Summer to Autumn to Winter

In February the chooks were moved to the Crepe-Apricot bed. They've been there for four months, and I've been adding not only kitchen wastes, but also garden wastes, woodchips, fallen autumn leaves, and some bits and pieces of other things to the tractor, so they've had a good chance to break it all down. The plan is to move the chooks on in the next week or so - probably onto the Avo-Shed again - put a border on the Crepe-Apricot bed (bricks again) and then leave it to mulch for a couple of weeks before planting out.

Current chook tractor location is the Crepe-Apricot bed:

All that leaf litter I'll leave to sit for a few weeks more and then plant it out. Planting out" for this bed requires planting more seeds of broccoli, mini cabbages, caulis, silverbeet, and anything else I can persuade to grow in there.

Onions, carrots, and parsnips are being grown in very fine soil. Radishes and beetroot and garlic have also been sown in a raised garden bed I put over the chook tractor bed base. I forgot to take a picture of it, though, but the radishes and garlic have both sprouted, although the carrots and parsnips aren't showing yet. Hopefully hopefully...

The azolla is growing great guns, and has been excellent for feeding to the chooks, making compost, and keeping mosquitoes from breeding in the water.

At the height of summer:

And now (after several 'harvests' for composts and chook food) it's dying down in autumn (as azolla does):

The stuff grows back so fast I can't stop it. And I haven't had trouble with mosquitoes since the end of February.

ASPARAGUS!

I can't tell you how excited I am about the asparagus this year! I mean, it's long since been exhausted, and definitely needs further mulching, and pretty soon, too, I think - before we start getting frosts. Which we're hovering on the edge of right now.

Avo-Shed bed - has been growing tomatoes all summer, eggplants and sunflowers a little, and pumpkins/curcubits NOT AT ALL.

The chickens are going on that bed next, and will probably be there until August.

I managed to grow a whole slew of papaya seedlings:

Gave a bunch away, then a whole heap of them got waterlogged and about half died. I have maybe four or five left and I don't know how well they'll do. They'll be going into the banana circle...if I can get them to keep growing!

Speaking of the banana circle, there's a lot to go into and around it: bananas, turmeric, ginger, galangal, taro, mango, paw paw, pineapple, comfrey, lemongrass...

Don't even talk to me about the 'food forest'.

I also considered the best location for sweet peas and have decided that it would be best utilised beneath the front window, where we have been trying to grow raspberries (they burn in summer) and where the rosebush has been doing utterly splendidly. They should be fine there up until spring, at which point, they might burn some...

I really need to take to that rosebush with a chainsaw, because I don't see how else I'm going to get it properly cut back. Plus, I think the trunk has some kind of scale on it.

I do need somewhere in the back to put clumps of flowers - at this stage, the best option would appear to be in front of the apricot, or else running alongside the bathtub gardens. I wonder if I could get poppies to grow?

Flowers for Spring
Poppies, wildflowers, etc. in one of the square cement pots.
Tulips in the green pot on the front porch.
More bulbs the square cement pot by the back door.

So many thing to do; so little time...