Weekend gardening update

Well I hope all you blog-readers had a lovely Christmas, I have been out of the blog-osphere the past week but we all had a great Christmas, lots of excitement with our children on the big day and enjoying some family time off together.

The summer garden however, stops for no-one! So after a few days neglect it was back into the gardening ... actually never feels like a chore as its always enjoyable.

Firstly, we collected a wheelbarrow full of compost from our first compost bin - it was the really slow type, cold as we filled that bin before the delights of chook poo! Since then we have a second bin full of hot compost (the holy grail of gardeners!) almost ready, and have re-filled the first bin which is also now hot too.



For those non-gardeners amongst you, our compost is made up of garden waste (grass and tree clippings, dead leaves and bark etc) some kitchen scraps (veg peelings, tea bags, eggshells etc) and lately whatever gets cleaned out of the hen house (newspaper, woodshavings and manure).

The kitchen scraps are becoming less as scraps go to chooks and the worm farm, but at least we hardly have any rubbish going out each week.

The resulting compost comes out as a fabulous nutrient rich soil, great as potting mix, topsoil for the veggie patch, seed raising ....

If the carbon : nitrogen mix is right, it will heat up and be ready in a couple of weeks (and no it doesn't smell!) If its cold compost, it takes forever but gets there eventually when the worms move in.

Other garden news - planted out into the patch a row of capsicums and row of beetroots I have been neglecting in small pots for a while. Also a couple of tomato plants to replace the ones that gave themselves up. Zucchini plants are HUGE- now with fabulous flowers which look glorious in the mornings. Purple King beans now are growing up a teepee frame made of bamboo stakes, and Blue Lake beans doing well in their box.

Over Christmas we used our own salad greens for salad with lunch and dinner (can't get fresher than that), and used some of our hot chillis for garlic and chilli tiger prawns on Boxing Day..... OOOOH, YUM !!!