Around the garden

A quick update on what's happening in the garden at the moment. After all the rain we've had things are really happening. The grass has grown to super huge proportions in the side gardens. We are guilty of letting it go while we've worked on the wicker gardens and retaining walls at the far end of the garden so it's not surprising it's now hard to tell there was once garden beds all the way along here. We've started to chop it down, pull it out or dig it up, but it's not going to be a quick job. I'm looking forward to the Easter long weekend to hopefully get a chance to get a good go at it.

The rain has given the apple trees a spur along and they have flowers on and the start of new fruit, as too does the passionfruit vines.

The apple trees are flowering and you can see the start of an apple next to this one. The trees are now about three years old so they are at a size where we should start to see some resulting fruit.

I love the unusual flowers of the passionfruit.

Passionfruit on the vine, and now we wait...

The loquat tree is a mass of flowers heralding signs of a good feed to come and the little mandarin tree is covered in tiny fruits.

This loquat tree only stands as tall as me, but these flowers will probably produce anything up to 50 small fruits across the tree. Normally we just stand there and gobble.

This mandarin is about two years old now. We've had a couple of small fruit that were so tart the only thing we could do with them was make jam. But the fruit look like they are holding well this time, fingers crossed.

Some things that I thought were finished for the season have suddenly sprung back to life. The kale and basil are bigger than they've ever been and to think I almost pulled them out. The chillies have started flowering all over again, just when I thought there would be no more.

Kale on mass at the top, basil brought back to life at the bottom and sides. Pesto here we come.

Flowers mean chillies. These are my favourites, they aren't too hot. I missed out on getting many this season as the chickens suddenly decided after living with them for over a year that they'd try them and really took a shine to them, so much so it's one of their first stops on their rounds when they are let out each day.

Not everything is blossoming however. Regardless of the rain and the sun in between, the water chesnuts haven't been confused about the season and just seem to know it's time to die back. Harvesting them soon will have to go on the to do list.

It's not all about fruit and veg now though, the rose hubby was given for his birthday last year is in flower and the smell is divine. I love roses, but never dreamed I'd have any success with them. This one might just change my mind.

And of course my garden wouldn't be complete unless all this rain brought out the frogs as well. These are one of my favourites, I'm not sure what they're called but they are only about the size of my thumbnail at biggest and although they are green, they shine gold in the sun.

Thanks for sharing my pleasure in my garden at the moment. How is your garden looking with your weather at the moment?

what have I been doing with my time???

Gee, I can't believe as I look at this that it's been 3 months since my last post. This is not because I'm too busy, although I have been up to stuff, it's often because I don't think things I'm up to are all that interesting, or I've been working on a new project and I think I should have all the details together before I post it. Well, enough procratination, here's the update on recent stuff, at least the bits I'm excited enough to mention.

Firstly, I'm pleased to say my chickens have resumed laying. I've noticed a pattern over the last few years. They always begin to lay again, just after the winter solstice which for us was the 21st of June this year. It took about a week before the first egg appeared. Unfortunately it would appear that only one of my chooks is laying though, and this was the case before they stopped for the winter, so my thoughts have been straying towards getting another, although I am concerned about whether I can just introduce a stranger to their little group. If you're reading this and you've got any tips for making the transition easy for them please let me know. I recently spent a day at a friends home and was amazed at the wonderful chickens she had and my husband was inspired by her idea for raising guinea fowl as babies with baby chickens.

I've not planted much this winter, just one lot of broad beans and some peas, with the peas giving me my first small harvest today. The choko vines have continued to keep giving me the occassional choko, and from the rest of the garden, a few bell peppers, lots of chillis, a pile of ginger, lots of gooseberries and even some waterchestnuts. Spring has started to warm the garden and my peach, nectarine and plum have donned their first green sprigs and delicate flowers. Even the citrus have joined in, with my new baby lemonade tree even in flower for it's first time.  The rain has kept everything green, and my blueberries have never been happier.

 Winter has also been a time for getting jobs done in the garden that I'd hesitate to tackle during the heat of summer here. The neighbour has cut down and cut back lots of overgrown trees and let the sunshine into areas of my garden that have been really dark until now. Spurred on by the sunshine we've cleared some overhanging branches and had a big tidy up as well. The old shed has been moved onto a concrete pad that was on the other side of the house and had two sets of old metal shelves we've had for years assembled inside to give me great storage for all my gardening bits. And we've put up some great fencing that we got second hand at a bargain price to replace the holey fencing that was previously around that side of the house as well. As much as my chickens haven't tried to escape through it for some time, I've been concerned that it isn't much protection for them from dogs wandering around the neighbourhood. In tandem with digging holes for the fencing I've pulled out a lot of the singapore daisy that's got out of control here too. There's still a heap more to get out, but I've at least halved it. Everytime I pass the area now I look for any new little shoots popping up that I might have missed. It's time consuming but it's the only way I know to get rid of it. Again, if you're reading this and you've got any organic suggestions for eradicating this weed please let me know as I still have days, if not weeks of weeding ahead of me at this point.

At the other end of the garden my garden beds are undergoing a transformation. To date my gardens have started as 'no dig' beds and then after a crop has been grown, the chook pen would be moved on top, and the girls would work in lots of sugarcane mulch as they dug around searching for seeds and bugs, then left to rest after having some extra compost worked in, ready for their next crop. The system has been great except for a couple of draw backs. During summer these garden beds get large amounts of direct sunlight and watering once a day isn't enough. At times when their is no one to water them each day I've lost many new seedlings and the daily drought then flood at watering time has resulted in poorer production. So this winter I've taken time from the gardening to create new garden beds that I hope will solve this problem, but more on this when I've finished and got photos etc ready to post.

And just to finish off, I was delighted to find a big green frog in the garden. I haven't seen one for quite a while.

January Garden Update, it's all about multiplication...

My poor gardens have been so neglected of late. With the longer trading hours at work over the leadup until Christmas, and a lot of time spent inside the house to get things done ready to received visitors (my lovely sister and her kids) I haven't spent much time at all out in the garden.
Many of the seedlings I'd struck had grown too oversized and pot bound to be able to transplant into the garden. The gardens themselves had become overgrown with weeds and grass and the chickens had dug up anything that looked half decent! So just over a week ago I started the clean up. Out with the strangled seedlings (actually into the compost heap). All pots cleaned and stacked up ready for my next try. I'm pleased to say as I look around my garden, that much of what I've planted recently has been the offspring of last years plants, and my numbers are increasing.

Most of the ginger plants (I'm proud to say I've about 18 plants from last years roots, which started from 1 plant the first year and became 4 last year) planted out into one of the garden beds (new philosophy, not enough spare time to keep this many garden beds going with changing crops) where they will sit happily now for between 6 to 18 months. I normally like to harvest my ginger around August as the leaves die down, but these may not have had enough time in the ground by then to develop good sized roots. They've been given a good sprinkling of "Rooster Booster" to help get them kickstarted in the hopes of getting a great surprise come this winter, but the books all say they need at least 12 months, so we'll see.

The new Ginger bed, 15 plants here

I purchased some Tumeric roots from a fresh food market held near work each Wednesday and they had started to sprout so I popped some into pots to see if I could get them to grow and I'm thrilled to say I have at least one that has pushed up it's first leaf. I had already purchased a Tumeric plant last year along with a couple of Galangal plants (these two are both related to Ginger and given my success with that I figured I'd give them a go). I had wanted to buy more as they are a nice green plant with beautiful leaves, and they seem happy enough to grow in the garden under my giant Ghost Gum where not much else is thriving, but a little bag of roots for $3 seemed like a more cost effective way to get them going than $15 plants.
I weeded and tidied up another of the two garden beds near to the one now containing the ginger. They needed quite a bit of work as the chickens had slowly spread them almost flat. One has been planted out with my peanuts I'd struck from seed from the plants I'd bought last year (two original plants become about a dozen). These too had become seriously pot bound so I'm hoping I haven't left it too long to get some results from them.

Peanut shrub

In the clean up of the garden beds I dug up a couple of tomatoes that have sprung up and transplanted them into a better position near the fence line so I can tie them up and hopefully have a little more control over them as they grow! Each year since I first planted cherry tomatoes I've had them come up all over the place, many I just rip out as weeds, some I take pitty on as they seem so strong and healthy, letting them develop where they sit, only to get frustrated when they overtake other plants in the bed, so this time I'm determined to be the one in control!
To top off my gardening exploits, I put in some french beans in the third bed (my others were all dug up by the chooks in one of their escapades), some peas along the fence line, and lastly a few marigolds dotted around, just for good measure.

French Beans on the way

Reading this it sounds like everything in the garden came to a holt, but as I look around my bananas have grown, and look about ready to pick the first bunches,

 my snake beans have been producing steadily, my spinach has somehow survived the incredible heat through summer and it still going, the rosella seedlings are now about 2 foot high and growing quickly with recent rains,

One of the Rosellas

the Purple prince chilli that stayed no more than a seedling for the last 12 months has actually grown only a little but produced it's first chillies,

The purple prince, worth the wait

the water chestnuts have multiplied as well, quietly growing from last seasons bulbs I kept and put into another tray in the pond in the hope of getting enough to be able to move some into a new pond sometime this year,

The water chestnuts will start to die off ready for harvest

the gooseberries are growing some leaves back after the beetle problems left them stripped, the cuttings from the Brunsfelia (Yesterday, today and tomorrow bush) are holding their own, the raspberries are shooting canes up everywhere, the pineapples have produced new leaves,

the fig has 3 fruit on it, the lemonade tree is loaded down with fruit,

new growth one the potted citrus, the new paw paw has grown noticably,

there's frog eggs in the pond,


Those white bubbles are frogs eggs

 and the purple passionfruit has set fruit and the local pair of curlews have hatched two babies.

This protective parent has both chicks under her wings.

It all leaves me with hope that even without my contant input, things still have a way of getting slowly better.