Free seeds

Well this whole gardening thing has become quite a big part of my life.    Not that I spend hours in the veggie patch every day though.  I am spending more time there now as I am on leave at the moment taking care of my mum.  When I do work I usually water a couple of afternoons a week in summer and spend maybe an hour in the patch every sunday morning.   But now I am house bound 24/7 so I am spending a little more time tending to the veg.

The carrots planted back in May are coming to an end and whilst still edible I have let a few of them go to seed to see what happens next.    The seed pods are very lovely with an amazing structure.  I have never collected seeds before.  Seeds are cheap to buy and thats how I plant a lot of my crops.  Seed or seedling, depending on the crop.  As I have abundant hours spare I thought I could collect the seeds this time and see how they go as my next crop.

The methodology is to leave the flower heads on the plant until they are jam packed and looking almost dead. It is then that you harvest them.  Carrot seeds are very small and solid black in colour.  In the flower they have a furry like case around them.    The seeds won't shake out on their own, they need a little human intervention.  Important to tease them out onto white paper or into a while bowl because there are ants and lady bugs hiding in there.  They are easily visible on white.

One carrot left to seed can produce hundreds of seeds.  Seriously hundreds!!!  One carrot might produce 3 or 4 flower heads in which case you can collect thousands of seeds.

So here are some images of the my first foray into seed collection showing the various stages of the seed heads.

Now I am no scientist, but from what I can work out this is how to harvest carrot seeds!!!  I will plant then into a new veggie bed and await the results!

A Garden update.. the Autumn edition.

On the evening of 20 April Lake Macquarie and other parts of the east coast suffered some significant storms.  The high winds and torrential rain lasted for 3 days.  A lot of trees came down, a lot of property was damaged and a couple of people lost their lives.  I got off lightly.  The power was out for 36 hours and the phone ....  a whole lot longer, about 6 days!!! As a result there was a lot of damage in my veggie patch.  Some root veggies like carrots survived unscathed, but others, like ginger and garlic were awash.  I'm not sure if they will survive and prosper, only time will tell.  Above ground crops were badly affected.  All the corn was lost, an entire bed of it. Although it was planted late in the season and may not have been overly productive anyway.  I thought the broccoli was a goner, but it seems to have survived and the first heads are ready for harvest.  The silverbeet was lost, the spring onions flattened and the peas and beans and all their climbing framework was lost.

After the winds abated and the lawn began to dry out I cleaned out beds 1,3,6,7,9 and 10 and replanted with new seedlings.  20 silver beet, 4 mini cabbage, 8 brocollini, 8 cauliflower, 2 rhubarb, spring onions and a mix of different varieties of peas and beans.  There are still 4 beds unresolved.  Today the sun is out and bed number 11 is getting a makeover.  The basil in it was flattened, but has much young edible leaf.  It will have to go though and then the bed will be built up with a bag of moo poo, and a handful of troforte M, Searles 5 in 1, dynamic lifter, blood and bone and some lime for good measure.  I try to feed the soil, not the plant and it has worked for me so far... but I might be doing it very wrong.

I'm not sure what I might plant in bed 11.  Possibly more beans but it will be dependant on how the rest of the veggies are coming along and what is in stock at the nursery.  The yard needs a lot of work, there are two mid sized trees right down the back, both are harbouring dead limbs.  One assaulted me as I tried to remove it.... one is far to big for me to attempt.  Both might get a visit from Mr Nextdoors chainsaw later today if I see him!!!

Last Autumn white moth decimated my broccoli crop.  So I visited my local hardware and built a  frame of PVC covered curtain rods and plastic corner pieces that allowed me to drape mosquito netting over the frame and effectively exclude the moth.   This works well but the framing cost nearly $40.  A few weeks ago I saw flexible pvc coated metal rods that were 180cm long.  I bought 3 at the enormous amount of $2.80 each and they work in the same way.  They are only suitable for lower growing crops like cauliflower and cabbage, but work well to exclude the moth and uses less drapery in the process!  Still looking for the ideal solution, but I am moth free this season!

As usual, photos follow.

This is the set up with the 180cm bendy poles and mossie net.  Underneath is 4 drumhead cabbage and 8 broccolini I think the broccolini might grow too tall.

As the sign says!

Wish I could get more of these markers, they will last forever and are pretty groovy!

Snow peas, not my favourites, but I couldn't get any sugar snap ones. I usually plant peas and beans from seed, but after the storm took everything I used seedlings to speed up the process.

This time I used carrot tape as my last 3 attempts all failed. 

Pilchy, on guard duty!

Taking Stock: March

I follow a few blogs and LOVE Everyday Miracles     Thought I'd give "Taking Stock"  a try it and see how it goes...

Making:  A list of the jobs I need to complete today.
Cooking:  A huge vat of pumpkin soup from the last of my summer crop of butternut pumpkins.
Drinking:  Water, but nowhere near enough!
Reading:  "The Bounty" by Caroline Alexander.
Wanting:   To knit a blanket for the end of my bed. Problem is I haven't knitted in 30 years and even then I wasn't very good at it.
Looking:  At the computer screen a whole lot more than I should!
Playing:  Words with friends with Mert in the USA.
Deciding:  Whether to post this or not!!!
Wishing:  I wasn't Diabetic when I see all the Easter eggs in the supermarket.
Enjoying: The company of Terry at work.  I enjoy being on the building site and laugh a lot during the day.
Waiting:  For a phone call from my haematologist
Liking: The Health app on my phone.
Wondering:  When the next Ad Astra girls lunch will be?
Loving:  My reading chair.  Soooo comfy.
Pondering:  The endlessness of washing up.
Considering:  Paper plates!!!  (see "Pondering" for further clarification)
Watching:  One Giant Leap (again).
Hoping:  The nursery has some cauliflower seedlings in today.
Marvelling:  At how quickly radish seeds break the soil.
Needing:  To go for a walk.
Smelling:  A tiny vial of "Rochas Man" that I found in the bottom of my bag.
Wearing:  My favourite bracelet.
Following:  The treechanging life of Rebecca on Hamby Home(in)stead
Noticing:  How well my veggie patch springs into life after rain as opposed to regular tap watering.
Knowing:  My garden will never feed us totally, but we enjoy what we produce.
Thinking:  About retirement and when I should leave full time employment.
Feeling:  The huge bruise on my calf after it met the tow bar!
Admiring:  The great work my sister is doing in her home renovation.
Sorting:  My photography props into manageable piles.
Buying:  Stuff I don't necessarily need!!!
Getting:  Hungry!  I should stop typing and have some breakfast!!!
Bookmarking:  A load of new blogs I found through this project!
Disliking:   The failure of some of my late summer crops.  My soil is slightly acidic and this affects propagation and growth.
Giggling:  At the antics of Georgia the beagle every time I visit my sister.
Snacking:  When I shouldn't!
Coveting:  The brilliant photography of others.
Helping:  Lauren with her Ikea shopping list.  It is not a burden let me assure you!!!
Hearing:  The birds twittering outside as the rain had momentarily stopped and the sun is trying to break through.


As always, a few images to end this post.

Peas peas peas!!!

In the last post I talked about sisters floral front lawn no-mow garden makeover.  Well enough of that tizzy girly stuff... lets talk food production!

The veggie patch has now swelled to 12 1200x900mm raised veggie beds. The last three having only been in place and filled for about a month.  Assembly of them is really easy.  Ordering and receiving delivery of the soil from Green Thumbs Garden Centre was also easy.  Carting the 3 cubic meters of soil from the front yard to the back is a whole different story!!  That was hard.  Sister and I knocked it over in under 2 hours on a stinking hot sunday with quite a few rest breaks!!!  It was hot heavy work.

Those new beds now have capsicum, Queensland blue and butternut pumpkin, sugar snap peas and rockmelons growing in them.  Nothing productive yet, but on their way.  New growth is strong and the butternut has already spilled over the bed edge and onto the lawn.  There is still sufficient space to throw in more produce. A LOT more produce!   In other beds I have all the usual suspects carrots, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumber, spring onions, radish, silver beet, garlic and an abundance of sugar snap peas.

The peas are amazing.  I think I planted 16 pea "seeds" and from that I have already well over 1500 edible pods. A second wave of pods is ready for harvest in the next few days, but 3 vines have given up the ghost and will come out today.  Hence a new planting in one of the new beds.

We are in stir fry heaven here!  So many are eaten straight off the vine.  Sister and I like them in stir fries but mum just steams them and eats them whole. The neighbours are loving the excesses of bounty but I need to get into a rhythm of swapping excesses for eggs....as I chicken out of having chickens!!

The whole veggie garden experience is super easy to maintain.  All the work is in the setting up.  I do wander thru the veg every day.  I water daily when it is stinking hot, but thru the winter months it generally takes care of itself. I have not noticed any spike in the water bills thru watering the food crop.  Weeding is all done by hand.  No pesticides on the food, but I do kill the grass around the outside of the beds with a herbicide to slow the invasion of weeds and grass into the beds.  There are quite a few Redback spiders living in the corrugations of the metal beds.  They get squashed!  I might spent an hour in the veggies every weekend just tidying, trimming and weeding and about 15 minutes some mornings for watering.  Harvesting is in the evening just before dinner.  You can't get much fresher than that!

As per usual a visual reward for reading this far.

I chickened out!

After careful consideration and much budgeting and financial analysis I have decided I won't be getting chooks.  It was not that the fact that it would take 87 months of regular egg purchasing expenditure to even break even.  It was more the fact that I don't think I could really touch them!!!  They do need their wings clipped and they do attract vermin.  They do get lice and fleas and they do need care and attention that I really don't think I am up for.   They need to be kept clean and have fresh food and water daily...and I don't really have the time and energy for that when I can simply walk into the fruito and buy free range eggs.  It would be fair to say I chickened out!!

I decided that I would rather spend more time growing veggies that dealing with feathers.  I know that those who truly love chookies won't "get" me.  I know that those who are bird phobic will!!  I'm not bird phobic, not like my sister, but I don't really want to deal with them.  I don't want to risk having a fox or dog have a free meal and I don't want to deal with them when they depart this fine earth.

I sold the coop on Gumtree.  It took exactly 8 minutes from hitting the "submit" button to the first phone call.  In fact I wasn't even sure I had placed the advert correctly and was still refreshing and searching for the advert when the phone rang.  Her name was Julie and she had both Bantams and Reds.  She drove down from Mailtand, so the coop was gone from my yard in under an hour from the advert being placed.  Further, I sold it and recouped my outlay and delivery charges in total.  When considering the pros and cons of chooks verses no chooks it came to me that I would rather turn the yard over to more veg than any kind of livestock.  I felt my forte was veg not meat.  So the decision was made that I should sell the coop and invest those funds into my veggies.   So that is what  I did.

Today I took a trip with sister and mother to Masters Homewares at Rutherford.  On entering the store the greeter offered mum a catalogue and there, right on the front page, was the Hills Adda Garden 320's for a mere $49 a bed.   Even more amazing they were the same profile as the 9 beds I already have.  One reason why I had not expanded the garden earlier was that I couldn't find any more beds with the same profile.  Hills produce two types of raised veggie beds with the same dimensions... but they have different profiles.  Mine are the curvy wavy ones, the others are very square and sharp.  So I really needed to get the curvy ones.  I couldn't bear it if they didn't match!!!

So now I have 3 more beds to construct, 3 more loads of soil to shovel and 3 more spaces to include in my crop rotation book.  And I couldn't be happier.  To celebrate I picked some delicious carrots and chillies this afternoon and made a big vat of slow cooked curry.  I can't wait for spring when I can put those new beds into high production mode.  Oh, and there will be less mowing.  That makes life a little easier!

Moving house, not unlike moving mountains!

My sister has sold up the house she build over 20 years ago and so, as you do when someone else wants to move in, you pack up all your possessions and move on.  Her problems commenced when her house sold the day it went on the market to the first people who saw it and she wasn't able to find a house she liked!  So instead of moving from one home directly into another she moved in HERE with her youngest son AND cat AND dog!!!

Now I don't have an issue with that, in fact I think it might have been my idea,  but where do you put 20 years of accumulated "stuff".  The garage here is full, the garden shed, similar, so we have had to move her "stuff" into a storage unit.  6x3m is the largest we could get...... and it filled very quickly.  The nephew understands the concept of Tetris and maximising every spare millimetre, so he worked his magic moving the boxed material.  Even so that space filled early on the day we were moving the big stuff, the furniture.  So back we went and signed up for unit number 2.  They had no more 6x3's, but I didn't think we would need that.  We were offered 3x1.5m, 3x3m or a rare drive in 3x4m.  I chose the 3x4 thinking that drive in would make it easy and the spare space would be a bonus.  Ha!  There is no spare space!  The 3x4m was filled in two deliveries and that included stacking bookcases on top of bookcases!!!

Since that filled I have now received 5 ute fulls of "extras" here at home.  Mostly outdoor furniture, garden tools, outdoor umbrellas, pots and more pots.

The good news is sister has found a house she does like and the wheels are in motion for a super speedy settlement.  So in about 6 weeks (although I am hoping for 4 weeks)  the whole process will be reversed.  Truckload after truckload of furniture and boxes will be taken OUT of the storage unit and into the new home.  The new house is nice.  The gardens need some loving, but I might acquire the rear yard for more veggies! The house will hold MOST of what she owns, but I am lead to believe that there will be a rationalisation of goods.  She will have a dedicated sewing room too. YAH!  So no more sewing machine on the dining table.

Moving house is stressful and expensive, but when the dust has settled she will have a beautiful home.

Watch out for the "Operation Rationalisation" coming to Gumtree, eBay and a garage sale soon!  Who needs a pogo stick and some stilts?

Now these photos come from a phone and were shot in almost total darkness as they were snapped as we were doing a quick drop off this morning.   I'll substitute better shots when I can.

Update:  added 2 pics from the second unit, the hi rise!

Light Sussex or Welsummers? Choosing chooks!

Well I took one step closer to self sufficiently sunday morning.  I bought a chicken coop!  I hadn't planned to buy a coop although I have been tossing up whether to just continue to buy eggs at the fruito or go all out and "grow my own".   I hadn't made a firm decision but was wavering towards the fruito option!!   This indecision has been about 12 months in the making, with me going backwards and forwards between being a producer or just being a consumer.  Whilst I saw the benefits as far as recycling vegetable scraps and bug control in the veggie patch goes, I just couldn't see myself being a chook wrangler!  

I've never had chooks before,  never touched a chook and whilst I don't endure the same bird fear my sister has, I'm just not fussed on them.  I'm not a big consumer of eggy deggs either .  The Old Cheese on the other hand IS a big egg consumer but she too has lead a chook free lifestyle for her 84 years.  Then a couple of mates stuck their two bobs worth in and both commented on how good it would be to have a few chookies in the yard,  espousing the benefits of the feathered egg producer.  I was still hesitant but when I found a super cheap coop for sale locally I was hooked.

So with coop selected and collected the big question is what breed of chookie to keep.  The coop will hold 4 in comfort, but I was only planning to have 2 chooks.  The dude I bought the coop off suggested Isa Browns. Said they lay every day.   I like the look of the Light Sussex and the Welsummer has been suggested as a good producer of large brown eggs.  2 chooks should give me 10-14 eggs a week thru the warmer months and less thru winter.  That is PLENTY for myself and the Old Cheese.  Sister will reap the excess.  I had not realised how many breeds there were until I surfed the net last night  and found page after page of chookies to choose from!  All have their pros and cons and some are definitely prettier than others!  But how do I decide?   And WHERE does one obtain a pair of chookies???

I'm getting my head around the lingo "Point of Lay", "Pullets" and "Coccidiosis".  I know I need to buy at about 18-20 weeks to ensure they are layers and I need to buy from someone reputable so they come to me wormed and vaccinated.   But I still have no idea where that person or place is!   Apparently different breeds have different attributes.  So many things to consider... broodiness, aggressiveness, frequency or laying, hard feather, soft feather, egg size and colour.  I have read how some breeds will tear apart your veggie patch and that the last thing I want!    Who would have thought choosing a chook would be such a minefield!!!

The breed names bear little or no resemblance to any of their attributes.   The Silver Laced Wyandotte is a very pretty bird, but maybe a bit showy, but its name gives me no idea about its temperament or attributes!    I do like the look of the Light Sussex and the Welsummer, but the Isa Brown is "reliable" said the seller of the coop.  I could also consider the black Australorp and the New Hampshire.  The Frizzle and Silkies are out though.  They are all show and no go! It would make my decision much easier if their breed names reflected their egg producing potential!

I haven't even considered the equipment needed to feed and water them.  Do they get leg bands? How do I fox proof the yard and poor Old Pilchy the cat. I know he is scared of them! One came in the yard once and the old boy was quivering in his flea collar.

I wonder if there is a chicken chooser app somewhere that could help me with this all important decision.   All suggestions gratefully received!

And here it is, the coop,  a little slice of chookie heaven in my backyard!