A quick whip around the patch.

I haven’t done a post for a while on what’s happening in the veggie patch/garden. This is most likely because I haven’t really been doing much out there. With us now being into the third season of establishing the garden, we are finding that it is much more about maintenance rather than building new areas. We are still working on developing paths, contemplation spots and have yet to start tackling the front yard so it won’t be all sit back and relax for a while yet.

Peeking into the greenhouse.

I have a couple of sugar baby watermelon seedlings that appear to be happy and growing well. These may just take over the entire greenhouse!

Sugar baby watermelon

One of last years capsicum has over-wintered well and is throwing flowers with some baby caps appearing, this is much earlier than usual.

Capsicum flowering

I have taken some cuttings from the perennial Rocoto chilli and these seem to be quite successful. I’ve used the method similar to planting laterals that are removed from tomatoes that grow so well.

Rocoto cutting

There is a flower on the mature Rocoto Chilli. It was very rude and wouldn’t look at the camera!

Rocoto flower

Out in the Patch

The flowers on my Souvenir de la malmaison rose have suffered badly from the excessive amounts of rain we have experienced but it is growing nicely.

Souvenir de la malmaison Rose

I have however, had some good results from the roses in the laneway but I didn’t get a good photo. The lilac is magnificent! First time flowering this year and I am in love.

Lilac

This years garlic crop is looking terrific.

Garlic 2016

The shiitake mushrooms are giving the best yield in quite a few years. I think the high rain and humidity is just what they demand.

Shiitake

I have some baby figs, YAY!

and some baby apples.

Apple babies

This button lettuce is proving to be a lovely variety. It is working well as a ‘pick as you need’ lettuce and bounces back quickly. The silver beet and kale behind it is all that remains from the last planting. I need space for tomatoes!

In the berry house, the raspberries, loganberries and thornless blackberries are all flowering profusely.

Berry house

and the grapevine is starting to cover the climbing frame on the roof well with lots of grape clusters evident.

Grape vine

I have some pretty little daisies that bees and hoverflies just love and it is making me smile every time I see it.

Happy daisies

All in all, it’s looking pretty good.

I trimmed a lot of the parsley stalks that were threatening to seed, picked some lemons from our new tree, found some beetroot I didn’t know about (too woody for roasting but I think it will be ok as a dip), some new potatoes, some self sown garlic, mint and herbs and we had enough to throw into a salsa verde for tea.

Harvest pickings

A  peek in the new bedroom.

I have decided that I will now continue working in one room at a time and it will be completely finished before I move onto the next (please remind me of my pledge when I stray). We always seem to fall into the trap of saying “we will get back to that” and it takes a very long time to get back, but no more. I am absolutely going to follow through on this! This is the new spare (guest) bedroom that was part of the exteno. Painting is almost finished, carpet is booked for laying,

We have rehung the old kitchen door on this room and that needs to be repaired and painted. Mr ATMT did the skirting in the robe space this afternoon so that now needs painting. I absolutely love this colour. The walls are Taubman’s Raincloud and the ceiling and trim is Dulux Classic White.  I have almost finished painting the window and it is looking great. The radiator that was in the old room before demolition has been cleaned and polished. This was pain, one of those jobs where you use a knitting needle with a cloth over the end to get into all the little nooks and crannies but worth it.I am already becoming aware while I write, that there will be one unfinished part of this room and that is internal fit out of the wardrobe. We will use a set of the shelving units we had in the temporary kitchen  I think. They are really good and will leave some options for the final design.

What jobs do you leave until you put the house on the market?

Post Christmas Musings

Considering I didn’t really give Christmas much thought this year, I seem to be doing a really great job of needing to recover from it. Yes, I did party way too hard on Christmas Eve, yes, I did eat too much and yes, I had an awful lot of dishes, tables, glasses, bottles and paraphernalia to cleanup, but nothing like we usually deal with. I like to think it is because its been a big year and we now have the opportunity to slow down, so I have. Yesterday was a day of getting up, having a shower and then getting straight back onto the couch. Justification was that I could do some research on kitchen cabinets, tiles, window coverings and all sorts of things for the exteno. I also managed to read a really good book!

Christmas came and went. We had about 25 family and friends gather here on Christmas Eve sharing food, laughing, singing and generally letting loose. I do recall at some time one of the kids made a comment that the tables had turned and they were now watching the oldies do what we used to criticise them for doing. Fun times! This was taken very early in the evening, before everyone had arrived and the fun began. Goodness, I wonder whose rude children they are giving the camera the finger?

Some of the food we shared included a platter of assorted roast veg with marinated mushrooms, roasted red capsicum and almond dip, tomatoes baked with sumac, olives and assorted crudite. Smoked trout served with assorted sourdough crisps Indian Vegetable Pakora. This is always a standout favourite and is requested at most family get-togethers, I use a lot of cauliflower in these and the batter is made using besan (chickpea) flour and beer. Served with mint yoghurt sauce. I made some vegetarian ricotta, feta, kale and chilli rolls, wrapped in filo pastry and served with sweet chilli sauce.

A surprising hit of the night was a chick pea dip I made at the last minute. Purely a can of drained chick peas, lemon juice, parsley, olive oil zapped together in the food processor. Served with some olive oil drizzled over it and some turkish bread. This got lot’s of yummy!

Dukkah served with sesame and rye ciabatta. I cooked this bread on the barbecue and was really pleased with the result. I added black and white sesame seed to the dough which worked really well with the dukkah. Some mini chicken tikka kebabs served with a vietnamese style dipping sauce. There were only four of us here for Christmas Lunch (which turned into tea due to our Christmas Eve shenanigans!). We went to our sons for breakfast and after that decided it might be best to do tea rather than lunch. I am a bit of a sucker for traditional Christmas fare, didn’t take any photos but we had pork, turkey that I had brined before roasting (that went well), ham, roast veg with all the trimmings, pudding and it was all lovely. All cooked on the barbecue to perfection. Who needs a kitchen?

Garden catch up

Today I was back up and rearing to go so I got stuck into the vegetable garden. It’s the first time I’ve focussed on it since our open garden weekend and it was in dire need of some TLC. With more hot weather forecast, I put up extra shade protection around the tomatoes. The late afternoon sun is ferocious and I noticed there has already been considerable damage to some flowers which will reduce the yield dramatically.

Shade cloth overhead

I also hung some netting on the north facing side of the bed to reduce the impact of the afternoon sun.

Light netting along north facing side of wicking bed.

The winds have been awful and the wicking beds have been struggling to keep up. I think mostly due to evaporation from the surface of the beds so I have placed a really thick layer of mulch on the surface. Hopefully these measures will assist in the tomatoes coping with more extreme heat. I trimmed off the growing tip on a few to allow the side shoots to take off. These will have many more new flowers which will hopefully set fruit and not get burned off.

To assist in pollinating the tomatoes, I have for a few years now used an electric toothbrush. You just start-up the toothbrush and touch the stem of the flowers, the vibration shakes the pollen onto the stamens. Much easier than going around with a paint brush or shaking the trusses that can be too rough on the flowers. If you look closely you can see the pollen. A bit like fairy dust to me!

There are still a few raspberries to be found if you look hard.

The grapes are going really well, looking forward to those.

Tonight we had the first bruscetta of the season. The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been producing well and we have been picking these since mid November. Tomatoes, basil, feta, olive oil on top of grilled wholewheat sourdough that had garlic and olive oil rubbed into it. Heaven!

Tomorrow it’s back into the reno I think!

 

 

 

Lucky I like parsnip!

I pulled the entire parsnip crop on Sunday because I needed more space for tomatoes. I am really chuffed with the results, most are a pretty good shape and a decent size. They probably should have stayed in longer to develop some more, but, oh well…………….

 The oddly shaped ones will go into one of my favourite childhood foods. Carrot & parsnip mash! Just boil carrot and parsnip until mashable, drain well add salt and pepper (I like heavy on the pepper) and a good dollop of butter. Mash or give it a stick blender whizz and it’s done. The better shaped ones here will go in with the roast lamb I’m cooking from the recipe posted by Kylie over at  Town Mouse Country MouseOnly problem is that It’s hard to fit the joint and the veg into the ‘toy oven’ so I cooked the veg on the barbecue on a cast iron pot.Worked out OK but unlike Kylie I wasn’t that thrilled with the gravy. I was having a bad day and even spilled olive oil on my keyboard while reading her recipe! Presentation is pretty ordinary too but the lamb tasted great! Our parsnips, our broccoli, our thyme and parsley in the rub.  All clean, fresh and full of flavour. This is why we do these things!Other weekend jobs in the garden were, pulling the first of the garlic to make room for even more tomatoes. Looking great, another couple of weeks will really make it shine I think.The berry house was out of control! First time I’ve been in there since the spring growth started, boy, things had gone ballistic! I found some baby grapes on the grape-vine. This variety is a slip grape we got from a man who used to supply Mr ATMT with winemaking grapes and it also makes a great table grape. First time its fruited so I’m a bit excited really. Couldn’t see or get to the strawberries because of the growth of the raspberries. A bit of jute, a couple of bamboo stakes, some judicious trimming and its back in control in there. As I was collecting the trimmings to go into the compost I realised I was about to waste a great resource-vine leaves. Fresh, organically grown and no blemishes at all. Gold! I will use these to make some dolmades and there will be enough to preserve a few as well. Glad I came to my senses before they hit the compost!

Not this year birdies! These blueberry plants are about 7 years old and I think we’ve picked about 10 fruit at the most. We have however been tagged as an easy target for the birds who love them. Not any more, tonight I covered several with my exclusion bags in the hope they will ripen and we will reap the rewards. Today is remembrance day in Australia, a time to reflect and remember our soldiers from all the wartime conflicts we have sadly been involved in. The Flanders poppy is a symbol of remembrance day developing from its association with poppies flowering in the spring of 1915 on the battlefields of Belgium, France and Gallipoli, this vivid red flower has become synonymous with great loss of life in war.

I didn’t plant that variety but I did grow from Diggers seed “Poppy Ladybird” and it’s very pretty as well as fitting to watch and reflect on remembrance day.

Lest we  forget.

Beginnings and ending crops.

Last weekend I picked the first broccoli of the season and knew I would have to get back out there in the next few days to pick the next lot while at its peak. Didn’t get out there until after work tonight, I have been so busy that I almost haven’t thought about the     ???…..??? (area where I grow my food) mmmm, I need a name for my veggie patch. Back to that later! Tonight I picked two good heads of broccoli, basil, last little eggplant, a good capsicum and some tomatoes from the greenhouse that are almost finished.

I’m hoping to stretch out these tomatoes a bit longer so I can boast that I was still picking tomatoes in June! Every time I get home from work and go straight into the ???….??? I feel all the stresses from a usually busy, full of crap day just easing their way out and clearing my head. See those little critters in the front? Yep, Autumn raspberries!

I was very gracious and shared them (well 1) with Mr ATMT, to which he was VERY grateful. I must admit they don’t have that lush, sweet, full of flavour taste of the summer variety, but nevertheless I was happy!

So I need to come up with a name I can use as a reference when talking about where I grow things. Things like, ‘the patch’, the plot’, ‘the allotment’ have all been used to death and Mr ATMT suggested ‘The Tink Tank”. Sort of works for me, my name is Tink and it is like having a therapy session when I’m out there, I often come up with all sorts of ideas and plans whilst working away. What do you think?

 

It is summer isn’t it?

Another lovely summer day, not! At this rate we will not be seeing many tomatoes, pumpkins or much else that likes a bit of heat. Too yucky to work outside so took a pickie of todays harvest. Zucchini, thyme, parsley, asparagus, lettuce, strawberries, ONE raspberry and an egg. Asparagus just about finished as are the raspberries. If I could only grow one thing it would have to be raspberries. LOVE them!

First jobs for the New Year – and the last of the last years!

I must admit to having a very lazy day today. Not from over partying the seeing in of 2014  but just because it felt right. I am going back into the office tomorrow which doesn’t fill me with glee. I have been really busy since school finished and it was the first time it just felt right to stop.

Some of the jobs I ticked off over the last couple of days in readiness for the new year are:

• Mulching the citrus trees with manure and topping with spent hay to keep cool
• 
• Getting my espaliered pear tree a bit under control and headed the way I want it to.

Before                                                                                             After

• Succession planting of leeks, cucumbers, radish, lettuce and beans
• Cleaning up the perennial cottage garden bed
• Get the holiday herb pot going. A few years ago my sister mentioned they took a pot with lettuce and  herbs away with them and I must admit I thought they were bordering on senility! A few camping trips ago I had a glut of basil, parsley, lettuce and something else, so threw them into a pot to take with us. guess what I have been doing every camping holiday since! It’s amazing how much difference a few sprigs of fresh herbs can make to a camp dinner or breaky. Especially some fresh bruschetta with basil. Mmm, mm, mmmm. These should be ready for our trip in a couple of weeks.

• Mulching, feeding and deep watering the raspberries. I topped the beds up with bags of manure, compost and some pea straw. Rejigging the placement of the strawberry pots so we can actually get into the berry house is an improvement. Really happy with these raspberries in their first season. Adding all this feed now to boost resistance to drying out and to get root system really well developed.
• Sorting out the worm farm and harvesting some worm castings to go onto the surface of strawberry pots above.
• Pruned, tied and generally tidied up the 40 tomato plants I have planted. That seemed to take forever and it appears harvest will be late this year. Not a lot of young fruit developing yet. Plenty of flowers, so I am hand pollinating hoping to get better sets. Zucchini are not setting male flowers so I hope they get working soon or I won’t have any. I attempted pollinating zucchini with a male pumpkin flower yesterday, so that will be interesting!

  

  Big Beef (I think). Name tags a bit muddled.

• Yesterday I got onto the roof of the old stables in the hope I could pick some ripe mulberries that the birds had missed. Not a hope! But while up there I did take a couple of shots of how the yard is progressing. Things look so much different from above. Not bad seeing this garden is only a few months old!
• I can remember reading or hearing somewhere that laterals removed from tomatoes can be replanted and they would grow new plants. I put this to the test a few weeks ago and voila! Really healthy, strong, new plants created. I might do this towards the end of the season and get some fresh plants for the greenhouse overwintering.

Today I set about creating a better system for storing and tracking what seeds I have. Do I really have seed of 11 tomato varieties? How did that happen? I can now record what I get and when planting I can make sure I use the oldest first. I am going to set it up with an auto colour/shading formula so I will be alerted to old or approaching past best by times.

A lovely time watching the pretty little poppies dancing in the breeze today. Can even see some pollen flitting around on this one. Happy New Year everyone!!

In, out, in, out………

Deciding on what to tackle is loosely based around on the weather conditions, fine-work outside, wet-work inside. With the weather being very unpredictable at the moment changing from fine to wet and back again in the space of an hour or so we were doing a bit of toing and froing in and out all weekend. During the yucky, wet periods, it was clean and tidy up the verandah, (which looked absolutely frightful with reno stuff piled everywhere), and continue working on finishing painting the bedroom. We were going to fit the skirting boards but decided it would be best to wait until the floors are sanded. Can’t wait to post a photo of the finished bedroom!

Out for a bit.

Lots happening in the patch at the moment. One of the not so good things is that some crows discovered my corn seedlings and thought they were ideal fodder. With some quick thinking I requested some frames be attached to the beds. These will not only be used for supporting bird netting, but will mean I have something to attach shade cloth to in the very hot weather and they can also be used as anchoring points for trellis, wire and other supports. I think they will work really well and it was good to use up a bit of the old timber that came from a bungalow we demolished. There will be rails going across from  front to back  as well making them genuine ‘Four Poster Beds.  It started raining and we will have to come out again and get back to that.

Back in for a bit.

After a delightful brunch of cereal, greek yoghurt, skim milk and my beautiful strawberries, I headed into the greenhouse and did some planting, feeding, tying up and thinking.

Picking about this many every two days at the moment. They are soooo much nicer than the shop ones.

I am so sick of losing basil to snails and slugs I thought I’d try starting seed off in a hydroponic box. I cut down the lid of a broccoli box so it fits inside the box, made holes that fit small cups in,  filled the cups with potting mix, filled the box with nutrient solution, fitted some bamboo stakes through the box walls to keep the lid at a height that the cups have just their bottoms in the solution. Put some basil seed in cups on top and watered, then plonked the tray into the box. I grew basil in a similar way a few years ago and it was a great success.

See how we go with this!

Thanks to my wonderful Sproutwell Greenhouse, I have some tomatoes just about ripe, 

and some black cherry tomatoes going gangbusters in the old bath along with some rockmelons.

Some great harvests this week, potatoes, asparagus, our first raspberries at this house, (YAY!)

lettuce, herbs, silverbeet, and lots of radishes. I’ve cut the scapes from the garlic and will use them like garlic chives. It is reported that better bulbs result from doing this too.

What’s coming in?

The zucchini are starting to form. Might be able to do some stuffed flowers soon!

Back Outside

Lettuce coming along, garlic nearing harvest time, succession planting of radish and beans in. Replaced corn seed the flamin’ crows mowed down.

And most exciting of all………..dam, thought I had a photo, that will have to wait.

Back Inside

Thai Chicken Patties (recipe Below) with greek yoghurt sauce asparagus, roasted tomatoes and some gorgeous freshly picked spuds.

Wonder if we will be in or out this week!

THAI CHICKEN PATTIES

MT’s THAI CHICKEN PATTIES

• 300g lean skinless chicken, roughly chopped
• small handful coriander leaves
• 1 spring onion, finely sliced
• finely grated zest of 1 lime or lemon, no pith
• 2 tbsp sweet Thai chilli sauce
• 2 tbspn fish sauce
• 1 egg
• 2 slices bread that has been turned into crumbs
• salt and ground black pepper
• ¼ cup coconut cream or couple drops coconut essence (for sauce)

Mix all the ingredients apart from the coconut essence in a bowl. Form into pattie shape balls, let chill about 15 minutes. In a hot (but not too hot) pan, put in a little grapeseed oil. When oil is hot, carefully put the patties in (they are quite moist and soft so be careful). Gently cook and when golden turn to cook on other side.

While patties are cooking mix app ½ cup of greek yoghurt with 2 tblspns chilli sauce, some chopped coriander and  2 tspns of fish sauce. Add a couple of drops of coconut essence or a blob of coconut milk and mix all together. Use as a serving sauce.

I served them with asparagus, tomatoes and fresh potatoes cause that’s what we had, but they would be nice with salad served in a bun or in pitta bread too.

Plight of the humble bee.

The bee is one of nature’s most amazing creatures. Its social habitat, ability to pollinate a huge variety of food plants and the production of their beautiful honey is just some of their interesting factors. Unfortunately, worldwide bee populations  are under threat. Indiscriminate use of pesticides and fungicides  are leading to a massive reduction in bee colonies. Viruses and diseases are taking their toll and some consider genetically modified crops are adding to reducing resistance to these diseases. It is with this in mind I am conscious of planting many ‘bee friendly’ plants in our garden. We should all be mindful of these great agricultural helpers who reportedly travel an average 800km in their lifetime. Even if you are not in the position to have a garden you can help by sponsoring a beekeeper and beehive. Go to www.amazingbees.com.au and see what you can do to help. Was very happy to see this little worker on my young lavender plant.

Spring, joy oh joy!

What a welcome start to spring! The weather this weekend was absolutely beautiful. Sunny, light breeze, bees a buzzing and great for getting stuck into jobs in the garden/yard.

With the chooks being confined to their house more, I thought it best to have a dust bath in there where they can do their ablutions. I grabbed an old tyre from the discard pile at a local tyre centre, trimmed top curve off and filled it with sand, some toppings from where they choose to do their bathing in the garden and some diatomaceous earth (DE). DE is a powder made from fossils and is purported to be great for mite control as well as a host of other conditions. Apparently the sharp cell structure from the diatoms of the DE kills mites. I’m all for trying to treat these things organically, so we will see how it goes.

I’d bathe in that!

Good to see some birds

Native birds are starting to appear at our feeder, so far crimson rosella, lorikeets, king parrots and galahs. It is really interesting watching the hierarchy of them coming in to feed, they all take their turn and get very ‘snippy’ if one variety comes along at the wrong time. Although galahs aren’t our target, they are obviously spreading the word. I don’t think there have been any where near as many mynah birds recently, that’s a big bonus! Hopefully, once we get some of the bird attracting plants established we will be able to cut back on the manual feed.

Strawberry heaven!

I planted some new strawberry plants into my self watering ‘Auto Pots’ and put them in the berry hut. These pots have a great little valve that releases nutrient enriched water into the reservoir of the pot as needed. Can go away for weeks not worrying about watering and it means the problems that sometimes crop up from overhead watering are eliminated.

I am on the hunt for a small fridge or freezer that I can use as a stand for the nutrient solution that is in the olive drum on the pile of bricks. This drum holds approx 80 litres and feeds into the pots in 4mm tubing.

Potatoes/Spuds

My spuds have gone gang busters and grown too high for the bird proofing I installed, so I have to raise the height so when flowers form they wont be cramped. No drama just used some slightly longer bamboo stakes to elevate the poly pipe a bit.

Dinner of a quiche made with home grown broccoli, asparagus and eggs from the girls and it was lovely testimony as to why we do this!

No sooner than the last leaves of the oak tree have fallen, new ones are appearing. Next years compost in the making!             Plasterer has finished the bedroom and hall ceiling. Photos yet to be taken but we are very happy with it!

I proclaim today a P.I.P day!

I’ve decided I’m going to create something called a P.I.P day. That is my acronym for a ‘pig in poop’ day. I have had the best weekend doing exactly what I love doing and that is playing around in the garden and in my greenhouse. So many jobs to do, quite a few ticked off the list too.

Working through the list involved planting all the pot plants, rhizomes, canes, and bulbs that I had purchased over the past few weeks. The cage for the  raspberries is now finished, so in went the last of those. I will add some shelving at the rear of the cage for the strawberries to go on now that it is getting warm enough to take them from the greenhouse.

Planted 2 standard roses either side of the entrance path out the front. This is they first thing we have planted in the front yard since we bought the house. Still not sure if Blue River rose is the right choice, flowering time will tell!

First Compost.

The first batch of finished compost is ready to use, so it went into a new bed made from an old bathtub in the greenhouse. Haven’t quite planned what to plant in it yet, might try some early beans, snow peas and cucumbers.

My stocking up of seedlings to sell at the local massive garage sale day in October is progressing well. Today I potted up (using my great home made potting mix) approx 250 tomato seedlings. Varieties I have planted are San Marzano, Roma, Black Krim, Black Cherry, Grosse lisse, and Yellow mini pear. I stick to common ones for selling but I will try a few different ones for myself. Ran out of the coffee cups and milk cartons I’ve had everyone save for me so I’ll have to put out another wanted call. I also planted out lots of poppy seedlings, some assorted flowers (variety unknown) which I had saved seed from and hadn’t labelled and some lettuces.

We were pleasantly surprised that after the vile, wet week we’ve had that we could get outside to work. GMH started extending the path following the line it will take through the vegie patch. All of this concrete is what has been uncovered on site. With some filling between the slabs I think it will be great! Maybe a water feature in the circular section, yet to be decided.

Harvests this week have been:

Asparagus, broccoli, asian greens, coriander, silver beet and eggs.

Starting to come in thick and fast now!

Edible plantings this week have been:

Raspberries, artichoke, beetroot, strawberries, red currant, blackcurrant, elderflower  and lettuce.

Did pick the first bunch of beautiful cheery flowers too.

Inside action.

We have the plasterers in at the moment, fitting out the master bedroom and re-lining plaster to ceiling in passageway. This is very exciting and means we are one step closer to a job being completed. I dare not list all the other jobs that need attending to as well!

Yep, playing in the garden and in my greenhouse leads me to proclaim it was definitely a P.I.P. day for me. What makes your P.I.P. days?

Weekend wrap

We have done a huge amount of work out in the back yard this weekend but somehow I am left feeling like we have created more mess than beautification! A couple of major tasks to get the final layout in place were necessary, these have been, getting water points in place for the productive garden and chooks and making sure the storm water run off from the new garage was in place. Setting up the raspberry beds with a protective cage  surrounding them to eliminate those pesky birds nicking all the fruit and to install a small garden shed for storing all the ‘stuff’ necessary when working outside that has up until now been in the old greenhouse. Now these jobs have been done we can get into the serious business of bed layout and fencing the area. Now that’s exciting!

Storm water pipe in place to carry water from garage and old stables into drain. Slab for small garden shed in place.

Making a start on permanent berry patch.

The old greenhouse that I bought from my sister years ago which has been used as a temporary shed since we moved into ‘the new old house’  is being re-invented as a protective cage over the raspberry beds. It will be covered in heavy-duty bird net, cable tied to frame and hopefully will do the trick of keeping out the birdies. I am also considering using this space for my shiitake mushroom production but haven’t quite worked out how to integrate that yet. They will be staying in the old hip bath for a while yet!

New garden shed in place. Never mind the fact the slab is a bit too small, nothing that can’t be adjusted! This area will be fairly hidden from view when the grand design is done so plain gal will do just fine.

Canes in the bucket are those I retrieved from existing site, ones on left are newbies.

I retrieved as many canes I could from what I planted last season but they haven’t had a very great start so I also supplemented the planting with some new ones I bought from a local grower. Hopefully we will have enough to ooh and ahh over once they settle in and begin to thrive.

What’s growing out there?

Very happy to announce that the issues I had been having with powdery mildew on the strawberries in the greenhouse seems to have been resolved. I treated the plants with a garlic spray and have been leaving a window open in the greenhouse to ensure good ventilation is achieved. Looking just about ready to eat!

Broccoli ready to start harvesting,

Coriander I planted from a hydroponic pot purchased at a supermarket is doing well and we’ve harvested it for a few feeds in a couple of weeks.

Signs of spring!

This ancient purple magnolia is forming flower heads.

Oooh, now this is exciting! Couple of asparagus starting to shoot.

and the potatoes are all shooting and getting bigger every day.

Harvesting the rewards.

This weekend I have picked silver beet, coriander, lemon-grass, assorted asian greens, broccoli and mint, all of which were used in a lovely chicken stir fry for dinner.

Yep, worth it all! Very nice indeed. What’s growing at your place?