Sunday, November 30, 2008

The end of November

I have been to busy to add daily entries so this is the last day in November and here's where we stand:

This is the left hand view from my kitchen door. It's where I grow my herbs in pots. Right at the door there is also a little bed with Sage, Thai Basil and Oreganum. In the pots are rosemary, borage, lavender and thyme. Behind the pots are chillies, tomatoes and our grapevine.



On the left hand side of the door we have a raised bed with tomatoes and beans. I planted Marigolds in between them for pest control and so far it has worked.





These are the beautiful cucumber flowers:



My courgettes are starting to make their fruits:



Along with strawberries, spinach, carrots, tomatoes we had some little onions which were ready which I harvested.



Our lettuce is also coming along beautifully.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

After 2 hours of back breaking work....

A few weeks ago my daughter sowed some seeds of lettuce. More than one to a section... in fact more like 5 to a section. They were struggling were to grow so I seperated them all. I used that lovely worm poo from my wormery as a seedling mix. I guess we are going to eat salad 3X a day for the next while.



I had to fence my courgettes in...I am waiting for my son to make a me a frame that I can lean up against the wall to get them to climb rather than spread.



And just take a look at how wonderful my corn looks!



I also weeded all the pathways and beds, removed spent peas, planted out some egg plant seedlings, cleaned the coup, watered the whole garden and planted out some fennel.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

We have a chick

Meet "Mindstorm" born Friday. The other two eggs are still being sat on...

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Wanna see my rubbish?

Have you ever heard of nosey reporters going through celebrities garbage? Well I am FAAAAR from being a celeb and I am not even sure that anyone actually reads my lil' ol' blog...but if you ever wanted to see my garbage you will be sadly dissappointed!

This is due mainly to our fierce recycling habits that have now kicked in. Also our chickens eat all our veggie leaves and offcuts. We also compost everything we can. Then there is our wormery.

Our worms get everything that the chooks can't have: shredded soaked newspapers and pizza boxes, eggs shells, the fibre from our juicer etc.

We started our wormery in Feb this year and we have taken off on average 2 litres of worm juid (liquid fertilizer) ever weekend for the last 5 months. This pic below shows the top later where the new food is added.



Yesterday I took the bottom layer out, sent a few wayward worms to the top layer and this is the left over compost-humus which we are going to use for our new seeldings. It's really good stuff, odour free and steaming hot!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

This weeks produce

In the post below I mentioned how good it is to be able to walk 10 steps into my veggie patch and come back a little while later with some fresh fresh fresh things to eat. It makes me appreciate all sorts of things like basic principles set in place by the God of Creation...Praise Him! Also I appreciate how much hard work it is to grow things without pesticides. How much hard work it is to weed, water and keep up consecutive plantings.

But this was this weeks pickings:




This cabbage was made into coleslaw to go with supper



The coriander went into a salsa




This is what I picked this morning...great isn't it! The broccoli went into a broccoli salad, the peas in a green salad, the potatoes into a potato bake and the spinach into omlettes.

What a thrill!

Today I worked really hard planting new seeds - beet, leeks, carrots, lettuce. Also planted out the sweet melon and watermelon seedlings.

We cleaned the hutch out and added that to the compost pile...Quicksilver is still nursing her 3 eggs...if they do hatch it will be on Friday!