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.