Planted out the rose du var garlic in the black box where there were previously potatoes.
Need to dig out the chook yard and put it in the
How much cabbage do we eat? Wombok? 1 every fornight, maybe?
How much broccoli do we eat> Maybe 1 a week if B1 can get it.
Leafy greens? Maybe 1 a week? Pick-and-come-again is more my style.
TBH, we don't eat that much vegies - in part because B1 doesn't have the energy to prep them.
TO DO:
Friday:
- soak garlic in seaweed brew
- dig chook yard (holy place) into a black plastic box
- move black plastic box from backyard into chookyard holy place
- prep garlic bed
Saturday:
- plant out garlic bed
- prune backyard trees
- chop into smaller chunks
Sunday:
- chipping?
OBSERVATIONS:
GOLDEN PEACH has started flowering and showing green tips. (I sprayed it for leaf curl, should have done it earlier, probably should have held off now.)
TULIPS: I bought a big bag of tulips and kept them in the cool through to June. Then one morning I popped them in the freezer, intending to come back in an hour and plant them. They were there for a WHOLE DAY. Goodbye tulips! GRARGH. I seem to have zero luck with tulips and other bulbs, but I love them so much and just want some pretty spring bulbs, ARGH.
CHOOKS:
Tractor has been moved to AVO-SHED and the chooks are occasionally sitting in it.
Okay, the chook situation: at some point in May or June, we got two chooks from the postman. Literally, the postman. The 'Posties' had names, but we ended up renaming them Daofu and Haamyu (Tofu & Black Bean). They're down the lower end of the pecking order, and they haven't laid. We had them set up in the separate space for chooks for about four weeks, and then we started mingling them with Siyao, Goongbao, and Carambar.
It's always interesting watching chooks blend and mix. Goongbao is the prettiest and the top chook. Carambar is next, and then it seems like it's Haamyu, Siyao, and poor little white Daofu is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Well, sort of.
Because hard on the heels of getting Daofu and Haamyu, we also got two new chooks (new new chooks from a local girls school. They are collectively known as the “Lockdown Ladies” - Gladys (Berejeklian) and Kerry (Chant). I have no idea why we landed on those names, but we have and that is what they will be known as going forward. They have already started laying, which is a good sign. They're pretty happy digging everything up quite devotedly, and they have a voice and they're gonna use it!
Chooken Siyao is still with us, still holding on, still going about as strong as she's ever gone. Took her back to the vet, she got an ultrasound, the cyst had vanished. They think, however, it might have burst and caused general inflamation around the abdomen, which is why she's still not comfortable. We are giving her anti-inflammatory painkillers, and she seems to be doing okay.
Generally, the chooks are all doing about as well as one expects in the middle of winter. They seem pretty healthy, even if everyone but the Lockdown Ladies aren't laying, nor as active. (The Lockdown Ladies are pretty young – maybe a couple of years old.)
Today, I took away the old feeder that the Posties learned to feed from. They're still learning how to eat from the 'Grandfather feeder' – not to mention, we're running out of food! The remainder of the food in the bucket is mouldy and they shouldn't be eating it. Not quite sure what to do with it – compost, I guess?
Going to start them chooks on Vella food tomorrow: it's cheaper, and we'll see how much they like it.
On Sunday (Saturday?), sister and I cleared out the chook house of six months worth of cardboard and chips and poop. There are bags and there are buckets and I am hoping that there are no mites. I'm pretty sure I sprayed for mites a couple of months back, but I don't have a record of it anywhere, dammit!
COMPOST:
Would like to make some compost from the chook poop we cleared out, add with some chipped branches, and maybe some woodchips.
Am making leaf-mulch in the “display composter” between the APPLES and the DUAL STONE. Need more leaves.
PREPARING:
Lime Sulfate: Sprayed the TWO-STONE, the DUAL STONE and the Delicious/Dorset APPLE, then
realised I wasn't supposed to spray that APPLE and quickly rinsed it off with
water.
ETA: 25th: Sprayed the PLUM, STONE, CHERRY, and DONUT PEACH in the back (lightly). Also the PERSIMMON and a few of the leaves of the MULTI-CITRUS. Early morning, everything was still damp, may not have been the best choice. Sprayed the APRICOT in the front once the sun was out and the branches dry.
SEEDS:
Going to toss down some flower seeds along the fence bed: POPPIES, ECHINACEA, and some other stuff.
SWEET PEAS. Those need to go out ASAP.
PLANTING OUT:
Two ORIENTAL POPPY plants. Got to decide where they go and FAST.
FREESIA bulbs which look like they might have survived the freezer... Maybe?
HARVEST:
Occasional CHERRY TOMATOES from the small vegepods. Could (and should) probably try the CABBAGE in the CREPE-APRICOT (which is no longer a CREPE-APRICOT, but a CREPE-LYCHEE), and start harvesting leaves off the SILVERBEET and the other BRASSICAS. Also occasional PEAS which are growing in the dining room VEGEPOD
Still can pick some KALE, also CORIANDER.
Dug up a heap of SWEET POTATOES from under the mango. May need to dig some more out of there – they're pretty solid, and cutting back the space might give the mango a bit of space.
FEEDING:
Dug out the contents of two worm boxes, put them in another container (covered against rain), then rinsed out the worm boxes over the GARLIC bed.
PRUNING:
Gave the RASPBERRY patch a pretty good trim on the weekend. Also, a pretty severe one. Still have no quite worked out which are the autumn-ones and which are the spring-ones. Need to mulch that patch better, too.
Pruned the DUAL STONE, but very badly. Frankly, I'm surprised it survives, I've hacked it so many times. There's definitely some wounds that are bleeding gummosis, and I should really start looking at those.
In BACKYARD
Pruned: FOUR-APPLE
Still needs pruning: STONE
(apricot branch). PLUM, DONUT PEACH.
Haven't decided on: CHERRY. I don't
even know if this tree will produce anything in the coming years.
Need
to decide on a time: AVOCADO. It keeps sprouting right as I think it's time to
prune it!
THOUGHTS: Maybe put the new Lockdown Ladies in the ASPARAGUS beds and see how they go there. They're diggers, they might like that.
Need to think about how much space I need for the trees in the front bed. Might have to take the garden beds out, no matter how good and useful they are there!
1. re-setting the apple espalier, which is starting to fall over! ARGH.
2. get mulch delivered and move it to the backyard paths
(2a. dig out the
paths, and dump them in "compost piles"? What about a big compost pile in the
'hexabed' space?
3. dig some holes for the tea bushes (in front of the chook pen)
4. trim the trees
5. spray the trees
6. chip the branches of the trees
I'm going to try to seriously grow potatoes. In their own boxes. In as controlled conditions as I can manage, given everything on the property.
I never seem to do well with potatoes, I'm not sure if that's because the boxes/bags I grow them in are too hot for the potatoes to properly form, or if I plant them in the wrong place, or if they don't get enough food.
I saw a guy growing potatoes in some boxes very similar to what I have and have been thinking about utilising those boxes to grow my own potatoes
potatoes: heavy feeders - potash and phosphorus (not so much nitrogen; not fresh chook manure)
previously:
plant lettuce, radish, pea, spinach
then green manures
thoughts
- layer in-situ-compost in bottom of boxes to halfway up
- microbial liquid
- soil
- pea straw
- potatoes
- worm wee
- pea straw
- seaweed solution
every two weeks - pea straw and seaweed solution
The problem is (as always) keeping the chooks from getting to it.
OBSERVATIONS:
Weather's growing colder. Down to around 10C at night, still warming up to about 15C during the day.
Leaf-fall has happened on all the stonefruits and the persimmon. The persimmon dropped all its leaves in about the space of a week. The apples are holding on, both the front two and the back.
At some point, I think I killed the Gala apple with the Braeburn graft on it. I think I sprayed it with a poison rather than the antifungal I thought it was. All its leaves went brown at once, but didn't fall off. I had to strip them off once they were dead, and now it's utterly bare. I've repotted it into another box, at least for the time being. It's hopefully getting better care and remaining alive. Hopefully.
The pumpkin in the front is still pumping. It's got a small pumpkin growing after producing at least three others. They're all Kent-Butternut mixes, no idea about flavour.
The avocado is full of avos. I'm not sure if they're the right season to ripen, I've picked a few, but they seem to be ripening with extreme slowness. One has '13/4' written on it – which means it was picked six weeks ago and it's still hard as a rock. I guess we'll see...
CHOOKS:
Siyao got sick – a swelling in her abdomen, and a raw wound on her cloaca, and she was just sitting around with very little energy. We took her to the vet, she got scans done, came home with antibiotics and painkillers, and she seemed to get better.
I've spoken briefly before about the difficult of deciding if the chooks are pets or producers. Right now, they're being treated as pets, in part because neither the sisters nor I really have the distance to treat them as producers. And I have the money to afford vet care. If I didn't, that would be another matter. But also, I don't want to pay for them like pets. It's also extra difficult when the vets expect you to treat them like pets.
I think I should move the chook tractor to the AVO-SHED bed, let them run around in there for a while. Keep tossing chipmulch and other things around, let them eat what's in there. I've decided the AVO-SHED bed is a tricksy place to grow things – it's now shaded by the Avocado, and it's the bed that gets the least sun in summer. I really shouldn't be putting tomatoes in it. Where the tomatoes are doing really well? In the two small vegepods on the path from the street to the front door! Still growing, still cropping. The old sections are spotty and brown as are their leaves, but new growth is definitely happening! It's kind of crazy, we're only a month out from winter solstice.
COMPOST:
I haven't made compost in months. I really need to pack a rake or two, a pair of gloves, and a black box in the boot of the car for when I'm driving around and spot a space that I can pick up some leaves. Just a box a day – if I did that for a month, I'd have all the leafmulch I could use and some besides.
Worm farms are still going steady. Chooks are turning over the lawn clippings when we get them. And I have a big pile of twigs to chip, and a half-dozen trees that need some serious lopping.
I was thinking of getting a delivery of chip mulch, and hiring a young man from church to help move it. But I also need a working wheelbarrow for that, and the ones I have all have flat tyres or need repairs, dammit.
Chook poop hasn't been cleared from the henhouse in months. Possibly half a year. I just haven't had the energy/inclination, and the mite infestation didn't help one bit, because then I'm nervous about spreading them all around everywhere.
PREPARING:
Chook tractor on AVO-SHED, but also I've planted a bunch of green vegies out in the garden beds – I'm always late with that.
What if I use the chook tractor to make compost. Like, bigcompost. Just keep piling it up? Will the chooks still go in there? Maybe? I think they start ignoring the tractor when it gets too high. That's not good.
What do I plan to plant this summer?
1. I need to check if it's likely to be a hot summer or a wet summer.
2. Start developing a food forest?
3.Magic Square gardening (again? I've tried it several times, never quite managed to get it pumping, maybe because I'm not dedicated/organised enough?
SEEDING:
Need to plant the SWEET PEAS. I still haven't. Under the two apples, and beneath the front
PLANTING OUT:
Planted out assorted brassicas. Caulis, I think, and Gailan. I sowed a line of spinach in various beds, they seem to be doing pretty well.
HARVEST:
I've harvested all the BLACK TURMERIC. It grew really well in the driveway vegepod – as did the GINGER and the (putative) GALANGAL. I've dug up the galangal and was planning to plant it along the chook pen. Haven't done that yet, either. I've mentioned picking an avo or two off the tree, and there's a silverbeet in the vegepod that's just asking to be made into something like quiche or spanakopita.
FEEDING:
I have been using the Biocast+ (liquid vemicast biostimulant, from Island Biologicals), also seaweed brew, also comfrey brew. I feel like my buckets are producing considerably more weed teas than I can comfortably use. But a regular mix of weed teas, worm wee, seaweed brew, and biocast will hopefully give everything roots and get everything more firmly growing ready for the spring.
PRUNING:
Lawn guy has agreed to help do some pruning and lopping and stuff, and I'm going to hire the kid from church to help out – he was supposed to come on Saturday, but got sick and so I ended up trimming back the pomegranate and cutting back the pumpkin. And that was plenty on a day I got my period! Plan is to get all the trees down to a manageable height – including the DUAL PLUM, the MULTISTONE, and the DONUT PEACH up the back. Maybe the AVO, too, but that might have to wait until its fruiting is done. The TWO STONES don't need much trimming, and the APPLES are mostly manageable in their fan espalier, but the DUAL STONE always needs major trimming down.
THOUGHTS:s
1. Get Lawn Guy to do the bee garden – pulling out the sugarcane and trimming down the shrubberies there.
2. Get HS (church kid) to help reset the APPLES trellis, which is leaning on the houseward side.
- needs gravel (or use the stuff in the green box down the bottom)
- needs some sand/soil to 'cement' the post in
3. I wonder if the slowness of the plants in the tractor beds is in part because of the root systems of the trees above them. The best of the beds in the backyard is the bathtub garden and the wicking bed. It wouldn't surprise me that the tractor beds aren't getting quite enough nutrients for the plants I'm planting in them. Maybe a greater focus on leafy greens, wild greens, etc. Less on the cultivars? Could save the cultivars for the vegepod, perhaps?
Update: I started this log back in at least April, if not March. It's now May, and while some of these have been planted out (the root vegies), a lot of them didn't make it.
also planted: garlic
planning for: potatoes
FLOWERS
POPPIES: tossed in under frangipani
MARIGOLDS: planted along driveway
MEADOW DAISY: planted under cover in seed bed
NASTURTIUMS: lost the really nice red one (dried out)
SUNFLOWERS: not until summer
SWEET PEAS: not planted yet
CLOVER: white clover – sown all along the frangipani space. Red clover: not yet used, contemplating filling in the south side of the yard with it
CHOOKFEED: went in along the inner court of the chook pen, covered by upturned baskets, but the light is being blocked by corrugated iron, so need to move this.
A meadow garden along the driveway: marigolds along the border.
1. rake space around, dig up DANDELIONS
2. spray under the frangipani with SLASHER weedkiller - everything that got sprayed died
3. lay down some compost (finely sieved)
4. plant seeds: POPPIES in the middle, MARIGOLDS along the edges, NASTURTIUMS around the base of vegepod and under the frangipani, SWEET PEA under the apples, CLOVER in the grass around vegepod
5. cover with pea straw
&nsbp;
Along picket fence and on front verge (under the Illwarra flame)
1. water?
2. lay down some compost, finely sieved
3. seed CLOVER
4. cover with pea straw
In the bee garden
1. Pull out the big sugarcane (wait for Huntley's help)
2. trim down the bushes severely
3. dig up the DAHLIA bulbs
planting winterveg
note: most of this was planted out, Unfortunately, the chooks dug it all up! So only some of the radishes have survived. I've since planted out a lot more of the winterveg, but it's all over the place and I didn't make notes.
BEETROOT: golden detroit, red detroit, early wonder
RADISH: daikon white, black spanish, china rose
backyard Bathtub: daikon white
front vegepod: black spanish, china rose
ONION: red burgundy, white spanish, early creamgold , gladalan brown, barletta, unknown
backyard Bathtub: red burgundy, early creamgold
front vegepod: white spanish, gladalan brown
LEEK: mix - backyard bathtub?
TURNIP: mix - front vegepod:
ROCKET
SPINACH: bloomsdale, english
KALE
SILVERBEET
LETTUCE
WATER SPINACH: bamboo leaf
PEAS: shelling, massey gem, purple podded, golden podded, yakuma, sugarsnap, snow pea, telephone(?)
1. Where am I going to plant the peas? (under the apples in the front yard? Around the new lychee in the back? Do I plant them in different spaces and places? The sooner I get it in, the better it's likely to be growing.
