Seed Planting !!

Today my little helpers and I got stuck into some seed planting. We didn’t finish everything we had in the “to plant” container but we did get about a dozen varieties of Veges and herbs done.

As you can see we are reusing seedling containers we have used many times over, some of which will have to be thrown out after this season as they have been very sun damaged and have become very brittle.

I also just use cut up lids from ice cream or butter containers to make into seed tags. When everything has been planted and labelled I popped them into my little hothouse 🙂

Then we went to bunnings to pick up some supplies, seeds and plants for ourselves as well as Tzara and Michael who were about to build their first vege patch at their new house.

Then rather than go home we went to their house and supervised lol They did a great job and will hopefully get some nice veges too 🙂

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Hopefully we will finish planting seeds tomorrow and get in the few seedlings we bought today. I also grabbed some bags of compost to mix with my own compost to dig through the garden beds to give them some more life, ready for when the seedlings are ready to be planted out.

Planting Fruit Trees

So maybe planting them on the first 26 degree day in spring wasn’t such a fabulous idea, but I had to get them in the ground before they grew too much more!!!

Oh yes, Max the cat was a little tired after playing outside all day and helping plant the trees so had to have a bit of a nap…

Working on the front yard

Winter Garden Flowers

A Winter Garden

Seedlings and new growth

Dwarf beans

Cauliflower, purple and standard broccoli, Brussel sprouts and cabbages

Blueberry turning red from the cold

Sweet chillies finally turning red

Hmmmm

So I have been a bit busy with life and gardening and I haven’t posted in quite a while.

I will pop up some random pics of the garden for a while and do a proper post soon I promise xx

This and that

 

Today was Kai’s second full day of school, well technically the whole school finishes 45 minutes early on a Tuesday so it was still a full day 🙂 That left Emma and I a little more used to the quiet and we got a few things done both inside and outside the house. Things like cleaning the bath, handbasin and toilets for example, shock horror! It didn’t take long for us to make our way outside though.

Before I get into some of what we did, maybe I will show you some progress pics of how things are coming along in the garden. I don’t think I have actually listed out all of the fruits, veges, and herbs we have, so lets see if I can remember them all.

Fruits are blueberry, thornless blackberry, white mulberry, tayberry, strawberries, golden pepino, almond, nectarine, pomegranate, grape and strawberry guava. Vege’s we now have in zucchini’s, lebanese cucumbers, crystal apple cucumbers, lettuce, corn, kai’s broad bean and a new addition of black kale which I will show you in a minute.

Herbs I have an elderberry I have had for years and a bay tree which is booming, valerian, curry plant, stevia, angelica, 2 types of rosemary, 2 types of lavender, perennial basil, spiced, lemon, rose and mint pelargoniums and also nasturtiums. 

I have a feeling I have left some out but that isn’t too bad a list anyway! So here are some pics including some of the kids flowers.

Kai’s broad bean from kindy!

The raspberry and tayberry’s flowering

 

the blueberry with berries forming, yummy!! I am addicted to them at the moment…

the grape I didn’t think would come back this year, the rescued pomegranate and one of the transplanted strawberries

And how about some veges? Cucumbers, corn and zucchini

I am so pleased I made the effort to get all of these in just as we started getting the awesome weather. That combined with intermittent rain everything is booming!

So today started with watering, trimming, pruning, weeding the tiny weeds out of the vege garden and training the climbers on their respective frames. This included pruning back the native hibiscus as Dean had a bonfire to burn up excess wood while I was away, which burned some of its ranches! I also shovelled some dirt over the ashes to stop them lowing around after picking out all the metal and nails so the kids couldn’t tread on them. Then as I had the bin I went around and did another quick rubbish scout and pickup. 

I had to pop down to the doctors with Zacc and called into the shop while we were out. I was pleased to see that the local greengrocer was carrying the Renaissance hers and had grabbed a couple the other week, so of course had to pop in there too 😉 I restrict purchases only to seeds I don’t have or herbs I can’t easily buy so all I have grabbed so far is valerian, angelica, a curry plant and some stevia. Though I also snaffled a succulent I eyed off last time I was there, a pot of butternut pumpkins and some black kale. 

Emma and I planted the valerian, angelica and stevia into my renovated her/rose garden today. The curry plant I think I will plant out into the front garden. Of course I didn’t get any after pics but here they are in their pots. 

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The pumpkins Em and I planted along the edge of my roses in the herb/rose garden as I plan to put a trellis up in there to grow the pumpkins up. They will go up a side of the old galah cage that I will wire and the secure to the ground with star pickets, then run chicken wire from that to the edge of the carport. That way by the time the pumpkins have grown up and along the trellis they will give my herbs underneath protection from our harsh late afternoon summer sun. Plus the added advantage of keeping my pumpkins off the ground reducing powdery mildew and needing less space to grow them 🙂

Here’s a pic of the pumpkins after planting today. I have to pull out the frame and wire it next to secure in.

After having lunch we planted out 3 of the crystal apple cucumbers out the front yard, hopefully to avoid cross pollination with the lebanese ones I have out the back. No big deal if they do but it would be good if we can get some uncrossed seeds from them. The last one of these we popped into a pot and put it along the front path with the extra zucchini and will transplant them into bigger pots when they are bigger just to have a variety of growing results. I like to test things out lol

The last thing I did today while Dean was here visiting with the kids after school was to start filling in around the turtle tank, between that and the edges of the old vege garden sleepers. I wanted to get rid of the last big pile of compost/mess that Dean and had made and discovered while pulling it apart that he had put all of the pond plants he had ripped up in there. The root systems were massive and just like coir. It was perfect to put all down as a big layer of fill first, then I will back fill it with a mix of mushroom compost/sand and potting mix. I will then plant in the corners the black kale I bought as well as some silverbeet, spinach and some other veges. I am also going to leave the trellis there to grow up some peas and beans which will also protect the turtle yard from the hot summer afternoon sun later on. I will need to mesh the other side of it though as I will be putting chickens in there and they will eat them all!

So last, but by no means least, some pics of some of our flowers. We have quite a few more, but I will show them off another time. 

See you soon x

 

 

 

 

Catching Up

I have been a bit quiet since my last post as we have been sick as well as busy. Yes sick again and again, and um yes again! Thankfully that run seems to have broken and the kids are back to their bouncy, energetic and sometimes annoying selves 🙂

We were lucky enough to do a quick trip um to see my daughter, son in law and grandson which was awesome, though not anywhere near long enough!! I did however get lots of snuggles, some grandbaby babywearing in along with going out for dinner before coming home. Thankfully it will be only a few weeks till they need to come down this way, then not too many weeks after that is (ok say it quietly) Christmas….

Unexpectedly I came home with an extra child as Zacc my 21 year old decided to move back in for a while until he finds a place of his own. This of course meant that the day after we got back I had to do a major reshuffle of the house to give him his own room. The little kids got moved down to the other end of the house into my room and Zacc went into their room. This means I am currently sleeping in the loungeroom on a single mattress until Dean moves out his snakes, which thankfully and hopefully should be this weekend, then the tiny little snakeroom shall be my bedroom. Luckily I don’t need a lot of space. 

I got some random jobs done like moving the freezer into my dining room from the laundry so one of the bigger snake tanks that isn’t going, can go there instead; I installed a height adjustable shower head so Zacc can actually fit under the shower; moved the guinea pig cage out form the laundry also to outside. I positioned it along the back house wall under where I have the pandora’s growing up the trellis and chicken wire so they get fresh air, sunshine and shade; tied up the pandora lead shoots so they don’t break off in the wind; tidied up contents of the craft cupboard from my loungeroom floor after the kids raided it; brought in and folded 5 loads of washing; moved my wool and fabric tubs into the dogs area until my room is done and did some random around the house cleaning and sorting.

So, now back to the backyard. Since my ex mowed the back lawn with Kai, it made the long grass along the edges and the fence still out horribly, and yes, it annoyed the crap out of me. Now I don’t have a whipper snipper, well a working one anyway. Maybe it’s best not to mention the 5 or 6 broken ones Dean has in the shed… So not wanting to waste money or borrow one I kept to my cheap or no cost methods and pulled it all out by hand or used the secateurs. Yes my back was really, really sore the next day but it was bloody worth it!! I can’t find a good shot of the horrendous fenceline before as I got carried away with it all rather quickly, but here is an after shot of one area as well as the huge mound of pulled grass!

While we were away I asked Dean if he would mind doing scrap metal run as well as a rubbish dump while the kids weren’t there, which thankfully he did. Finally most of the crap has gone out of the yard except for small bits and pieces which I can slowly through away each week in our normal rubbish bin. He also moved the only cut piece of rainwater tank into the old vege garden for me. This is for the turtle and the blue-tongues to move into.

Today I dismantled the old turtle enclosure and created his new one. The first job involved the kids and I scooping out all of the water from his pond and pouring it onto the veges, fruit trees, flowers and then any random plant in the back yard lol They thought it was awesome as the water was green and stinky! Then I rinsed out the tub and put it in the new tank enclosure, filled in some spots around everything with soil from the old enclosure and added some succulent type plants that have been sitting around in no soil for aaagggges. They will hopefully take off now they are actually in some soil! Then I topped those areas with stones to stop the plants drying out too much as well as to stop sand from falling into the pond. These stones are from an old random cage I had pulled up and threw out that had been full of the stones. I can’t even remember what had originally been in there!! Anyway I think it turned out fantastic! I am going to get a variety of small grasses and plant them in too. I don’t think I will add the blue tongues now as they will be able to climb out I think, in fact I think the turtle might too, particular above his pond area so I might need to put some mesh that can lift up for cleaning over that area.

The old enclosure 

The new enclosure, before and after, though a crappy pic

I pulled up the tin sides of the old enclosure, filled in the old pond hole and moved the kids climbing frame there. Then I moved the ‘c’ channel from along the fenceline near there out to my special “salvage yard area” and pulled out the long grass. I nicely asked Zacc to give me a hand and we shifted the swings (finally!) along the fenceline to open up the yard. We played with the positioning a bit with Kai acting as “test swinger” so we could make sure we could get the swings close enough to the the fence to maximise space without having the kids crash into the fence while swinging 😉 It fits in beautifully with the trampoline in its original position, so now we have some good running and kicking space in the middle of the yard.

The yard before

And the glorious after pics, yes I am very, very pleased with it 🙂

There is an area next to the old vege garden that used to be random nothingness which Dean ended up planting some grass pieces in. The plan was just to start them off, then dig them up to move into the yard later on. Well it has now grown well and truly all over that area so was mowed when he did the rest of the yard. lol Along the back was one of the areas I had pulled all the grass from along the fenceline. I decided to move all my fruit tress and bushes there which I had planted into bigger pots a few weeks ago, until I decide where their forever spot will be. It may end up just being there in bigger pots yet. I will buy some straw to build up around the pots in summer to reduce heat and also water loss. Now I can use the old herb garden where I had them all originally as an extra vege garden. The kids and I will plant the butternut pumpkins, extra zucchini’s and herbs in there over the next few days.

All of our vege and flowers are growing amazingly so I will try and remember to take some pics to show you soon x