A pretty good harvest for the first day of Winter

I almost thought I had abandoned this blog (too busy, too otherwise occupied, too many TV series to watch on DVD after the kids are in bed) but I was so chuffed to pick all of the above today that I had to keep a record of it somewhere! We've also got harvestable leeks, parsley, coriander, radishes and so much self-sown  lettuces that I am pulling them out whole to throw to the chooks and there is still plenty to spare. The beetroot, carrot and parsnips are getting bigger and the first sowing of broad beans are poking their heads up out of the soil.

I am feeling especially chuffed when a year ago we didn't even have the chooks yet and it still looked like this:

It's good to take the time to remember, particularly when I am feeling that going back to work this year has meant so much less time spent in the garden. Luckily the chooks keep working for me here and the plentiful sun, rain and unseasonable warmth this May means things just keep on growing!

In the middle of a heatwave

It's stinking hot outside this week so the hardworking chooks are getting some extra attention. Not only have they been moved on in the chook clock to a shaded jungle of lettuce, kale, celery, parsley & broccoli gone to seed, we rigged up a shade cloth for their comfort, and I change their water a couple of times daily to keep it cool. It's a hard life being a chook!

Chooks are back on the job

The chooks are back to work in their clock. I think they're happy to be there. It's closer to the house so it's far more likely a passing child will notice them and throw them some seeds and there's good tucker to be had from the spent vegetable plants that were left to go to seed. It really does not take them long to transform a used bed to a fresh one ready to plant. Three weeks ago they started work in section 6 when it looked like this:

Today the chooks have been moved off this section and they have left it like this:

All I did was let them out each day, cut off the vegetable stalks at their base and left them lying on the ground and throw them extra straw, grass clippings, weeds and kitchen scraps. Now I just need to rake the path, lay out the dripper hose again, turn on the taps and plant the next lot of Summer vegetable seedlings that are ready and waiting to go.

Before letting the chooks out into section 8 I pulled these last beetroot, carrots & spring onions, the final harvest from a guild planting that also provided us with snow peas, lettuce, kale, parsley, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, silver beet and an attempt at celery which wasn't really successful - the celery grew plenty but I never worked out when to pick it and it went almost straight to seed.

Those chooks are pretty good at their job....and they produce great eggs too!

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!