At the end of Spring

Everything is growing, flowering, producing or promising to produce...right now our backyard is a rather lovely place to be.

Beating the birds

A bit of a fruit salad from the orchard is looking promising this year, promising enough that we have had to give some thought to how we ensure the fruit salad is for us and not for the birds. At the moment I love the flock of black cockatoos that announce their imminent arrival with their distinctive cries and wheel their way overhead most days. I know I will love them less if they decide to stop off on my fruit trees and take off with the year's cherry crop as has happened to a neighbour...while they were watching from their deck...having recently discussed if the cherries were ready for picking yet. I guess they were. Not that my cherries are actually fruiting this year but I'm sure I would feel the same regardless of fruit variety. Too much worm castings, bokashi juice, chook manure, mulch, water, rabbit fences and companion planting have gone into these babies!!

The peaches & nectarines are dotted only with a few fruit each, so I have used some orange bags and pegs to protect each fruit individually.

One of the apricots and both of the plums are much more laden, too much for me to want to individually bag the fruit, even after thinning the fruit to 7-10cm apart (Pulling unripened fruit off the trees did just about kill me but I read somewhere it was good for the tree, better for the size and quality of the remaining fruit and reduces the likelihood of biennial fruit bearing). So for these trees we made a temporary structure using four star pickets, lengths of poly pipe arched over the top and nets draped over. Constructing them was quick and stress-free. 

The raspberries, blackberries and KNNN espaliered apples and pears have had a wire stretched at the very top of their support structures that we can throw a long net over each row...and the blueberries...actually I totally forgot about them, they are still so small I haven't even considered how to protect their future fruit. I'll leave that one to next Summer.

The chook tunnel

A few weeks ago we were faced with a problem. The chooks were to be given a rest from their scratching, weeding and fertilising in the vegetable garden so that I could grow veggies, however, I did not want them in the orchard to make a mess of my mulch just before Summer (they will be allowed in the orchard in Autumn to clean up fallen fruit, fertilise & eat slugs). Finding a place for them to spend these 3 months was not the problem. A rectangle between the side fence, orchard fence and garden shed only needed a couple of temporary fences to be pretty much perfect...shade, grass & dust baths aplenty plus I can talk to them while in my shed. The problem was how to get them between their fox-proof chicken house with its roosts & nesting boxes and their outdoor play space...Enter the chook tunnel.

 

It's safe to say they are pretty happy with the new arrangement. They cluck their way down the tunnel each morning & back again each night, plus back & forth to lay their eggs during the day and when they just feel like having a bit of a stroll. The amusement value to the watching humans is pretty high, especially when a handful of seeds is thrown in the yard and any chook up near the house runs full pelt down the tunnel to not miss out.

Problem solved!

A good day's harvest

I wandered out this evening and came back with eggs, kale, silverbeet, broccoli, cauliflower, broad beans and a couple of cabbages. So exciting! Not sure when I will stop taking photos of my produce. I think it will last for some time yet. Just imagine what red tomatoes and orange carrots will add to the photo!

Vegies in progress

The chook clock vegetable garden is up and running (ticking?). The chooks completed their first 3 month rotation a few weeks back and are now taking a bit of a rest, sunning themselves in a rather relaxed manner for the Oct/Nov/Dec season, a good fence away from my planted out vegetable garden and neatly mulched orchard.

The chooks started in segment 6, spent 2 weeks there and then moved onto 8. I planted out seedlings immediately. This photo is from a few weeks ago:

I am harvesting all the silver beet, kale, parsley and lettuce we want to eat. We have had a good amount of broccoli and are still getting some sprouting broccolini. The celery and broad beans are almost ready for picking. You can also see a bit of 8 in the background, planted out in early August after another chook fortnight of preparation – I have harvested snow peas, a couple of mini-cauliflowers, broccoli, a different variety of kale, more lettuce & a few turnips (now what to do with turnips?). There are a few cabbages looking promising though I have not quite got the knack yet of sewing/thinning carrots & beetroot in this system. They are coming up, but far too close together and often right under a cabbage. Also, being new to growing beetroot I keep pulling some up to check if the root is actually growing – yep, it is – too small to eat – oops, can’t really put it back.

Segments 10 & 12 have the same mix of plants planted 2 weeks apart – beans along the perimeter fence, potatoes, leeks, tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, basil, cabbages, more parsley & more lettuce. Here it is just after planting:

                            

And now:

 

And lastly here are the chooks in 4 before their season in the sun via the chook tunnel. This segment is about to be planted with sweet corn en masse.

Thankfully, whilst the chooks are taking a break from their work in the veg garden, they are still hard at work producing eggs and I continue to sail past the egg aisle at the supermarket, smug in the knowledge I face no hard decisions over which ‘free-range’ eggs are, in fact, free-range. 5 dozen eggs a week go a long way.