A bit of sun in more ways than one

Beautiful sun on Saturday and the first glorious sunflower on Sunday.

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.

Veggies are go

 

 

It was a cold day for the first planting out of vegetables in the chook clock. For this first mid-winter planting I have put in broccoli, cabbage, kale, various lettuces, celery, parsley, rocket, dill, silver beet and broad beans. The chooks were very interested in proceedings and happy to have the surplus seedlings thrown over the fence!

 

Chooks are in 8

Our lovely chooks settled themselves in very quickly and have taken to their task of vegetable garden preparation with relish. As soon as they arrived and we confined them to the 6 wedge of the chook clock with moveable internal fences (to the North is 12 o'clock of course), I started to toss them a daily armful of weeds/kitchen scraps/cabbage or lettuce leaves/grass clippings sourced from home/supermarket veg waste/local gardening man that they have eaten, scratched, tossed around and added their own special manure to in order to make mulch and prepare the soil for vegetables planting. A fortnight later, their job in 6 is done and they have been moved clockwise (of course) into 8 to start over. A couple of jobs later (watering dripper system and laying a path) and 6 is ready for planting. Thankyou chooks (Justine, Gandalf, Lightning, Fergie, Cadel Evans, Penny, Bluey, Valverde, Pepper & Saffron) and Linda Woodrow's book 'The Permaculture home garden'.

 

Introducing Justine...

 

 

...and Penny, Cadel Evans, Gandalf, Lightning, Pepper, Saffron, Fergus, Bluey & Usain (all female). Each of us chose 2 names.....can you guess who named which chook?

 

They seemed pretty pleased with their new digs on the whole, especially with the windows. So happy, we were rewarded with an egg, not 3 hours after they came home.

 



 

 

Perimeter planting around the chook clock

About a 600mm strip around the edge is designated the perimeter planting. As per Linda Woodrow's book 'The Permaculture Home Garden' I have taken a three row approach. Whilst I have purchased a few tubes to start it off I am hoping to do more of my own propagation from seeds, cuttings and divisions over the next few years to get enough plants to go right around the chook clock. Must be patient...

The outer row has been started off as lemongrass. This is primarily to act as a barrier to keep the lawn grass from invading what will be vegetable garden. I do have some doubts over how successfully lemongrass will grow in this climate...particularly as I have planted it in Winter...and we had a light frost this morning... Oh well, have to wait and see!

The second row is comfrey, partly a second line of defence against grass creep, partly because the comfrey will send deep roots into the soil bringing up nutrients so that when I harvest leaves for use in the compost or as fruit tree mulch, they will add an enormous amount of goodness to the soil.

The inner row is a mix of herbs and flowers; thymes on the South edge which is slightly higher and dryer, mints on the lower North edge and oreganos to go around the sides. There's also, or will be, rosemary, lavender, sage, borage, wormwood, curry plant, tansy, a couple of climbing roses on the gate posts and, of course, some of my never-ending supply of alyssum. Some are edible, some are insect repelling or bee attracting, some just look pretty (after all the chook clock does have prime position in the centre of our backyard and we look at it from our lounge room window), and some appeal to the collector in me...why not grow every type of thyme/mint/oregano I can lay my hands on? I've got space...

Can't wait 'til they all grow a bit and bed in the whole structure.

Vermin-proof fence

 

 
 

 

 

 

Rabbits Can No Longer Enter The Orchard. The ugly temporary fences protecting the apples are finally gone...raspberry canes are free to flop around in the fresh air...suffocating chicken wire collars have been removed from all of the fruit trees. We started this particular project last August so feels Good (!) to be done. On a technical note we have buried the rabbit wire about 20mm deep and then 20mm out to stop burrowing under the fences. We also buried wire like this under the gates.

Foxes Will Not Enter The Chookrun. So says the trench digger (moi) and fence builder (he with the new tools). So much energy, effort and time has gone into this project that I will be very affronted if a wily fox thwarts our considerable efforts to thwart him. I wonder how many nights it will take without incident after we get the chooks before I can sleep freely? Again we buried 25mm cage wire down and out in a trench although it was slightly deeper this time as foxes are reputedly wilier than rabbits.

And, finally, No Goblins Shall Enter, or other folk of the Fairy Kingdom, though my girls may have some objections to that one.

What did you plant today?

 

 

I, (well, we actually, thanks Grandma & Poppa) planted peach, nectarine, blueberries, blackberries, persimmon, fig, pomegranate, almond, Pierre de Ronsard climbing roses, acacias, southwoods, Japanese maples, oakleaf hydangeas and several other herb/cottagey tubes in chook clock perimeter bed. Big day!

Sweet strawberries in six months...

 

The Summer petunias have been pulled out of their prime spot near the deck, a bit of horse manure and compost dug in, and 20 strawberry runners planted, half from a friend's garden and the other half, Cambridge Royal, purchased bare-rooted from The Diggers Club. They were given a light mulch of pine needles to acidify the soil and increase the flavour, although I am convinced any edible strawberry that comes out of my backyard will be exceptional due to flavour enhancing excitement and anticipation. Companion planting includes lettuces, borage, spinach and alyssum; borage because a website told me it will improve flavour; lettuce and spinach because a book told me strawberries like them and why shouldn't they be happy?; and alyssum will help attract bees and look pretty (plus I have grown an awful lot from seed so am now pretty much adding a plant or two whenever I plant anything else!)

The chickens are coming...the chickens are coming...

We have been making small but steady steps with this chook house/vegetable garden extravaganza . Getting the perimeter fence up felt like a big leap forward. It is almost finished. Close enough that I feel confident enough to put an arrival date on the chooks. 4 weeks away...max!

1 week, 1 hundred plants

I've been wondering why I feel weary this week. Could be because this time last week I had 100 tube seedlings in cardboard boxes in the carport while this week I have 30 Dietes Grandiflora (Wild Iris), 10 Correa Alba, 10 Tagagaste (tree lucerne), 10 Winter lavendar, 5 Acacia Howittii (Sticky Wattle), 5 Leptosperum laevigatum (Coastal Tea Tree), 5 Malaleuca armillaris, 5 Callistemon rugulosus, 5 Wallaby Grass, 5 Tussock grass and 10 Myoporium Parvifolium in the ground, watered, fed and settled in to establish themselves before Winter. I did have help! Now for some Autumn rains please...

 

All in a morning's work

Digging, spreading, weeding...digging, spreading, weeding...I'll be glad when the cooler weather means I can start planting again!

 

Fox-proofing the chook run.

Killing off the orchard grass in preparation for underplanting with companion crops and a whole range of useful plants.

Removing grass in prepration for more companion planting around my lemon & lime trees.