Cabbage Moths

First of all, I apologise for being absent so long - just too much going on somehow so something had to give :(
Anyway, I wanted to share a testament to permaculture and Linda Woodrow's principle of interplanting. The cabbage moths hit town the other day and look at this - one patch of brassicas inter planted with celery, onions, leeks, carrots & celeriac, and the other a little cabbage all on its own!

Seedling experiment - the results!

Well, many thanks to Linda Woodrow for her growing from seeds tips. I, like a number of you in blogland, had been having trouble with my strike rate growing seeds in punnets and blogged about that here. Linda kindly shared her tips about growing seeds in a polystyrene box, so I rescued a number of them from the back of the local supermarket. And decided to try an experiment.
So, I planted up a set of punnets and a number of rows of vegie seeds into the polystyrene box on the 9th October. I'm afraid I didn't have the energy to go dig up a bucketful of creek sand and collect cow manure from the farmer's field about 10 minutes' drive away, so I just used good quality seed raising mix in both the punnets and the box. Here's the results:

Things are looking pretty good in the polystyrene box aren't they?

But over in punnet-world:

That's right folks - on lousy leek seed is just starting to sprout!
So, guess who is a complete convert to planting seeds in the polystyrene box? You guessed it - that'd be me!

Very busy time in the emerging food forest at the moment. A Pictorial update in the next few days I promise!
Enjoy - Greenie x

A little holiday

Ah! Down the beach for a little relax! The view from our room:

And what is the first thing I think when I see that view? Just imagine all the veggies I could grow where that lawn is!!

Enjoy your weekend all
Greenie x

Lessons and Yolks

Well, first an update on the Monster Monster egg. Yep, she was a double yolker all right!

We got a yummy lunch of scrambled eggs on toast (sorry Frugalites - it was bought bread - but a local baker!!) out of this and just one more egg - for the two of us. Oh and sorry - I forgot to take photos of it once it was all cooked up. My God it was good though. So thank you Keema and keep up the good work.  She's only missed one day since that post - all pretty consistent around the 78g mark. The other two lay about 5 a week each. I'm keeping a tally so I can look back over the years. We got about 51/2 dozen in September. You can see how I'm progressing in my quest to build a food forest too by clicking on the Harvest Diary tab at the top of this page :)

And now for the lessons. Every journey towards growing your own food is full of lessons, and I've just learnt a big one. Don't let your seed trays dry out and DO use good seed raising mix.  All of the gardening gurus in books and in Blogland say so, but little Miss Greenie got a bit over-confident didn't she?

You might remember me blogging about asking my daughter to make a mercy dash to check on the chooks and water the seedlings?  Well, if they were already seedlings they made it, and if they were in the good seed raising mix in the bucket - they came up anyway, but those I potted with a mix of seed raising mix, and soil from the gardener - NADA!  Well, that's unfair, I have three rockmelons, two sweetcorn, two zucchini (but I don't reckon one of them will last) a couple of struggling leeks and a few purple Basil - oh! a one tomato! That's it - out of 20 punnets!

I'm bowed but not beaten. So, all that soil will be unceremoniously tossed into a little nook in the garden to see if anything eventuates. Meantime, I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

This time, I'm going to plant some in punnets and some straight into the ground - and see what happens.  This can be the beginning of my planting diary, which I will also put on the tabs at the top so you can see what's happening.

Wish me luck! I've heard from a few blog-friends, like Our Gang of 7 and Outback Tania that they struggle too with planting seeds into punnets. What about you - any secrets to share?

Take care
Greenie x

The Monster Egg Chronicles

Well, there I was thinking it was just another day. I thought we might have got three eggs (a perfect score from our three chooks, but it doesn't happen that often), but I was not expecting this ...

That's right ladies and gentlemen - a whopping 118 gram egg! Miss Keema completely outdid herself! You may remember one of my first blogs was about Keema laying a 90g egg. Well, in a slightly modified version of the immortal words of Crocodile Dundee - that's not an egg .... now THIS is an egg!

I swear to you, she's just a normal Langshan chook, not a duck or a goose. Here is a photo of the MONSTER alongside her normal offering (about 80g) and then on the right, an example of the typical egg we get from the other two girls (64-66 g)

It would not fit in the egg carton and looked quite bizarre against the others - a kind of Mt Killimanjaro of eggs against a few measly hills

DH is a bit weirded out and is not sure about eating it. I can't wait to see if its a double yolker!

And do you know the most incredible thing? She laid us another egg the very next day! Only 78g though - but that still qualifies as an extra large egg in the Supermarket. She skipped the next day and has laid consistently ever since.

What an amazing girl!  Thanks Keema - queen of the layers!

Talk soon
Greenie x 

Seed raising mix surprises

This one is specially for Our Gang of 7 who's been having one hell of a run lately. Her seed babies got knocked over in the high winds of last weekend, so she wondered about throwing the seed raising mix from the pots on the garden to see what came up!

Well, a few weeks ago, I went away for work and forgot to ask my best friend, DH to water the seed trays for me while I was away. It all got a bit dry and a big nothing happened. So, I threw all the seed raising mix into a bucket and mixed in some left over topsoil that we'd put on some of the garden beds. I've been using that on the new seeds I've planted ever since.

Today when I went out to water - look what I saw in the bucket

There's about 8 little seedlings popping up! God only knows what they are, but I'm going to prick them out into some newspaper pots I made, using Laura's instructions via Rose's wonderful blog (thank you Rose!). I do not have a fancy tool, I just used a round glass that we have in the cupboard, so keep scrolling down till you get to the instructions using a bottle.

Aaanywaay! I have no idea what these little fellas are, but it will be awfully good fun finding out, and I thought it would give !  Stay tuned!

Enjoy the rest of your week
Greenie x

Mercy Dash and a Close Call

There were loads of sightings of foxes in the Canberra area over the past week, and we were away in Castlemaine in Victoria.

And then, I heard it was going to be 26, hot and windy over the next few days. So then I began to worry about my darling little seedlings, including the new tomatoes I got from the Duck Herder and Murra Mumma at the Canberra Urban Homesteaders Club meeting on the previous weekend.

I was getting more and more nervous, and it was ruining my weekend.  So, I finally rang my daughter to see if she had time to do a mercy dash across town and check on my girls, and water my seedy babies. When she'd stopped laughing at me, she did promise to go.

A few hours later, I got a text with the label "Bok Bok Bok" and this photo

Phew! The girls are OK! Then I had to laugh because I had the opportunity to see how silly the annex looked all sewn up with twine from the straw bales!!

When I got home, all the seed trays were fine, and the girls had laid 8 eggs! but one was broken (it was starting to get a little crowded in there!) So, I collected all the eggs, watered the planted out seedlings and the newly planted ones in the greenhouse, and went to bed.

The next day, I went to let the girls out. All were happy to be going to the day facility again. But on the way back, look what I saw

I had left the nesting box door/lid wide open! I may as well have left a "Please Take Me" sign on the fence for the foxes! Luckily, the foxes were visiting another part of the neighbourhood last night. I don't kid myself that the perimeter is fox-proof; any fox that wanted to could get in. Only Guantanamo Chook is safe - unless you leave the bl#@$%y door open!

Anyway, all's well that ends well - and this time - I seem to have got away with the one little slip up!

I must be more careful. I must be more careful. I must be more ...

Talk soon
Greenie x