbeet and the yellow zuccinin's. The silverbeet isn't "big" yet, but it is lush looking and tasting. We have already made and devoured a fresh silverbeet and fetta quiche. To date the yellow zuccini's have been a little on the small side, but they are slowly increasing in length - Yay!

Baby bean plants

Raspberry flowers

What is well under way? Hmm, well I don't think the beans will be far off from the start of their harvest. Raspberries can't be too far away (though I think the rain may impact on their size and flavour), and the corn is powering along. Tomatoes are slowly chugging along (perhaps I will get some kind of a crop off them???) and there is a tiny cucumber on the tiny cucumber.

I have some pumpkin vines starting to do their thing about the yard. Will have to wait and see just how much of the yard they devour this year! I have avoided pumpkins for a couple of years due to the amount of yard that I have left once they have engulfed it, their pretty lame flavour and development, and due to a large harvest a couple of years ago I haven't been too keen to actually eat pumpkin, but I am ready again this year :)

I can't remember whether or not it made it into the last post, but I have finished the roads around my yard! I can get from my backdoor to my shed without getting my feet dirty (unless the chooks have been out and have burried my paths). I have a lovely new section of paving and a beaut ramp that has been designed for the purpose of one small child cruising down and round the garden on his bike (and the transport of goods and services around the yard by wheelbarrow (especially a small red wheelbarrow).

The red pears are causing people confusion in my yard. People seem to think (or dream) that they are figs, even though their shape couldn't possibly be confused with any other shape - a pear is a pear! Nashi's are growing well (even after a pair of small hands removed a few!) as are the quince (despite the attack of pear slug and some kind of fungal disease on the leaves, possibly apple scab).

There are always so many things to do in the garden. The best chore's at this time of year have got to be watching, harvesting, and consuming (while watching)! Mmm perhaps yellow zuccini fritters for dinner???

Paitently waiting... or not...

Watching the garden grow can be like watching a kettle boil...

Everything seems to be taking forever to grow at the moment. Some things have really taken off - the Nashi, Apple, Quince, and Pear, also the beetroot (YUMMMO!), one yellow zuccini and the lettuce. The lettuce is definitely better this year than last year, I like to think that is due to the shade frames that I built to shelter them from the harsh Lithgow sun (when it appears!). Everything else seems to be struggling, especially the capsicum, silverbeet (which makes NO sense at all given the growth of the beetroot!), the corn, and the most of the zuccini. Don't know what their problem is, but I really wish they would get over it and just grow...

Oh, hang on! How could I forget about the amazing strawberry patch?! I have never seen so many strawberry flowers. All I need to do is protect them from the "reaching" little hands of my son, who is keen to eat them regardless of their colour and stage of ripeness (or lack there of!!!).

I haven't really done much to the veg garden over the last couple of weeks (except for a weeding session the other day). I have been busy though! I finished my garden gate (not that attractive, but happily functional) and fence. I have also carefully pulled down (brick by painstaking brick) the brick fence at the front of my house. I have had plans for a while to use these beautiful Lithgow bricks to finish building my garden path out the back (didn't really want to pull the wall down as it was a beautiful feature, but it was too dangerous to stay put).

Today was spent paving... and I finished. I am pretty happy with the result, despite not following the instructions given to my by my father (yeah, I know, I will probably regret it later when it sinks and warps). It is sort of level, but needed to bend and slope to a certain extent to work in with the world around it. It looks happily rustic...

Unfortunately I ran out of bricks, so I will need to extend my modestly built and kinda quirky (and not so level and strait) deck. A job for tomorrow perhaps????

I have also spent the last couple of days on my local orchid mission. I went up the hill a couple of times over the weekend with my son in search of some new ones. There was success yesterday, but I neglected to take my camera with me, so today I took the opportunity (and what a great excuse to delay paving!!!) to head back up the hill to capture these beautiful specimens on modern "film". I am up to 7 obvious varieties so far, and there must be loads of time left in "orchid season". I shall post some pictures of what I have found soon.

So many options for jobs to do tomorrow while my son is at daycare...

New Growth

Well, study is done for the year, so now I can concentrate on the things I really enjoy - gardening, walking and music!

The instant I finished my last essay, off I went out into the garden to see what had been happening over the last few weeks while the books had taken over my life. Things have grown, snails and birds have been destroying, the weeds have been slowly advancing, the citrus trees are slowly recovering from the winter harshness, some flowers have burst into bloom, while others have made way for the beginnings of hopefully tasty fruits!

This is the first year that fruit has set on my pear tree! I am pretty excited as its not your average pear. It is a red variety that I can't wait to taste (can't remember what, but something like Sensation Red - I will endeavor to find the missing links). I will be working hard to keep the pear slugs off it and my other trees this year.

A couple who visit the local bowling club each year around this time with their sturdy seedlings have been and I have come home with my usual purchases - capsicum, tomato, silverbeet, and lettuce. I pretty much grow these things from seed myself, but I need to be better organised to get things planted much earlier than I have in past years, plus the sparrows don't seem to do much damage to their hardy seedlings as they do to mine!

The seeds and seedlings I planted earlier all seem to be doing well - with the exception of the capsicum (haven't had much luck in the past, but I will keep experimenting) and I have lost some of the cucumber and zuccini (which is fine as I only really need a couple of plants of each). The self-seeding stem lettuce are really benefiting from the shade trellis' I have provided for them! The two corn varieties are up and doing their thing.

Strawberries!! There is going to be a strawberry bonanza in my yard this year. I have never seen so many flowers on them. My son is going to absolutely love it. I am personally not a fan of the strawberry, but nothing compares to home grown strawberries for flavour - just ask the resident snails.

I am still not sure what the blueberries and raspberries are going to offer this year. The blueberry flowers are plentiful, but the plants are still relatively young. At least there is no dog this year to remove branches and whole plants from their lodgings... As for the raspberries, flower development has just begun. Hopefully the dust storms and severe winds will stay away and I will get fruit set. They are in a different position than they have been in past years, due to their "wandering" tendencies, and they were still settling in to their new bath last year - will have to wait on the outcome of this little experiment.

The natives in the garden all seem pretty happy and I am extremely excited to announce that I am going to get flowers on the waratahs for the first time! I have waited about 5 years for this. The Prostanthera have been out for a few weeks, and the Pelaleucas and Olearea have just started flowering. With the flowering of the fruit trees now finished the colour from these is welcome!

It has also been pretty amazing at the moment out in the bush for orchids. I have been up the hill a few times each week to collect images of the amazing orchids that grow up there. I have seen more this year already than past years combined (I am actually making a concerted effort to go and record what is there week to week!).

It's Raining!

Woohoo, its raining! This is a good thing. My 3 little "water tanks" (really 200L x-olive drums) are all empty. I asked for rain and down it came. It will also be a good thing for my recent plantings.

Also, in my shed, where I put the tomato seeds to hopefully grow, I have found tomato seedlings! I am loving this, as last year I couldn't manage to get any to germinate. Now I just have to look after them until they are ready to move into the garden (despite the nice weather, I am still scared of late frosts). My pear tree has its first flowers blooming, the Nashi is in full flower, and the apple has one fully open beautiful bloom. I love this time of the year in my garden. The only depressing thing is that the spectacular magnolia flowers are now turning brown and falling to the ground. My son told me today "broken" as he pointed to the fallen petals. That made me a little sad.

I have harvested some of the parsnips as I am too impatient to leave them any longer. They could be a little bigger, but they are sweet and tender. My first parsnips! I will definitely grow them again next year.

A day of planting

Remains of the winter veggies 

After spending an afternoon in a friends garden helping do some planting, I was keen to get out and put more into my little patch of dirt. Unfortunately I am aware that I may well get burnt again by a late frost (planted some things 4 times last year before the frosts decided to leave my garden alone).

Mmmm, before I can go any further with this I just need to make a small comment on the lunch I am currently eating. Besides being REALLY tasty, it is pretty fresh. In it is my Kale, Kohlrabi, and some baby onions (had to be removed to make space for some summer plantings). It is a great reminder as to one of the reasons I love to spend so much time in my garden.

Today's harvest that turned into lunch!

Back to today's activities so far. As I mentioned, I decided it is time to put in some of the summer veggies. I have planted 2 small sections of corn (a red variety that I grew a few years ago and collected the seed, and a sweet corn), 2 zuccini varieties (a black one and a round one), squash, 2 types of cucumber (German pickling and an apple variety), rockmelon (dreaming of big things!), and some Jap pumpkin. 

Then I cheated a little (more cheating still to come if my tomato seeds remain as such!). I have planted some capscicum seedlings, yellow zuccini seedlings, celery, and some rainbow swiss chard. Some of these I haven't had much luck with in the past, but I am determined to have a go and get it right. I have never grown celery, so I thought I would have a go.

With the addition of chickens this year my "compost" has been enriched, both in volume and quality. My wonderful neighbours provide me with all their kitchen scraps and occasionally their lawn clippings (as I have removed all my grassed areas to enable more production and to save time and money on mowing). The chickens have scratched all this around and made a few additions of their own. After the chooks have done their job I then wheelbarrow this beautiful mix into the compost construction that I built (again, not quite complete). Here is where the worms that live there finish off the product. There are a couple of areas in the garden where i put some of this amazing (and well cooled) compost about a month ago. Today I planted into it and wanted to eat the soil. It was amazing. Lets just hope it lives up to its looks!

Spring is in the air!

Its Spring so its time to start a new blog about my garden. I love gardening and there is always something interesting to see or do. Last year my son and I watched a tiny caterpillar turn into a big caterpillar and then hide in its web. Unfortunately my son was too young to understand that he shouldn't pick this "cocoon" off the tree it was on, so there will be no beautiful citrus butterfly this year :(

Back in the "beginning"

About my garden:

My garden grew from a pretty unloved state into something full of life. It is a small garden, but gives me great joy. I have replaced a barren "grass only" disaster (see picture to the left!) into a productive and enjoyable space. It is far from finished, with many projects still to come and others not yet complete. That said, I have: a chook house and pen housing 4 happy chooks that provide my son and I wish fresh happy eggs and hours of entertainment in watching them go about their daily business; a number of fruit trees (pear, nashi, quince, lemon, orange, apple); berry world (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries); the "C" shaped veggie garden; the small herb garden; and the rest filled in with mostly local provenance natives. Oh, but how could I forget about the recently planted Kiwi fruit and the two cold climate edible grapes (with the red variety producing bucket loads of tasty fruit last year!)

Possibly more sturdy than the house!!!!

Winter in my garden is usually a pretty desolate time. However, this year I made a serious attempt at planting a winter garden. I usually grow garlic, but that's about it. This year I grew kale, garlic, onions, leeks, broccoli, swedes, parsnips, cabbage, spinach, and attempted broad beans again (unfortunately without much success). There were also a few sad looking beetroot seedlings that a friend gave me that were going to be thrown out from a local nursery. I planted them thinking that they would die. However, they managed to survive our harsh winter and have just sprouted new green shoots and are really taking off.

I am looking forward to starting to harvest the parsnips. They are looking pretty amazing!

I have 4 happy chooks that I fence OUT of my veggie garden. They can be let into different parts of the veg garden if I want them in there, thanks to my fence design. They are currently roaming about the rest of my garden searching for whatever it is that chooks search for.

Little man learning to love his new feathered friends

I am looking out my back door and can see the beautiful purple magnolia flowers, the apple and quince trees starting to leaf up, the Nashi and pear getting their first flowers and birds happily chirping and flitting about. So busy out there!

Magnolia this spring