Birds and onions

I love my chickens and I love the wonderful native birds that we share our patch with, I really do!

Myrtle and Mavis eyeing off the baby spring onions

Except when they eat my oniony things! For instance, on Monday morning I emerged from the house to find this.

All my shallots dug up and flung around their little oniony bed. Hmm, a busy tribe of choughs! Thank goodness they had only just started to put down a few roots and no shoots. And there were other casualties in that bed as well.  The shallots were sharing their bed with some onion seedlings  and a row of snow peas that had started to sprout. Gone, all gone.

The shallots have been put into another bed and the soil has been covered with wire to stop the choughs scratchy feet and flicky beaks. Hopefully!

What are choughs (pronounced - chuffs)? Well they are fabulous black and white birds with lovely curved wings and beaks and quite mad red eyes. They hang out in groups and spend a lot of time turning over leaves and other forest litter and they chat to one another as they do. Trevor's Birding has a nice picture of them hanging out together.  They have the most amazing big mud nests. This website has great pictures of them and their nests.

As for my chooky girls, well they like chives,

garlic chives,

and spring onions.

I am guessing that their eggs are going to have a nice oniony taste? Better not make a cake! And better find a solution to their onion tribe snacking.

What irresistible birdie treats do you have in your patch?

The garden in mid-April - Onions

If you are not tired of my garden in mid-April tour yet, here is the third instalment - the onion family.

Garlic
This season I am making a serious attempt at growing garlic. I have tried growing garlic before, but I am not sure I have ever been focused enough in the past to get a result I was happy with. This year I am trying Monaro Purple which are reputedly suitable for colder climates. I wonder what their origin is - the Monaro Plain of NSW? They look pretty good so far, I am certain every bulb I put in has come up.

They are Rocambole-style garlic which are hardnecks. The neighbours up the track had great success with this variety last year and so I am taking their lead. It is of course possible that it was their gardening skills rather than the variety of garlic that made the difference, but for now I am placing faith in the variety and a liberal dash of lime.

Leeks
I love leeks, really love them. I also like how they look in the bed and love their huge round flower heads. These leeks I bought in punnet form, but I have another row in which is much less developed that have been raised from seed.

I always put leeks in quite close together, thinning out by pulling some quite young. On the right of the leeks you can see some parsnips on the way.

Spring onions
We seem to eat a lot of spring onions so I have a lot in.  They are mostly in pots but there are some in the beds. These have all been raised from seed. Again, like the leeks, I tend to plant densely.

Red Shallots
Years ago, when I lived in Britain, I grew shallots, red and brown ones and they were heavenly! Why it has taken me so long to grow them again I don't know.  It might have had something to do with space but now I have lots of space there is little excuse.

I haven't put these in yet as you can see. I intend to plant them in a couple of weeks, in the meantime I have prepared a bed for them and am asking the chooky girls to help out. This morning they ate a lot of slaters that were hiding in the parts of the bed that had lots of straw. They have done a fair bit of scratching around already.

(Apologies for the shadow of the photographer in the photo.)

Other oniony things
I also have chives and garlic chives in pots but I kind of call these things 'herbs'.

Onions
Yes, hmmm. You will have noticed that I don't have any onions in. To be honest, I am a little scared of growing onions. Scared is perhaps an exaggeration,  I think I don't like the idea of tying up a big area of a bed when I might be unsuccessful. If I think growing garlic is a challenge, I suspect growing onions is even harder. If you have any tips for success with onions (and garlic for that matter), It will be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I will take onions on next year.