Autumn Days

The year is just flying by! At last I've cleaned up most of the greenhouse garden after the wet season. A friend brought me some fresh sawdust for the paths and I've removed the overgrown and spent plants and put in some sugarloaf cabbage, various lettuce, broccoli and silverbeet so far. I have more seeds germinating nicely in styrofoam boxes, pots and punnets, as well as in the fresh manure and mulch laid on the beds. It should be a jungle again in no time!

The cucumber vine which came from Greenpatch's Summer Permaculture Seed Mix is setting it's first tiny fruit. I hope they're lovely and we get some before it gets too cold. The pumpkins are still producing, so we have a good store of pumpkins and more to come. Winged Beans are climbing prettily over the back of the greenhouse - their delicate leaves and flowers as lovely as the frilly pods. I'm getting the last of the butter and bush beans picked, and hoping another variety comes along more quickly to replace it. There are some local "Italian Beans" from Seed Savers I'll be trying. I want to grow lots of peas this winter too. I have some yellow cherry tomatoes fruiting, and some more tomatoes just starting to flower. I have had trouble with wilt recently, so I hope that by growing the large tomatoes in pots I get to harvest some before winter. We've had nothing like the gluts we had at our old house, where I dried and bottled roma tomatoes for weeks, but I'm sure we'll get there as I build up the soil and find the right areas in which to plant things. It did take me a good while at our old place to get it right too!

Soon the yacon and yams should be ready to harvest, and probably the ginger and tumeric etc too. All of these tropical plants die off during Autumn and it's time to harvest for next planting season. The sweet potatoes are rambling wildly and I'm not sure how to get in there to harvest except clear the whole lot. Someone told me that if I miss any, just watch for new sprouts and I'll know where to dig - sage advice! I'm sure the horses and chickens will love picking through the vines - they love to nibble the leaves which poke out from the greenhouse. I'm not sure I'll get chokos or aerial potatoes from my vines until next summer, because they were late getting into the ground. I'm just happy to see them becoming established after a bit of trial and error.


Our chickens are doing really well - breeding, coming of age and producing plenty of eggs. We ate our first two roosters a couple of weeks ago and that went well overall. I think we'll do it again since we intend to keep breeding chickens. We've been vegetarian and/or only eaten fish for a long time (over 14 years), so this was a big deal to us. The ethics of food is a complex issue, but I do feel that eating a little organic, home-grown flesh is probably the best choice for our health, our planet (and our budget).

Today I fed the fruiting trees and some other plants with a smelly concoction of diluted horse manure, seasol, minerals, fish emulsion and comfrey - all mixed up with water and applied with a watering can. I'm hoping this will please my first planting of stone fruit who suffered from some bothersome insect in spring. The leaves were nibbled and stung and turned yellow. I applied pyrethrum as suggested by the nursery where I purchased them - a farmer who specialises in stonefruit. Many dropped off and I feared the trees were dying - our first casualties. But today I see there are new green leaves coming on and the first blossoms now that our nights are cool. Let's hope today's 'tea' encourages more of the same!

The cherry guavas are still fruiting and we've found several yellow guava trees too. The aroma of this fruit is such a delight. Hopefully when there are more ripe fruit I can make some jam or jelly and preserve the sweetness to enjoy over the coming months. We have bucketloads of macadamia nuts, which is fantastic. They keep well so we're just collecting and peeling. We keep a basket of fresh nuts and the BONK handy for ourselves and our guests to enjoy. I bought this nutcracker from eBay Australia and it's the best tool for the toughest nuts around!

And so, the abundance continues and I am counting my blessings and enjoying the lessons and the harvest.

End of Summer Update

This is part of my monthly ramble on my main blog site.

We have planted every single tree! All the trees we’d bought and had in the greenhouse are now in the ground. It started with the area behind the house. Then we finally planted out the noise/privacy barrier of natives and bushtucker trees along the driveway. Then the final 18 fruit trees went into Stage 2 of the orchard. That brings us to over eighty new food producing trees and about as many natives in the ground in our first year here. I’d hoped for one hundred trees in the orchard, but we just don’t have the time or money to meet that goal in the next 2.5 weeks. I’m sure we’ll get there soon, though, and perhaps we will aim for another eighty in our second year here?

We have done a lot of maintenance work on the orchard areas too - trimming, slashing, fixing up tree guards, applying dolomite to the trees and so on. A few are bearing their first fruit (a total of a dozen or so citrus fruits, for example), and many have at least doubled in size already.

The tree seeds I planted I’ve had mixed success with. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but we have Pigeon Pea, Albizia and Jakfruit taking off. Perhaps the rest of the seeds were not fresh, or will still germinate yet. If not, I will keep trying! Despite the mice, weather and other obstacles!

We now have over thirty chickens, including four mature roosters. Not really sure how to deal with them, as at least three have names and are considered ‘pets’. Last week we had 4 chicks hatch out of 11 eggs under 2 hens. Another hen was stealing and eating the eggs, 2 new chicks were walked upon or otherwise damaged and the other eggs were rejected or didn’t hatch.

Sweet Pea the pony has settled in well. She quite happily tolerates ‘Pony Rides’ and is easy to care for overall.

I’ve had to clear out the greenhouse a little with some tomato, squash, rosella and gooseberry plants being past their prime. Everything is growing prolifically and it’s like a jungle in there. Very difficult to get enough light and space for more delicate plants like lettuce and the asian green seedlings. It’s probably time to finish of the second greenhouse now and use that as my tidy garden. The best producing plants right now are the various beans - butter beans, dwarf French beans, winged beans and another type I don’t recall planting. Hmmmm. I presume it was one of my little helpers and think that when the pods come on I’ll find that they’re Purple King Beans - meant to climb but planted with nowhere to go…

We’re still enjoying loads of fresh macadamias, a few raspberries and plenty of cherry guavas. I love wild foods!

Seed Savers Meeting

This weekend I attended my first local Seed Savers meeting. There were around 20 people there and it was so lovely to be surrounded by like-minded folk for the afternoon. The meeting opened with general business and planning for the year. Then we went around the circle and introduced ourselves and explained a bit about our place and what we'd been up to in the garden. And next was afternoon tea and sharing items. I took some lemongrass plants and 3 varieties of seeds to share, as we've not been here so long that I was able to take more than that. I was introduced to a huge variety of plants and given a whole lot of seedlings, cuttings, runners and even a couple of little fruit trees! I was so rapt and can't wait to get into the garden when the rain stops. I'm nurturing them all through the constant downpours until then and hope they all survive and flourish. I should have written down the names of the plants I received, to share them here. Instead I know them as 'the lettuce-type vine', 'another perennial spinach-type plant', etc. I am such a non-technical gardener... I will gather the names of the plants I know, though, and update the post soon.