A special Easter gift

I've had my beautiful girls, Naughty, Henrietta, Larry and Buffy since just after Christmas 3 years ago. They have been a wonderful part of the change my little blue shack has brought for me. My original plan for them was to be willing workers, clearing the ground of grass and weeds, allowing me to establish garden beds, eating bugs, and in general being of service in my garden. Little did I realise how many contented hours would be spent with a cup of tea in hand, just watching them roam about the garden. It's been a relevation to me in so many ways, from a naive start(I didn't think for one second they'd eat plants, in retrospect, how stupid was I) until today, they have been an incredible source of learning and company.

Well, today I welcome two new girls, Alice and Wendy. I haven't met them yet, but feel like it's a meant to be thing. I met their current owner a couple of weeks ago. She had overheard me talking with hubby about it being time to move the chook house again and mentioned she needed to move soon and was looking for someone to give her two girls a home.
When I first investigated the idea of having chickens, I had thoughts of keeping about 10. The chook houses are both designed large enough to take this number in comfort, but I was contented with the four I first introduced. If you're wondering how I arrived at four instead of 10 it's because I got overwhelmed making the choice of which ones I would have from a large assortment. I ended up with a white one (Naughty, named by my niece and nephews because apparently that's all they heard me saying to it for the first few days!!!), a brown one, Larry, as she was always on her own at first, a peach one, Buffy, named after the vampire slayer as she is always the protective one when it comes to other birds entering their space, and lastly Henrietta, the baby (bantam) who is black. Four different colours so I could tell them apart. I had always intended to introduce a new chicken each year and slowly add to my little flock. I hadn't done this yet. After seeing the four girls in action, I don't think my garden could survive more than 6 anyways, so I've held off waiting for the right opportunity. I didn't know how old each of the girls were when I first got them, or if they'd even lay. Originally all the girls would lay an egg each every day or so, which was a bonus over their required work duties in the garden, but they've slowed down now. And I had been contemplating getting the extras because now I've been spoilt with our own girls eggs, I  hate eating store bought eggs.
And so fate has had a hand and this morning I'll be welcoming two more girls to our little family. I'm excited and anxious all at the same time, I hope everyone will get along, I hope my girls will accept them and they'll be happy in their new home too. Only time will tell.

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?

On the potting bench

When I first started gardening I bought most of my plants as seedlings from nurseries or from our local Bunnings hardware. This was convenient and made it really easy for me to make up a quick garden bed as the fancy took me. There were some down sides though. I would often select what looked to be the healthiest and the biggest of the seedlings (maybe with a degree of greed I have to admit) which would often turn out to be rather poorly performing plants. On removing them at the end of the season, I would often find an undersized root ball, the exact shape of the punnet cell it had originally come from. I believe this is probably because the plant was already root bound at the time I'd bought it. Often these punnets come with unexpected "extras", sometime caterpillars I've missed seeing under a leaf, or an additional tiny weed that spreads like wildfire on the days I'm not in the garden. And all this comes with a heftier price tag then the huge number of plants I can potentially get from a packet of seeds. My last pet hate with purchased seedlings and the one that has really turned me off buying them is the tiny styrofoam balls that help make up the filling of the potting mix used in their punnets. This stuff never seems to go away. Yet again just a couple of days ago I turned up soil out of a pot to top fill a garden bed and this white menace was everywhere. Things don't look so organic when you're trying to stop the chickens from gobbling these little seed look alikes.

Like most gardeners I turned to producing my own seedlings, from bought seeds, from seeds collected from plants that worked in my garden, from volunteer plants that pop up and from strikings of plants already existing. At first my hubby built me a rough potting bench against the back shed. But time has proved it a little too high for me to work comfortably at (maybe because he's six foot 5 compared to my 5 foot 6), and instead my hive of activity now centres around the old outdoor table. I thought that I should start to share what I'm anxiously waiting on sprouting, what's sitting there waiting anxiously for it's own garden spot, the stories behind the successes and the failures in a regular little update. It also might encourage me as a sort of confessional, to finally plant out some of these poor things that have patiently waited way too long to find a more permanently suitable spot.

Hibiscus cuttings still in their tubes, stacked into a bigger pot to keep them upright.

Lately I've been almost obsessed with growing anything I can get my hands on, just to try, so it's a real mixed bag. I've got what I think are called Spraxis in a punnet, struck from seed which I took from one that just popped up out of the ground near my front door one day, they look kind of like a dutch lily leaf and the flowers are dainty, gold with a red freckle. After the flower comes a seed pod, and well, I couldn't help myself, the seeds went into a punnet and the rest they say is history. Near them, some chillies or maybe capsicum, or bell peppers, in all honesty, they been there so long now I'm no longer sure, but they did come from one of the above I had growing at one point.
I have a large hibicus near the back door, and somewhere in my dreams this will need to be cut down and transplanted to make way for a deck, plus it needed cutting back, so I had about 30 cuttings, of which about 8 or so are now in small pots, another 10 are alive in tubes but still not showing enough root for me to believe they are ready for bigger things, and the rest are compost. Do I know what I'm going to do with either of these things? No, no idea. Just thought I'd give it a go because they were there and I could. I have ginger, lots of ginger, about 2 dozen in old herb pots, struck from the leftovers of last seasons ginger. I want to put these into the garden in the retained area around my levelled wicker bed area, but the area's not fully retained yet and the chickens keep digging it up, meanwhile they are quickly outgrowing their little yellow pots. The yellow pots remind me that I should mention that I kept my pots and punnets from previously purchased plants and reuse them (until they fall apart). I also like to keep same things in same coloured pots where possible, a habit I started when I couldn't really recognise what I'd actually planted. I've also got red pots with loquats grown from my own loquat fruit seeds, and green pots with cape gooseberry seedlings from last seasons crop.
So what's on your potting bench these days?

One tray of ginger waiting to be planted out.

Cape gooseberry seedlings from my own plant seeds

Spraxis to the left, chillies (I think) to the right

The loquat seedlings at least made it to the ground next to the table

A mixed bag of tumeric, ginger, comfrey, and something dead.

Rain, rain, and more rain

It's been raining heavily for the last three days which means I've been unable to get much done in the garden this past weekend. It was raining on my last day off as well. The grass that only a month ago was dried, dead and brown, is now flourishing at knee height. The only plants wilting now are those that are drowning. It's amazing how much the weather and climate can change so quickly.

A fortnight ago, after we had the first lot of deluge I pulled out the cucumber plants which had been flourishing happily in the number one wicker bed up till that first rain. They thrived, protected from the worst of the heat with a shade cloth canopy, and had enough constant access to water via the wicker bed setup, but kept free from water directly on the leaves. My first successful cucumbers! No problems with powdery mildew, no problems with them becoming dried out from lack of water. They were perfect, and delivered a bountiful crop of white cucumbers until the rain came. With the constant wet weather came the powdery mildew, and then the vine in it's weakened state fell victim to an invasion of bad (24 spot) ladybugs and their hungry offspring. I decided to cut my losses and pulled them out. Out too came the first crop of peanuts, perhaps in retrospect a little early, but I still have enough to be able to use some of the crop to replant and go again, and some for a little snack. In their place have been planted a variety of lettuce seedlings and asian greens from seed.  A fornight later the seedlings have sprouted and will soon need to be thinned out.

The chickens were moved off wicking bed number two, and onto bed three, which was already sporting a thick cover of green manure ready to delight the chooks and nourish my soon to be next planting area.
Wicking bed two has been planted out with some snake beans grown from seeds I'd struck from last seasons crop, some tomatoes and basil, edged with the rest of my peanut seedlings and accompanied by some parsley. About a week ago I also popped in some dwarf bean seeds, a mixed of borlotti and butter among others, and some beetroot. I have to say that I think the seeds may have been too old, because nothing has shown itself yet. I have to admit, I'm not feeling positive, given that beans and normally really quick to show.

On the positive, the rosellas I planted out have all settled in really well courtesy of the rain. So too has the sweet potatoes I'd started from slips from others I'd grown. These are outside the wicker beds in the ground gardens created by the retaining walls I've built to level the garden for the wicker beds to sit flat. Older plants like the pawpaw (papaya) and the artichoke that I thought had all but died off in the dry, have been given a new lease of life by the rain and are coming back strong. All sorts of things are popping up, including lots of self seeded parsley, nastursiums and even some basil right at the back door.

The first bananas were cut down a fortnight ago as well, and finally today have started to show a flash of yellow, indicating they are about to ripen. I find once one starts, they whole bunch follow suit really quickly. So hopefully Thursday will see me with some fresh home grown bananas, and by that night a well stocked supply in the freezer ready to use in home made icecream.
Today I also picked the one pineapple that had grown this season. It looked a little the worse for wear today, and when I went to investigate I discovered the base was aready blushing golden on it's way to being ripe.

In all lots coming along nicely. I am keen to make sure the three wicker beds really prove their worth over the next seasons, although with this rain, I wonder why I even needed them in the first place. How's your garden surviving the wet, or are you somewhere where you're still battling the heat and dry?

Benifits of moving house, chook house that is

Here’s a quick couple of photos that show the benefit of a moveable chook pen. The first shot is of the day the pen went onto one of the new wicker beds. The bed had been planted with a green manure crop, which had probably been left a little too long, due to pen construction delays. This was a month ago. The chooks always love moving day.  They run around and investigate every little spot. They look for opportunities where they can get under the greenery, making a instant nesting spot and will often lay an egg in here if left to it. They also get really excited when they find bugs, and in this garden there was also some wheat that had gone to seed. In all plenty of things to take their interest. So much so that for the first day or so, they are hesitant at first to leave it and wander around the yard instead. This is their second wicker bed to work over, but prior to the wicking beds they used to do the same thing with my normal garden beds. The change to wicker beds meant a new pen with some design changes to accommodate the bed construction. We are hoping that some of the design shortcomings we had with the old pen might be overcome with this newer version.

The photo below was taken a couple of days ago. All signs of plant life, caterpillars, and grasshoppers gone. The chooks eat whatever is edible, and the rest gets scratched to pieces and worked into the garden bed. I’ll give them some sugar cane mulch and lucerne over the next week or so until they are again moved on, this too will get worked through the soil. As this is happening, the soil is also getting a great dose of chook manure.

The bed will be left for a few weeks before it is then planted up. In all it makes for really easy garden preparation.

Going Bananas

I was so excited yesterday to look up from the bottom of the garden and see I have another banana about to flower. For those who don't know the joys of growing your own bananas yet, the flower is the start of what will become your bunch of bananas. Last year, almost a year after planting two suckers that a friend had given me, I had my first two bunches of home grown bananas. The tricky thing is that like the small hand of bananas you buy and leave on the bench to ripen, the whole lot ripen all at once and I'd estimate that one of my bunches last year would have had in excess of 40 bananas on it. Thats a lot of bananas to deal with at once.

You can see the flower 'bud' in the centre of the image.

After picking the bunch, I've discovered then ripen quite quickly if I hang them inside off of the rafter in the lounge. (Just a note here, be careful for the sap, it stains, hence the newspaper on the floor). It also makes them easier to access. Fresh and newly ripe they are delicious to just walk past, grab one and snack on it, even my chooks like them (although it's interesting to note that they wouldn't touch a store bought one). The rest I chopped up and froze in tupperware containers thinking I'd use them in smoothies or even get motivated enough to do a banana cake. I felt that those two would be plenty to keep my happy, until I discovered banana icecream that is.



My grandaughter helping herself to one off a ripened bunch earlier this year.

 Those first two banana trees produced their own suckers. Most of the websites and blogs I googled suggested that you remove all suckers but one, so you are left with the leader (the first big one) and a follower which is the one that will replace it when you cut down the original after it delivers what will be it's first and only bunch.  This is so that the bananas put their efforts into producing fruit rather than growing the developing suckers. I have to admit, that laziness meant I've got more suckers than I should have and a few months back I got hubby to dig some out and we've established another two spots in the garden with their own two banana plants growing. These ones are coming along nicely, but it will be a year before I'll see them fruiting.



In the centre you can see one of the birds which visit the flowers daily. This photo was taken in early October so it's taken almost 2 months to form the fruit from this time.

 So last years two 'followers' became the leaders and were doing well, have flowered and now have set fruit, so it was a real shock to see that one of the 'followers' is also now beginning to flower.



Bananas growing on the bunch.


Then delight turned to panic last night as I was working late in the garden and saw not just one bat, but two land in my banana tree! Both flew off again, but now I'll have to watch very closely for the first signs of ripening on the bunches that are hanging there ready to make my move before the bats do. If  anyone has any suggestions on how I can deter the bats from my bananas please let me know.

The bananas bekonning to bats in the late day. How do they even know they are there?

Summer heats here

Today was another smouldering hot summer day. This has been the third day in a row, with the temperatures in the high 30’s. The new wicker bed is holding up well, and now that we’ve put shade cloth over the top it should lose even less moisture and give the plants additional protection. I’ve planted the bed with peanuts that I’ve grown from last seasons harvest, some bell peppers that I’d struck from seeds when the original plants had started to die back, some climbing beans, a mixture of Blue Lake, Scarlet Runner, and a new type who’s name now eludes me. In addition to this we’ve added a couple of advanced zucchini and mini cucumbers yesterday that I’d bought as seedlings.

The potted flowers have suffered with the heat. I’ve been deadheading the cornflowers and the petunias are coming to the end. But today they played host to what seemed like hundreds of butterflies that chose today to take to the skies. Years ago we saw a swarm (I don’t think that’s the right term, but the only way I can explain the sheer numbers) of butterflies while bushwalking on Hamilton Island. Someone at the time told me they often hatch on the islands and fly across to the mainland. I wondered today when I saw these ones everywhere whether they had hatched on one of the local bay islands and made their way here.


Butterfly on the crucifix orchid.

The petunias taken two weeks ago before the heat really hit.

Finally got one sitting still on the Brunsfelia (commonly known as Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow)

The chooks have now been on the second wicker bed for approximately a week. They’ve already flattened most of the green manure crop that was planted in it, much faster than they dug over the first bed. Hubby has done some modifications today to the pen, adding some additional piping into the door frame to help block the gaps around the door further, making it harder now for any snakes to get in.

With the heat of summer comes the inevitable bush fires and the smoke from these provided a spectacular backdrop to tonights sunset.


Others watched the sunset too.