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.

The Garden makeover

AS you are probably aware the sister bought a new house earlier this year and its internal paint and decorate is nearly complete.  Now that spring has sprung it is time to look at the outside and start with the garden makeover.  Apparently I am the only one in the family that actually enjoys mowing but as I have the classic quarter acre here I'm not so keen to take on hers as well.   So we have decided to create a no mow front lawn.  The plan, well if you can call it a plan, is to kill off the lawn with newspaper and mulch and plants a zillion flowering plants and shrubs to totally alleviate any mowing.  The front yard is not huge, but we intent to make the driveway wider and link it to the front steps on a solid base, possibly pebble, but maybe concrete. Then the rest of the yard will be planted out.  We will leave a rambling walkway of mulch to the far northern side gate, which is not ever used, but it does provide an alternative walkway to the backyard.  Ultimately the house will be painted too because the colour now is a bit ordinary!

The lawn itself has a small slope from north to south, so taller plants will be at the top nearest the neighbours fence and lower ones towards the front.   There is already some established plants.  A HUGE camellia, 3 azaleas and a big tuft of french lavender.   To supplement this I have bought 3 more camellias, 4 azaleas and 2 lavenders. The general tone of the garden is in purples and pinks with the exception of one "beachy" style daisy which is bright orange.  There are also 3 big brown Yukkas and a stump!  The stump is pretty much centre of the current lawn and sits about 20cm proud of the lawn.  It is too big to dig out and "mostly" level.  As we can't realistically remove it, it will house a   feature of some sort. Perhaps a wire structure, a hebel sculpture or a big timber birdhouse.  Two roses  and two mankey plastic pots with grey/white strappy leaf plants in them are currently accommodated in the yard, but they will all go.  The grey/white leaf plants will be separated and spread thru the lawn and the roses will make their way to the recycling bin, but everything else stays at this stage.

The current layout is that there is a metre wide flower bed running north south on the front boundary fence.  A single height run of coppers log keeps that in place.  The only other bed is 2x1.5m and runs north south along the front of the house. Its held in place with terracotta edging, the majority of which will be removed.  The edge facing the path and steps will be replaced with something else, possibly brick to tie in with the brick steps.

The soil structure is best described as impoverished.  It is very poor quality, dry and devoid of nutrients, but unfortunately healthy enough for grass and weed growth.   By comparison the back lawn is rich and green, but also in need of a good mow!  The back yard has a veggie bed running the full length of the communal southern fence.  It is only about 400mm wide and has some established veggies.  Nero kale and celery mostly.  It will look good with more planting.  There are two other beds in the back yard that need attention. At the moment the front is the priority.  None of the garden has a watering system and there is no rainwater tank.  The garden when established will have to survive on rain alone.

So thats the plan.  Lets see how it all turns out.
The first shot is day one.  The weedy grass is long and Georgia nearly disappears in it.  Visible are the two rose bushes and the terracotta tile garden bed edging.

This shot was taken after I'd mowed down the weeds!

The next two photos are at the end of the day. Both rose bushes are gone, as is the terracotta edging.  Two new camellias, an azalea and a lavender are planted. The grey/white strappy leafed plant in the plastic pots have been divided and planted under the new layer of mulch.

It is an ongoing project and one I am enjoying thus far!

December update:   We spent another day planting some new plants and laying more mulch and the result is shown below.  Since the initial planting there has been very little weed break through and what has come has been removed instantly so as not to get a toe hold back in the garden.  We calculate we need another 16 or so plants in 8 inch pots or bigger and about 6 cubic metres of mulch for get it finished.  Then we can start on removing the remaining grass and enlarging the drive area.

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!

A garden full of goodness

Well I thought it might be time to do a veggie bed followup.

 A couple of years ago I was given a Hills Adda garden raised veggie bed for christmas.  The Hills Adda garden are 120x90x30cm corrugated iron veggie beds that sit atop the lawn.  Yes, if you were wondering,  I am difficult to buy for and this was a complete surprise.   So with one bed assembled, filled and producing I thought I should buy another.  I had twin beds going for a couple of seasons and I really had the "growing your own" bug.  In 2013 I bought 4 more beds, so I had 6 in total and finally could rely on a reasonable crop of some items.   As 2103 was drawing to a close I realised Hills were changing the profile of the Adda Garden Bed I had to either jump or miss out forever on expanding the garden with matching beds.  Yes, matching IS important!!!  So I found three more matching beds and my garden of nine beds was complete.

The beauty of the Hills Adda garden is there is minimal wastage.   After assembly and before filling, the cardboard  packaging forms the base of the bed and ultimately kills the grass and then decomposes adding carbon to the mix!   The only bin items are a small plastic bag that the screws came in and two cable ties that held the 4 panel pieces together for transport.  Less than half a handful!!

So with 9 beds I began to look at crop rotation as a method of pest control and soil rejuvenation.  I'm seriously no expert but I do understand the concept.  Root crops should be followed by leaf crops.  Beans "fix" nitrogen issues so should follows plants that exhaust nitrogen in the soil.  Some veggie types will not thrive in beds with some from other families.  It's a minefield, but I am trying to implement a relaible and functional system.

I rarely use fertiliser.  I tend more towards enriching the soil between plantings.  Of course there are times, especially with high yielding crops like cucumbers and tomatoes where  a hit of thrive helps in the dying days of the plants to get just that little bit more out of them before they become compost.

I also avoid pestacides.  I try all the touchy feely "green" alternatives before ultimately removing a pest infested plant.  Soapy water, fish emulsion and cardboard cutout butterflies to name just a few of my oddities. I use chillies and marigolds to entice good bugs and bees into the veggies and use lucern in preference to snow pea straw as a mulching product.

I don't have a water tank, so I rely on rain and "town water".   I'd LOVE a tank, but I don't really have somewhere to put it so that it doesn't look like an eyesore.  No matter how much I water, a few drops of rain will yield a better result!  I think it must be the chlorine in our drinking water that acts to hinder some growth.  I do think I would have more produce with stored rain water tank set up.

When crops are at their peak I wander the neighbourhood with a baskets of excess produce and I often receive fresh eggs for gifted veggies.  Its a very gentle system.  There are only 8 houses in our street, so everyone gets something.   One lovely neighbour, new to the street, has no land for produce, so she has recently gifted me some beautiful art books.  Her late husband being an artist and his collection far exceeds her needs.  So win win!!

The nine beds are all numbered with the aim of making my sparse record keeping easier.  Actually the record keeping is a complete failure!  Growing right now are birdseye chillies, spring onions, carrots, 2 varieties  of tomatoes, corn, silverbeet, 2 varieties of zucchini, cucumbers, red runner beans, french dwarf beans, Rajan super hot chillies, baby squash, celery and capsicum.  There is also a vast array of herbs and some other chillies in pots.  This morning I planted 2 more varieties of beans, specifically as a legume crop to follow a brassica crop in bed 5.  I'm hoping that works well.  Fingers crossed!


As per usual some piccies as a thank you for reading this far!

Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014!

2013 is just about to click over into 2014 and just like that moment when your cars odometer clicks over a special number, it will seem all vital that you experience it and all important and yet strangely totally unimportant in mere moments after the event.

2014 will be an improvement on 2013, as 2013 was on 2012.

As for 2013 I had hoped to leave the whole cancer thing in 2012, but come February I was back in hospital for the Radioactive Iodine Ablation and lost another 8 weeks off work while I was radioactive.  Thinking the worst of it was all behind me I tried to get back into the swing of work and life... but it was not to be. I struggled and struggled until September when Dr Jeff decided it was time to test for all manner of cancers and oddities.  The first tests came back showing there was definitely something a rye (pun intended).  Ultimately I got a clearance on all the "regular" cancers, but Coeliac was preliminarily diagnosed.  So where I had hoped 2014 would be free of hospitals I am, apparently,  incorrect on that.  I go back in in mid February!  But that's the end of it. I am totally over the whole feeling crook senario. AND NO MORE HOSPITAL!  They are full of sick people you know!!!

2013 was filled with wonderful people.  If I began the list this post would go forever.  Let me just say I hope THEY know they are special and made 2013 great for me.  There are some I will never see again. Death and distance keep me apart from some special friends but that doesn't mean they are not thought of.  Distance seems much smaller with the internet being so accessible, but it's not the same as being there.  It IS a whole lot less final than death though.

2014 will see me finish my 100 Strangers photographic project and then work out what to do with it.   I'm stuck on number 64 because I never seem to be well enough to travel far from home.  That will change after February. I also want to spend more time on portraits in general and know a few likely suspects that will get the whole four light set up foisted upon them!  If you are one of those people, fear not... it is mostly painless!  Mostly!!!  I'd shoot more bands at the 16's if some goodies comes up.  It's a great venue for me to practice those skills.  A bit more macro is needed too.  I have a new series in mind too, but I will need the indulgence of a few friends to pull that one off!

2014 will also see me back in the veggie patch.  I'm still planting somewhat randomly. Not really following  a good crop rotation program or even good companion planting.  My record keeping sucks and I need to stagger my planting fortnightly.  So at the moment I get a glut of one veggie and the others are as rare as hens teeth.  I tried growing pumpkins for the first time this year and harvested my first on December 27.  They are messy and run all over the yard, but that just means less mowing! I think I need more flowering plants to encourage more bees, so rejuvenation of one of the beds that runs along the dividing fence is a must.  I have the plants.  It's the energy I am lacking.  Chickens are still a no go zone for me.  I do need to construct some frames for climbers in the yard.  That will have to wait to 2014 now!

So it's back to work on the 3rd for me and the daily grind is drawing closer to an end with retirement in the not too distant future.  But until that day comes I'll still be using photography as my primary escape method.

In celebration of 2013 here are a selection of my fave pics for the year.
Hope you enjoy them too!

I'm no Costa Georgiadis or even Jerry Coleby-Williams

I'm no Costa Georgiadis or even Jerry Coleby-Williams.  I'm not even close to being a Jane Edmanson or a Sophie Thomson. Nor even a Pip Courtney,  but I do love to tinker in the veggie patch.  What started a few years ago with one 1200x900x300mm raised bed has become a bit of an obsession with 6 beds full to bursting with the freshest of veggies imaginable!   In the height of summer I have so much produce I give it away to family, neighbours and friends.  Now in the thick of winter I struggle to get enough out of it at all.  But that's not a bad thing. Winter is when I replenish the soil and build up the worm population.

I am trialling a 6 bed rotation system this year.  No two crops from the same family in a row.  Alternating root crops with leaf crops season by season yet still attempting to adhere to the principals of companion planting.  I don't use any insecticides or pestacides. I do make my own compost and I do use a mix of crushed up fish guts and seaweed as a deterrent to the white cabbage moth, but otherwise I hand pick pests off leaves and hope for good rainfall, sunny days and strong growth.  Season dependant I use chillies and marigolds to discourage bugs.  Fortunately the local possum population is not fond of broccoli or radish, so they leave me alone.

I've done a little experimenting too this season.  I planted spring onion seeds into a mini greenhouse and let them establish.  I transferred  them into a bed after a few weeks.   That same day they were planted I directly sewed seeds from the same packet into another bed and 10 weeks on the direct sewn spring onions are thriving.  The greenhouse crop, whilst older, is far less advanced.  Whooda thunkit!  So for spring onions at least I will buy seeds now, not punnets. Seeds are HEAPS cheaper and are always on hand so  I can zip out and plant a few rows instead of driving to the nursery and grabbing a punnet THEN planting!  Over time I will test that theory further with other veggies too.  

So with my 6 beds full or replenishing before a spring crop I needed to either buy more beds and get another truckload of soil delivered  OR acquire more space by other methods.  I'd like to increase the variety of plants I grow and so some extra beds are essential. The backyard here is massive, but massively overgrown.  It is just your classic quarter acre block, but I have left one area wild for native birds and animals.  Side beds are overgrown and have poor soil with neighbouring trees sucking the life blood out of them and being a mass of twisted tree roots.  The large lawn section is where I have placed the 6 beds I already have, but that still leaves me with masses of lawn to mow and realistically I could put another 6 beds in........  but then it wouldn't really look much like a backyard anymore!!  So in my quest for more space  I have acquired the use of a long narrow disused veggie bed that is divided into four smaller spaces at my sister home, just up the road.

That bed is in really poor condition!  Some worms, but a tangled mat of roots in the soil that will take me some time to clean out and build up.  I tackled one part of it yesterday and got it cleaned out and I planted spring onions to get something in!   Then I bought some blood and bone and lucern mulch.  Today I spent a couple of hours digging out what weeds and roots I could then treated the whole bed with blood and bone.  I covered two beds with lucern mulch and gave it all a good water.  I then planted garlic in the corner of the spring onion bed and tomatoes and capsicum in the far end of the bed.  The one remaining plant from last year is a rhubarb so it got a hit of blood and bone and a good water too.  It may well flourish again.

So what is a blog without images.  Heres some of the garden...... or should I say gardens!!!