Home improvement

We have made recent improvements to the home of our chooks. A paved entrance using local rock.

bolstered predator proofing by way of a concrete and wire obstacle topped by local rocks - a few more rocks to go, and

a water tank!

Now fetching clean water for the ladies is easy and the shed collects the water. Have roof - collect water is the motto.

The water tank is one of the few things bought to make the chook shed.
Most of the rest of the materials are recycled from around the farm.

The plumbing for the shed is from recycled materials as well. The guttering is a piece of agricultural pipe found on the property. It is very simply constructed by making a slit in the pipe and inserting the end of the corrugated iron into the slit.

The very handsome Lad is the chook shed home improver - thank you! The chooky girls say thank you too!

The ghosts of Highfield

At Highfield the ghosts start appearing in late autumn. There are two types of ghosts out here in the bush.

The first type crawls from holes in the ground and leaves behind strange orange shells.

From their orange shells emerge the thumb-sized ghost moth,

which tap on the window in the evening.  See their little eyes glow?

Then there are the citrus ghosts.

These are my crude frost protectors flung over the baby citrus trees each night when the forecast minimum is 2 degrees Celsius or less. These frost cloths are thin old sheets I bought at the Gundagai Op Shop for $2.00 each.

Do you have interesting wildlife visit your garden? How do you protect your plants from frost damage?

Harvest Monday - 10th June '13

This week the winter produce has started to come in.  It's a great feeling. The pickings have been broccoli, chillies and some tiny capsicums picked green to beat the frost.

A little fennel - this bulb was picked as a baby fennel lightly sautéed to accompany a meal.

LOADS of parsley, loads and loads  - parsley with everything. At present I only have curled parsley.

More broccoli and the first of the cauliflower,

a rather pathetically small cauli, sigh!

A wonderful wombok,

much admired by Muriel the chicken,

Rocket, loads of rocket and a little rosemary. This rocket made a salad of rocket, shaved pecorino, garlic oil and lemon juice. It was fantastic.

It feels great to finally have so much produce. As a result, I have decided I don't need to buy any greens at all for the foreseeable. I have this produce and more coming thru. Finally after a horribly hard summer with almost no produce at all, this little pile of produce feels like true bounty.

How is your produce going? I am contributing this to Daphne's  Harvest Monday, pop over and see  the produce of others - there will be a little list of links to others' growings when the world turns a little more.

Saturday Spotlight: Mini Wombok

This is the first season I have attempted to grow a Wombok  (Chinese Cabbage) and I must say that it has proven to be an easy and a quick grow.

In February I raised a punnet (6) of Mini Wombok from seed. They were quick out of the ground and were one of the first seedlings that I raised from seed to go into their beds. They have also been the first brassica  that I raised from seed that I have picked this winter.

I picked my first last week, it's a beauty.

The chooks think it's a beauty too. Muriel is quickly drawn to the cabbage

and takes a nip - you're awful Muriel (thanks Baz)!

I am glad that I raised Mini Wombok, cause it's a great size - big enough for a couple of feeds but not too big for the fridge and not so big that you groan thinking that you must eat cabbage again this evening.

It had no issues with aphids, snails or any other pest but I suspect that it just good fortune rather than some intrinsic characteristic of Wombok.

Here is the Wombok growing near the Red Drumhead Cabbages.

I am contributing this post to Liz's Saturday Spotlight.

The heads could have been tighter but I was happy to pick it and eat it as it was.

Happy Wombok growing!

Use your thistle

Today was one of those days when things go wrong or don't go right. I wont bore you with those things (yes, it was a plural failure day!) that I haven't been able to fix, instead I will talk of my one triumph of the day - a triumph over thistles.

Even my triumph over thistles started with a failure. Ever had issues with your whipper snipper / line trimmer? Well today I decided to whipper snipper the variegated thistles that are threatening to take over what we call Kangaroo Valley a pretty part of the property that always has loads of grazing 'roos. But I couldn't get the  xxx***xxx nylon line on the whipper snipper to extend, aarrgghh!

First, let me introduce to you to the agricultural weed - Variegated Thistle (Silybum marianum).

Photo from Victorian Government Department of Environment and Primary Industries  linked to above

It is quite pretty actually - for a thistle. Lots of cabbage-like curly variegated leaves off a rosette but with lots and lots of nasty spines. It has pretty purple thistle flowers but it takes over and one plant can generate millions of seeds. Thankfully most seeds fall near the mother plant and as a result they form huge spiny clumps - easy to hit them in one go.

With no whipper snipper to aid me and keen not to waste the day totally, I decided to do what I could by hand. Armed with long sleeves and thick gloves, I decided to hand weed this beasty. With the soil being soft from lots of rain and their tendency to overcrowd themselves they were easy to pull out. I cleaned up three big patches.

Thistles and nettles are pretty known for being rich in nutrients so I  packed all the pulled thistles into the back of the truck to bring them home. I placed them on the new beds I am building to make a nutrient rich mulch of organic matter. Piled on top of cardboard, some soil from a nearby valley and cow pooh I am sure they will add to my veggie patch preparation.

A very spikey leaf

Adding these beasties to my veggie patch makes me feel like weeding  - usually a chore - is worth it.

Die thistle and fertilise!

So a frustrating day over I will nurse my spiked hands in front of the fire while I watch the colours on the hills change in the afternoon light.

Do you have a favourite weed that adds to your veggie patch?

Can I eat these?

Please, please tell me, can I eat these? Does anyone know?

In May and now in the very beginning of June we have had a fantastic amount of rain the creeks are all flowing and the dams are filling up. All this rain has been  followed by beautifully clear and sunny wintery days.  Rain + Sun = Mushrooms.

These enormous examples were found growing in a grassy area near Callitris Pines (an Australian native pine). An area where cattle graze but similar ones can be found popping up all over the place round the property.

These ones are probably past their prime as they seem to have attracted the attention of some insects but they look like ordinary mushrooms to me at least.

(Will you look at my hands! They have taken some punishment since moving to the bush  - dry, red cracked, dirty...)

On consulting Cribb and Cribb's, Wild Food In Australia, they seem to match the description of  Agaricus campestrus - the common Field Mushroom.

There must be someone out there who picks field mushrooms that can help? Can you easily identify wild mushrooms?

Autumn audit - '13

Each season I do a summary to reflect on what has happened in the patch. Here is my autumn 2013 summary - the first autumn in our new rural patch. But first an explanation for those from outside Australia - we define our seasons here by calendar months - so autumn here is March, April and May.

Weather
Phew, thank goodness for the cool of autumn. Summer was exhaustingly hot and so we were so grateful for the coolness that autumn brings. We had good rain in March and again in May but April was achingly dry. Our first frost was in late May and then it was only relatively light. In the whole of autumn we have only had two frosty mornings.

Growing for the first time

• Parsnips -They seems to be growing ok, but it's hard to tell with root crops until you pull them.  As the soil is still developing I think they will be pretty short roots, but I love parsnips and I as sure I will enjoy eating them no matter what size they are.
• Brussels Sprouts -  I bought a punnet of Brussels just to give them a go. I never really liked Brussels until I had them fresh from a garden in Lincolnshire, UK. They were wonderful and I hope mine will be too. I can just see the little sprouts starting to form on the stems. It's fun to grow new things.
• Raspberries -  But they have just gone in so no reflections yet.

Finally getting success with
Garlic -  I have attempted to grow garlic before but it has been pretty unsuccessful. This year I have taken it more seriously. I have about 40 cloves in  - most are Monaro Purple and a few are the sprouted cloves from some locally grown garlic I buy for cooking purposes. I figure seeing it's locally grown it might do ok here. I think they are doing well -  certainly they have more growth on them that I have ever had before. The difference this year is that they are getting more water and they are getting more of a feed.  I also have them in a bed all together. Previously I have used them as a gap filler crop  meaning that they kind of got lost in the garden and didn't get the attention they deserved.

Plants I am really enjoying
Red drumhead cabbage -  their red-blueness is just stunning beautiful in the bed.

Brussels Sprouts - growing them for the first time is kind of quietly exciting - but I'm a bit odd.

Blueberries -the beautiful colours of their autumn leaves.

Fennel - I love the fine fluffy foliage as a break to all that brassica-ness.

Broad beans - popping their heads out of the soil.

Things I am really enjoying
The way rain beads on brassicas.

 Spiders webs on the fence lines.

The way mist hangs in the valleys.

Chickens encountering wildlife, wildlife encountering chickens.

Pests
Cabbage White butterflies and their grubs - strangely no cabbage white moths, not one, consequently I have very tidy looking brassicas, that is where they haven't been nipped by the chickens.

Aphids -  loads of aphids but only on the Savoy cabbages.

Things that chickens like too much!

Cauliflower plants - they totally ate three of them pecking thru the plastic mesh I had erected to exclude them.

Any of the onion family - lost a whole bed of onions and half a row of leeks to the chooky girls!

Beetroot leaves and rocket - they harmlessly graze on those protruding the chicken exclusion fence

Do yourself a favour - take a drive to Adelong
Just a little recommendation for you... you really must drive the Snowy Mountains Highway from the Hume to Adelong in autumn, the autumn colour of the deciduous trees is outstanding. The golden poplars along the road and then a riot of  colour in  pretty  little Adelong.

What's happened in your garden this autumn?