The Not-So-Quiet Winter

If you believe the gardening books, winter is supposedly a quiet time in the garden. A time for rest and reflection, maybe planning ahead for the following year. Are they kidding??!!! I have been busier than ever this winter working in our garden.

I posted about building our veggie patch a few months ago after we moved here. I am pleased to say that although it was a fairly rushed job, with me desperate to get something (anything!) into the ground before winter hit, it has done extremely well and has fed us many greens over the colder months.

 Plenty of kale, spinach, silverbeet, rocket and lettuce through the winter

Following that, in the past 2 months I have :-

• Planted a row of 6 bare-rooted rose bushes, outside our main front window (as a bit of a privacy screen from passing bushwalkers and locals walking their dogs!)

I have since made this into a long strip of 'rose bed', with mulch to keep out competing grass



• Planted a hedge- row of  5 hazelnut trees I bought 2 years ago. see here   for the original post. Somehow they have miraculously survived living in large pots (thank you) and hopefully will thrive now they are in the ground.

• Planted over 500 flowering Spring bulbs throughout the front, back and side gardens, and in pots which can be moved around to suit our window view when they flower. Some of the daffodils are just starting to flower now. I also planted tulips, freesias, jonquils, muscari, anemones, ranunculi, ixias, snowflakes, dutch iris, chincherinchee.... so many more!

• Established a small garlic patch of both Australian Purple and White bulbs (around 30 plants) and a separate potato patch (around 30 seed potatoes) including Sebago, Nicola, Desiree and Ruby Lou.

• Planted 2 varieties of blueberry bushes -Northland and Anna- in the back garden. The area I chose to plant them in is a sunny spot but has pine trees hanging over the fence from the property behind- this means the soil here is naturally acidic which blueberries love, and the pine needles that fall create a natural acidic mulch. Ideal conditions for them, less work for me!

• Planted a variety of dormant berry canes- thornless blackberry, boysenberry, and 13 raspberry canes. All are against fences where they can be tied up when they start to grow (hopefully profusely!)

• Started transforming the side garden into a mini orchard (we call it the side garden, its the equivalent of a normal front garden but our house is long and sideways on a corner block). In there we have planted 3 apple trees- (Granny Smith, Red Fuji and Gala), 1 nectarine and 1 peach (all dwarf varieties) along with rhubarb and the raspberries. I am thinking of buying a double-grafted pear as well, if I can make a space! The garden was already quite full with deciduous trees and a few other random trees, including a huge cypress which is beautiful but creates a lot of shade Luckily this is a sunny North facing garden so the fruit trees should do well. Our daughter has claimed the Gala as her tree, and our son has always loved Granny Smith apples and wanted his own tree since he was 3, so it was a happy day when he got to plant it :-)

This corner was not even visible when we moved in- covered in overhanging trees
• Oh and of course not forgetting our feathered friends! We put up a brushwood fence along the back boundary to hide the tangled mess of ivy and other weeds in the property behind us (after lopping off several huge pine tree limbs that were overhanging our garden). We then built the chook pen similar to the first one we made. Chicken wire and star pickets, old gate, A-frame inside for shelter, sleeping and nest boxes. It is approx 25 m2 so plenty of room to scratch around in.

Our hens were so happy they immediately started laying again! After our egg-less winter, the very next day 3 of our 5 hens had laid! And they haven't stopped since. we are now getting over 20 a week from the 5 chooks which is great.

It is exciting to see my vision coming into reality, although I can be a little impatient at times (!) and the vision is a pretty fluid one, and often morphs into other ideas.
Our ultimate aim is not to be self-sufficient here, but to provide as much as we can for ourselves of fresh, healthy food, whilst enjoying our garden and also living in a practical and beautiful space.

Achievable?

Watch this space.

:-)

What a difference a day makes ....

.... 24 little hours..... since yesterday- this is how my patch looked today!

Snow came from nowhere, extremely exciting for kids, beautiful to look at. But I hope my veggies survive!

My New Winter Veggie Garden

I think its about time I showed my new veggie patch- it is still very young and new but showing lots of promise! I picked this area as it receives sun most of the day and is very sheltered. Our back garden is much warmer than the front (open to wind) or side (shady) which is important in our cold climate. The colorbond fence at the back and the shed to the side make a little microclimate, which I am hoping will equate to more food in less time!

We roped in my in-laws to help while they were staying here (hey, no such thing as a free lunch eh?!!) which made things take shape pretty quickly. We used whatever materials we had for borders- some timber offcuts and old timber posts, short star pickets and even an old sign was cut in half! Hopefully one day they will be replaced with handsome hardwood sleepers, but for now I was happy to just get something to hold the soil in. A few bricks are makeshift 'steppers' so I can get in to the middle without crushing the plants.

My helpers and the newly filled bed.

Only these few herbs were plants, the rest raised from seed.

The main patch is a raised bed as the garden is kikuyu lawn, which truly is like digging into carpet. Much easier for quick results was to put down cardboard and thick newspaper layers (to block the grass growing through), then heap up with around 30cm deep of good soil. We bought our soil in from a local nursery and it is a rich mix of animal manures and mushroom compost, a specific product for vegetable beds.

The main bed pictured here is 6 metres long x 1.2 metres wide, and used about 2/3 of the 2 cubic metres soil we bought, so cost around $70 to fill. I think it was worth doing for the quick results and less back-breaking for us :-)

....and yesterday, starting to look a lot greener

So what did I plant? Well here in the Blue Mountains winter choices are pretty limited for this season. I chose things that we will actually eat, that don't take a lot of room and that work in our climate.

English Spinach
Silverbeet
Curly Kale
Tuscan Kale
Rocket
Italian Lettuce

Broad beans

Sugar Snap peas
Massey (shelling) peas

Snow Peas

Leeks

Broccoli (Di Cicco)

Broccoli (Romanesco)

and various herbs- parsley, thyme, oregano, lemon thyme, lemon balm, coriander

English Spinach

Trying to coax my peas to find the string!

Each has its own section, but given that I had my kids 'helping' some of the the seeds were broadcast thickly rather than sown in rows, such as the curly kale which germinated fantastically, possibly because a whole packet of teeny tiny seeds was spilt! I'm working on the permaculture principle of having no gaps to block weeds :-)

I have used no fertilisers other than a couple of waterings with diluted worm juice from our worm farm. I think the soil has enough goodness to last quite a while.

Curly Kale- enough to feed the street!

We will certainly not have enough to feed our family, (unless we live on kale!) but even supplementing our shop-bought groceries is a great start. It is a great on-going project for the whole family, our kids have learnt so much and now get really excited when they see the huge fat worms in the patch because the soil is so good!

Leeks in recycled poly-pipes to blanch the stems

I have just started another section as well, up to the shed, to plant my garlic and potatoes into, but I will leave that for another post.

Happy gardening!  :-)

Propagating Rosemary & other lovelies

OK, this must be one of the easiest gardening tasks I've done. I know it is supposed to be easy, lots of people have said that, but I never propogated anything before so it was a first for me.

I started with a bunch of rosemary bought from the local fruit and veg store for $2. I cut the tips off 8 stems to roughly 8-10cm or so, (the rest of the stems were dried for kitchen use) removed the leaves up to about the top 2-3 cm (I don't really do exact measurements!) and dipped then ends in some honey before popping them all into a plant pot of seed raising mix.

The honey apparently does a similar job to hormone rooting powder- it encourages roots to form. And seed raising mix works better than normal soil because it is fine and well draining (although a coir peat/compost/sand mix can work well too).

That was done a couple of months ago and I'm very pleased that all the cuttings have taken and are growing happily. 3 of them have only small roots and so are still in the 'mother' pot (!) but these 5 were very vigorous, and were planted into their own pots last month. I placed them in front of the veggie patch and when I moved them yesterday I found the roots were coming out of the bottom and growing into the garden!!!

small but strong- these have roots out of the pots~!

Now I have the happy task of finding permanent homes for my new plants. 2 of them have gone near the back door, close to the kitchen.

I also have some hydrangea cuttings taken from our last house before we moved, they have also taken very well, I think I have around around 6 out of 8 survived, using the same technique.

Dizzy with my success (!) I am also trying lavender propogation, from a big overgrown lavender I bump into every time I walk out the back door (I don't mind though, it smells incredible!) I want to ensure it lives on before it the mother plant gets a severe haircut!

:-)

Costa's Garden Odyssey

How great is this new show? I love it! And how wacky is Costa? He is like a hippy Steve Irwin of the gardening world, all animated and arms flying!

I watched the third episode last night and it was so full of interesting and useful bits and pieces. I loved the permablitz idea, where groups of volunteers work to transform someone's garden, and in exchange they learn whatever skills they are interested in by hands-on work and in workshops. It reminded me a bit of the native gardening course I did last year, there was a lot of weeding, planting and mulching! but I learnt a lot both in the classroom and outside.

I think it beats the other 'lifestyle' shows on tv hands-down (Better Homes than mine etc) there is a lot less fluffing around sticking lace onto plantpots (or whatever!) and a lot more gritty, useful permaculture-based ideas.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it yet, despair no longer! You can watch them online and get all the info HERE on Costa's website.

I'm looking forward to episode 10 at the end of next month, he has done a segment from right here in the Blue Mountains!

Costa's Garden Odyssey - SBS Thursday nights 8pm

Shameful gardening update ...

I haven't blogged about any gardening for a while ... and if you continue reading you will understand why!

I wrote about the state of our backyard recently HERE after the chooks had 'moon-scaped' it, I am thinking I will put a mulch-type pathway through, going around the middle section, and up to the top corners where we go a lot (washing line one side and chook pen on the other) which sections off the centre. Still thinking of what I can put in there, as it is shady and has lots of tree roots, but need to do something fast as the soil is turning to dust..... any ideas welcome!

That leaves the front rectangle to become grassy again, and the fence sides ... well, not sure about them.

On the food garden front - well that has been somewhat shameful too. Practically nothing grew over winter, even though we didn't get frost. The patch is looking very sad :-(

The little bits of green that are growing are parsley, a handful of lettuces and a few silverbeet.

My cauliflowers didn't work at all, the few that survived long enough to transplant into the patch have just sat there providing food for the odd snail, but not displaying anything that looks like a flower.

My leeks, which I grew from seed in April, still look like skinny, spindly grasses sticking out of the soil. I was dreaming of leek and potato soup over winter- no chance!

I have about a dozen or so garlic plants in, which seem to look ok (above the ground anyway) but when I sneakily dug one up yesterday for a peek, there was just lots of roots.

Times like this are so disheartening! I really thought we could have a patch full of healthy, organic produce over each season, but instead it is depressingly empty.

:-(

Ho Hum, life goes on. Spring in a couple of weeks, and the weather is warming up already, so I will simply get my box of seeds out and sort through what can go in next. Its does seem that leafy greens do fine in the patch, but root vegetables and fruiting ones don't, so I wil bear that in mind. Perhaps the soil has lots of nitrogen but not much else? Nitrogen produces lots of green growth but not so good for fruiting or flowering, although by composting our chook manure it is supposed to stabilise all the nutrients ...... oh, I thought this was going to be easy - so wrong!

Oh, almost forgot, I did do something today! I found these in the back of my veggie cupboard .....

Oh yes, the shame again! I couldn't believe the enormous shoots on these potatoes, (my children thought they looked like 'aliens' !!) and decided they would be great for planting. Certainly not going to eat them anyway!

I read recently about planting them into sacks, with compost and mulch, a bit like the potato-cage idea. As they grow, you just roll up the sack a bit more and top up the compost to cover the stems (so you don't get poisonous green potatoes!) We have loads of big sacks from the produce store (they give them away, used to have bulk chook grain in them) and also loads of compost to use (2 compost bins full) so with my 2 little helpers we planted the wrinkly spuds into a sack each.

We spent quite a bit of money and effort last year on certified seed potatoes, only to yield -nothing. So, this time ....

If they work - bonus! Lots of free spuds!
If they don't - well, we will have neat sacks of compost ready for the next experiment!

:-)

Autumn in my garden

I just love Autumn in the mountains ...
































I was despairing yesterday at the state of our back 'garden' since gettting our chooks (the price of free-ranging!) They have destroyed a lot of the soil, scratching up too much and turning areas into dustbowls. So I am trying to focus on the nicer aspects today, if I look up to the trees and not at the ground it seems so much better !!!


We have 9 maples in our back garden, and a few at the front. At this time of year they do look their best as the leaves start to turn ..... some just starting to change quietly to soft yellows and pinky-orange, others (like the one above in my front garden) screaming scarlet red.


The trees mark a definite season here, and I love that about this area. Somedays it feels as though Autumn is sort of lost somewhere summer and winter, as we can have gusts of really cold wintery weather, then strangely warm again for days. So it's reassuring to be reminded we live in a part of Australia that does have 4 definite seasons (the little bit of English left in me likes that!) and what better to remind us than our own back gardens.


:-)

Backyard Revolution

I was pleased (and quite surprised) to see 'Backyard Revolution' aired on '60 Minutes' last week. Surprised because its not their usual type of sensationalised story, and pleased because it seems the general population is waking up to the benefits of growing your own food!

Peter Cundall appears with his usual 'chuck-it-in-the-ground-and-it-will-feed-you-for-months' approach (I love him! He makes it look so easy and is always inspiring. Can't believe he is 82!)

If you missed 'Backyard Revolution' or for those overseas, you can watch it by clicking HERE

Its only about 12 minutes long so no excuses!

I have been wondering whether this really is a 'revolution' that is sweeping the country, or whether it's just that my eyes are opened more now and I'm mixing with different people (real or online) that have the same interest .... but I'm starting to realise that yes, people are getting out and getting into their gardens and growing more than lawn!

The show just touched on some of the reasons why growing you own food is beneficial, and mostly talked about the benefits of fresh food over processed food, rather than home-grown over supermarket fruit/veg. I would have liked to see a little more talk about food miles, genetic engineering of food and how huge corporations like Monsanto are taking control of our food future, but hey, its only a 12 minute slot! and for this type of story to be covered at all on a mainstream show is progress.

Viva la revolution!

This weekend in the garden ...

Gardening update- planted some more seeds into containers today. My original plan was to plant something every week to make sure there's always something on the go at various stages.

Planted -
Bush Beans -cherokee wax (black beans in cream pods)
Climbing Beans - purple king (purple pods)
Watermelon - Moon and stars
Peppermint, hopefully to make tea (smallest seeds I've ever seen!)

.... all in recycled containers until they germinate (yoghurt pots, strawberry cartons, snow pea cartons) as the slugs are feasting here on my veggie patch this week, so much rain, they have eaten ALL my Blue Lake beans just as they were getting big, they've also had go at all they leafy veg, zuchini, tomatoes .... aarrrgggghhh ! This way I'll grow them big and strong before planting out.

So we are trying an organic method of slug control- the BEER TRAP! Hubby bought a bottle of VB tonight (quite weird as we don't drink, so had to shell out $2.50 just for the slugs) and I filled some containers and have set my traps! The idea is they will be attracted to the beer, crawl in and then get stuck and drown.

Either that or they will invite all their mates round, order pizza and start playing AC/DC at 2am .......

Yesterday made another no-dig bed at the sunny side of the house, (couple of metres long x about 50cm wide) to plant the next lot of tomatoes into (have about 11 seedlings waiting squished in a strawberry carton).

Did it like this -

1. roughly clear weeds/ grass from area
2. cover ground thickly with newspapers for the base (at least 6-8 sheets thick, overlap the edges)
3. build up with lucerne mulch to about 15cm deep
4. next layer was a load of fine wood shavings/shredded newspaper/chicken manure (just cleaned chook house out!)
5. layer of straw about 10cm deep

Water each layer in between, esp paper or it will fly all over your garden!

When I'm ready to plant I will just put small piles of compost, soil, or potting mix to plant the seedlings into. Maybe some blood and bone too. By the time the plants are putting down roots, the manure will be composted and the whole pile will be settling.


Have got a few no-digs on the go and they seem to work really well. This is my biggest though. Its next to a small bed of potatoes that have FINALLY surfaced ... hooray!


Quite a productive weekend !

Veggie Patch from scratch

We started this only last month- and have already eaten some of our efforts! We picked a small area (2m x 3m) of weedy lawn where the sun hits most of the day. I marked it out roughly and started to dig.... really hard work, the ground was so hard, dry and full of weed roots if was like digging carpet.

There was no way anything would grow in that, it was actually repelling water, so I dug in a bag of compost, 2 bags of cow manure and 1 bag blood & bone.


Eventually it looked like something like soil ....

(no need for gym membersip this year!)




We made a border with some recycled timber sleepers, then topped them with some mud bricks, bushrock and old house bricks (total cost - nil)!

Some cheap lattice things at the back from the reject shop as trellis for climbing plants, and hey presto !

I had been trying my hand at seed raising for the first time (not fantastic results but enough to have something to plant! ) so some of them went in, and some seeds direct to the soil.

I have bought seeds from a few sources who sell 'heirloom' or 'heritage' varieties, sometimes organic, but always open-pollinated and non-genetically modified. These are the varieties of foods that used to be around generations ago, but have been 'culled' by supermarkets nowadays if they don't travel well (think hard strawberries!) or withstand extended periods of sitting in warehouses. (Did you know supermarkets generally won't stock apple varieties that have a shelf life of less than 4 months? Wonder how long it takes from the orchard to your fruit bowl?)
Heirloom varieties do however, have better flavour and extended growing seasons, so ideal for small home-veggie-gardeners!


There are plenty of online companies in Australia, but the ones I like are:

http://www.diggers.com.au/
http://www.thelostseed.com.au/
http://www.cornucopiaseeds.com.au/


I also got some seeds from my native gardening tutor, and some from a swap I did on Aussies Living Simply http://aussieslivingsimply.com.au/


So.... what did we put in???

Broad Beans
Peas (greenfeast)
Tomatoes (2x full size, 2xcherry size and 1 xplum type)
Pak Choy
Cos Lettuce
Mesclun Mix
Turnip
Cabbage
Radish (kids project!)
Silverbeet
Carrots
Beetroot (rainbow)
Zucchini (black beauty)


hmm ...think thats it .... oh, and a big flat rock in the middle so I can stand on it to reach everything!


We later put more stakes in the front and planted some climbing beans (Blue Lake) in front of the border wall (making use of all spaces!)


It's all doing pretty well , considering our local water restrictions and our lack of experience!

Have eaten the radishes (very proudly harvested by our kids) and bits of various lettuces.

Its still only mid Spring so the best is yet to come.....

(7 weeks after sowing!!)

Growing Veggies -1

We decided to have a go at veggie gardening (like most people I know) because of the rise in chemicals/pesticides and other toxic substances used now, as well as the rising cost, and the fact that what is available to buy in the shops is often weeks or even months old (even if it looks lovely) and is often tasteless. We wanted to grow a few things as organically as we could to see if there really was a difference, and also just to see how easy/difficult it was.

So we started growing our first veggies in the winter... perhaps not the wisest but hey, its all an experiment! Besides, there was a 2-for-1 special offer coupon from oasis seedings (and I do love a coupon) so we bought -

Rainbow silverbeet
Broccoli
Mixed lettuce
Snap peas
Flat parsley
Curly parsley
Oregano
Rocket


and planted them into recycled polystyrene boxes (pick up free from fruit/veg shops), some old plant pots and also used our old recycling crate that the council had just replaced.


Ended up looking like this - note the colourful 'artwork' on 2 of the boxes, courtesy of our lovely kids. (note for future- kids paint will run everywhere whenever it rains outside!)

We planted into organic potting mix we bought in, as well as some of our own compost we make from garden waste and kitchen scraps . No chemicals or pesticides as we want to keep the food as 'clean' as possible.

Well, to fast forward a bit .... 4 months later and the herbs are going great, rocket and silverbeet did well too though nearly finished now. It seems the lettuces and broccoli were just there to provide food for the snails/slugs and keep them off the other stuff!

Anyway,we were pretty pleased with our initial efforts so decided we would GO BIG in Spring and do a real veggie patch! More about that later ....