Category: Garden

Last full day with my sister and family, so doing a bit of a local buzz about. We went down to Boat Harbour Beach first to let the kids run amok and soak up the amazing sunshine today!

Its a beautiful little beach with notoriously cold waters!

I dabbled my toes of course – it wasn’t too bad – certainly fresh though! Maybe a little while before we go swimming… and maybe at a different beach! 🙂

We drove up Table Cape (which kind of lies between our house and the ocean) for beautiful views and a peek at the lighthouse.

We dined on some hot chips for lunch down by Wynyard Beach, then came back home for a quiet afternoon – Michelle took a much needed nap. The husbands and kids entertained themselves with the Minions movie.

But I couldn’t resist staying out in the sunshine to play in the garden for a while. I decided to pull up everything out of my crazy broccoli raised garden bed.

The chickens got a lot of scraps today -and lots of greens in the way of broccoli plants – and as a special bonus – a swag full of snails that had taken up residence in this bed!

There was much excitement, snatching, running and crunching!

I did get into the hothouse and plant my three new tomato plants. I am going to try to keep it to only these three and dig up and relocate any self seeded tomatoes (that are bound to come up) All other tomato plants can be outside ones.

I still have plenty of broccoli on offer around the place, so I didn’t feel so bad taking out that whole plot – I have a feeling a lot of self seeded ones will still pop up, so if I want to put in more, I won’t have any supply problems.

Hope your day was great too!!

Cheers!

Such a super gorgeous day today – it fills you with enthusiasm to get in and do ‘stuff’

So I dashed down the street to get my blood and bone – and also a box of dodgy bananas as I wanted to bake a banana/raspberry loaf for my sister and her family who got back in this evening.

I dug in the B&B and set up a few stakes and sticks to mark my rows.

Pip spent a quality five minutes with me in the garden schmoozling everything with his face before getting bored and whinging to go back inside.

I don’t know how other potato planters go about it, but I dig holes row by row, drop my potatoes in but not cover them. That’s so I can see how to evenly plant the next row, and more importantly, not trample the ones I have already put in! Oh, and because I am stingy frugal, I cut my potatoes in half.

About halfway through my plot, I ran out of the seed potato that I bought, so the next step was to raid the pantry. These last potatoes from the previous season seemed keen to do some growing so I just used them, rather than going and buying more. Remember? Frugal.

In other exciting news I found some nice sturdy tomato seedlings today – indulged in two Black Russian and one Tomato Rouge. These will go into the hothouse and once big enough I will be taking their laterals to grow a heap more in the main patch.

After planting my potatoes, I went and dug & weeded Ruby’s potato patch, then came home & washed off a ton of dirt, made the lasagne, Michelle & co turned up, had dinner, baked a cake, cut up two weeks of cat dinners for Pip (lamb – spoiled cat), put bread on to bake for brekkie and did umpteen dishes.

I think I am ready for bed!

Cheers!

The weather held off pretty well today – even ended up quite sunny! So, back into the garden for us!

I have been itching to get the spuds & snow peas in, so dragged Jeff from his comfy seat on the back veranda to give me a hand.

I relocated a few pieces of rebar to along the vegetable garden fence, as its my new snow-pea location. Weeded and dug in some of that compost and got the seeds in (Seeds I had collected from last season)

I had to relocate a few plants to make way for my potato patch. A few nice parsely plants & a couple of rhubarb plants that I thought I had killed – magically come back to life and actually looking pretty good. Hope they don’t mind the move.

There was also a lot of leek, but I just pulled them up. I have grand plans for soup tomorrow night.

We have dug this garden over many many many times and I am still being surprised by the crazy things I will find in this garden!

Like this weird bit of rubbish –

And holy cats, what about this monster potato????

I am prepared to admit, you will never find ALL your potatoes. But how do you miss something this size???

I have replanted it to see how many new potatoes it will produce!

I love our red soil! Its all ready to go – but I want to dig in some blood and bone before actually planting the potatoes. It was hard not to put them in though, and finish the job!

I think I am going to have to pot up some of that amazing parsley!

Between our garden and Ruby’s, I am going to have to put out the call for some ‘working guests’ !! 🙂

Hopefully my network of travelling friends know of someone that wants to hang out in Tasmania for a while and earn their keep!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

Cheers

Right!! I slothed the day away yesterday, so today I was determined to pull on the gardening clothes and get some stuff planted!

Apart from all my collected seeds, I rummaged about for leftovers from last season as I am not confident my saved zucchini & cucumber seeds will germinate.

Lets see… I planted normal and yellow zucchini, mini rock melons, cucumber, basil (a lot), heirloom capsicum (a lot – from saved seed so fingers crossed they do the right thing), chilli, eggplant, pumpkin and some test corn.

I am testing some corn because I saved this from our harvest last season – I have never saved corn seed before and I don’t know if I had a hybrid or not. So I want to see if this germinates before planting stacks of duds and wasting time!

Then – for a change of scenery, I convinced Jeff to accompany me down to Ruby’s to put in her Christmas Peas (ie, the peas that go on the plate for Christmas Dinner)

I had covered this area in seaweed grass and it has done a pretty good job of keeping the weeds down. We weeded and raked aside most of the seaweed before digging the plot

We used some of Ruby’s Birthday Compost to dig into the area where the peas are to be planted then set up the rebar for them to climb on.

We were then taken inside for dinner – pumpkin soup and garlic bread and boy, did that hit the spot!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Cheers!

My sister Michelle and her family drove off east this morning and will head south for a few days before coming back up here prior to taking the boat back to the mainland.

Its weirdly quiet!! 🙂

I planned to plant some seeds and muck about in the garden but it was a hideous day and the rain continues to steadily fall even now – so I pretty much did nothing useful at all.

And its lovely to see my tulips starting to come out – and be battered by the rain! Poor things.

Have a wonderful day!

Cheers!

It’s the time of year when it’s a bit frustratingly slow. Spring is here, but most of the first lot of seeds haven’t shown their heads and I am just impatient for ‘Things To Be Happening’

The herb garden seems to be looking after itself nicely – things are popping up. I am actually pleased to see the mint starting to run away as before this I have been the only one that can’t get mint to go crazy! And yes- I will probably regret it!

At least my cos lettuce seeds are really rocking along.

Some of my flower seeds have finally popped up – although the pumpkin, cucumber and zucchini are conspicuously absent!

Compared to last year, the raspberry canes are distressingly slow at producing leaves – there are a few popping out now, but way behind compared to last season.

Which is a worry because I keep inviting people here in December trying to lure them along with promised of endless raspberries! 😀

A quick tour of the fruit trees showed lots of budding.

It was a rain-off-and-on kind of day, but I chucked in some washing anyway – it immediately started to rain after I hung it out, but I told the weather I wasn’t playing that game today, walked away and left it. It quit raining and didn’t start up again!! 😀

I had a couple of cracked eggs I wanted to use in a cake for the chickens so I finally got around to that.

It proved popular!

Pip enjoyed being outside today – is now buried in my Nanna-Knee-Rug! (Taking up a whole couch to himself)

Anyday now – my tulips will be out!

Can’t wait for more to be happening!!

Patience patience!!

Hope your gardens are looking super!

Cheers

Parents only a few days from arriving and I am still working my way room to room spring cleaning. Today was the laundry and sun-room.

Basically I am NOT naturally domesticated. So I am trying to clean a room and then ban myself from it. 🙂 It might work!!!

I even folded clothes today!! I know!!! (But I didn’t enjoy it, so I had to go outside to water my plants to recover)

Remember my little cos lettuce?

Two days ago:

Today:

Its very satisfying watching them zoom along.

I also got around to getting the Gee-Whizzer out to sort the food scraps that the chooks turn their beaks up at, to give to the compost worms

Not going to bore you with tales of my domestics. But it does look rather nice in the sunroom now!

Hope your day was fun and domestics free! 😀

Cheers!

Hello!! Welcome to the middle of the week! 🙂

Just a quick note about commenting. I have tried to add ‘captcha’ to weed out some intensely irritating spam. It means you have to do some higher math to make a comment! PLEASE let me know if it it dead annoying, or not working etc. I will try to make any of you commenting exempt (I can add you to a ‘whitelist’)(But my skill with this sort of thing is limited so…. bear with me!)  I am not getting bucketloads of spam, but one company is absolutely slamming me with their messages – each message fills about 4 full pages and they sent 11 yesterday alone!! So scrolling down and mucking about with these “insert favourite insulting name here” is really getting up my nose!!  I am just afraid if I blanket-delete the spam folder I will put someone legit in the trash, as I have had a few of you go to my spam folder for whatever weird reason!

Anyway – love the comments from real people!! 😀 😀

So – today was really lovely and sunny – so I fixed that weather problem by doing a couple of loads of laundry – haha

I think its still a bit early, but I had to plant some more seeds – curious to see how they germinate as I have collected them all myself

Trying zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber & Marigolds

Do you remember Ruby’s tip about watering seeds and seedlings? I leave a watering can or bucket of water in the hothouse to keep it a moderate temperature to water my new plants with, instead of using cold water. Its kinder – as an elderly relative told Nurse-Ruby “You wouldn’t give a new-born cold milk, would you?!!”

I also took time to burn our ‘burnables’ Once that got going it was hard to tear myself away, as there was a lot of garden off-cuts that could have done with burning off and tidying!! (But I had the back veranda to clean)

The back veranda really had gotten into a state – partly due to hauling the wood in, partly due to Jeff’s new whittling for ‘fat wood’ hobby, sad pot plants (remember I said I suck at keeping potted plants nice) and rain/mud/leaves etc.  So I fixed it today. (OK the deck could use a good scrub but I wasn’t getting that over-excited about cleaning)

Here’s hoping the weather keeps on the up & up!! Its great being outside again more than once a week!!

Cheers!

I get excited every time I see the plum blossoms – spring so close!!

Remember a few days ago – ok maybe a week ago – when I cleared out the hothouse? I planted some cos lettuce seeds. Well.. yesterday I was thrilled to see that they had germinated already!!

Even better – this was all from seed I saved myself, so was having a doubly proud moment! 😀

And the jury is out no longer – the brassica that could have been cabbage has most definitely become a broccoli!

Isn’t it cool the way these leaves are impervious to water??? So clever how it runs off getting to the ground where the plant needs it most. I need to play about with droplets and broccoli leaves with my camera more!

I had to do a bit of searching, but I finally found some green sprouting on a raspberry cane! They seem really late compared to last season!! I have been starting to fret!

I did do manual labour today – but didn’t bother photographing it! I bagged up the remaining compost mix to free up the trailer. I am sure I will be using it up soon in the garden somewhere! The dining room table also got cleared too – yay me!

Look at this poor mess!! Amazingly, the silverbeet (chard) that I put in last November is still producing new leaves! The sometimes-pecked-by-hens broccoli is looking woebegone.

I also spied a whole lot of little happy self seeded silverbeet among the weeds and broccoli!

Which is it?? Lazy gardening or permaculture?? haha

And more pretty stuff:

I hope Monday has begun well for everyone!

Cheers!