Labour Weekend

Labour Weekend is seen by many gardeners as the golden weekend to begin planting out seedlings. The risk of getting a frost should be almost non existent now and being a long weekend there's an extra day for gardening. I currently have seedlings at all different stages so today I sat down and reflected on where exactly I am with everything. I have seedlings that are hardened off and are waiting patiently outside to be planted, some are ready to be transplanted from seedling trays into larger pots or are already in the process of being hardened off, others still need to be left in the trays until their first set of true leaves appear and then there are seeds that need to be directly planted into the ground.

The following varieties of tomatoes are all ready to be planted out tomorrow - Yellow Pear, Black from Tula, San Marzano, Brandywine Blend, Mortgage Lifter, Roma, Moneymaker, Green Zebra and Sunrise Bumblebee.There are also a mix of beans, a butternut, courgette, cucumber, capsicum, lettuces, sugar baby watermelons and golden midget watermelons that are ready. We also have bee friendly flowers that make great companion plants too, such as: marigolds, calendula, borage, poppies, sweet peas, purple tansy and nasturtium.

Ready to be transplanted from seedling trays and into their own little pots are: three seedlings from a squash mix (it reminds me of getting a lucky dip as a child), purple beans and emu beans, luffa, Tuscan Delight melons, golden midget watermelon, yellow meated watermelon, zephyr courgette, pepino, violet cauliflower, bright lights silverbeet, cut and come lettuce, nasturtium, sunflowers, marigolds and sweet peas.

In the process of hardening off I have bright lights silverbeet, black and strawberry popping corn, Atlantic Giant pumpkin, beetroot, eggplants, small sugar pumpkin, Italian broccoli, violet cauliflower and zephyr courgettes. Then left in the seedling trays will be melons - collective farm women and golden midget watermelon, small fry cherry tomatoes, another pepino, eggplants, capsicum and a variety of herbs (basil, chives, Italian parsley, rosemary and thyme). I may need to sow some more rosemary and thyme though as not a single one of those seeds has germinated. I'm hoping to use the herbs as companion plants in the vegetable gardens, as well as planting some in hanging baskets. They'll need to be watered twice a day in the hanging baskets, but I always grew up with my mum and grandparents growing plants in hanging baskets so would love to have a go myself this year too. I may also plant a couple of cherry tomatoes in the baskets as well.

Last, but not least there are the seeds that I will sow directly into the ground - honey and pearl corn, beans, rainbow carrots and purple dragon carrots, watermelon radishes and Easter egg radishes, peas and bee friendly flowers.

Today wasn't as productive in the garden as I would have liked, but that's okay because instead I was gifted more time to reflect on where I'm at, where to next and how I might like to modify my garden plan prior to planting out my seedlings. I did manage a quick trip to a couple of garden shops though. I ended up by purchasing some marigold seedlings, bird netting for the berry garden, a hose nozzle attachment, a pack of bamboo stakes and a ruby pepino. As well as all the vegetables that need planting out I now have the pepino, tropical guava and an apple tree I still desperately need to plant. Hopefully the weather holds out tomorrow so I can tick a few things off my 'to do' list.

What have you got planned in your garden for Labour Weekend?

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September 2017

A little monthly update on what's been happening in our backyard and gardens over September.


Chickens and Ducks 

We recently purchased another two Araucana chickens. These two lavender hens are coming onto their first lay now and lay beautiful blue eggs. Both are reasonably tame and are interesting to watch scratching around in the backyard. We've had no luck with getting our Pekin duck to go clucky, but now have five chickens that are clucky so I've popped a few eggs under them. Some of these eggs will definitely be fertile, but I'm unsure as to whether the chickens will commit to hatching them or not. So far it's looking promising. The two Indian Runner x ducks are still both sitting on a nest of eggs each. Over the past week one of them has started smashing the odd egg. These eggs obviously weren't fertile. You can easily tell by how rotten they now are.

Pet Orphaned Lambs 

Peppermint and Snowflake are doing really well. They're now outside day and night. They have two old dog kennels in the paddock for shelter. They sleep cuddled up together in one at night. When I first started putting the lambs outside I let them play in our backyard, instead of putting them in the paddock. When they started to learn how to strip the citrus trees it was time to move them out into the paddock. Both lambs will be two months old in early October. They're old enough to be completely weaned off bottles of milk now, but we've continued to give them a bottle each night to keep them tame. They are also due to be drenched and have their tails, as well as Peppermint's boy bits removed soon. They're incredibly friendly and have learnt to come when they called, especially if they know there's a bottle of milk it in for them. 

Backyard Orchard 

The two latest fruit trees that I've recently purchased are a Greenmeadow Cox Orange apple tree and a tropical guava. We needed a second apple tree to pollinate our Royal Gala apple. We also ensured that we selected a tree that will do well in clay soil. This is something that I failed to think about the first time when selecting fruit trees so I'm hoping that the other trees will do okay. The tropical guava I couldn't walk past at our local grower's market when I saw it was only $10. Both my little boy and I love guavas at much as the wood pigeons so we may even end up purchasing a couple more of these.

Raised Vegetable Garden Building Project 

We've had a lot of rain over the past few weeks so our raised vegetable garden project has taken a bit longer than we had expected. The frames are now all up, but we still have to attach all of the chicken netting to it to stop out cheeky chickens from being able to get into our garden. I've spent hours planning my garden and taking into consideration gardening methods such as, companion planting and crop rotation. You can read more about our garden design and plan here.

Berry Patch 

Our berry patch has now been relocated away from outside the lounge window. Now that the chickens can no longer jump up onto the window sill and it's the garden, we should hopefully have a bit more success. We've planted two blueberry bushes so far and will add a third too. It's beneficial to grow more than one variety together. This ensures that they pollinate each other and that you get a better crop. Some blueberries will however pollinate self-pollinate. We also plant different varieties of strawberries.

Mr 2 helped to put sheep pellets on our berry garden around the strawberries. We don't put them around the blueberry plants as they don't like it like the strawberries do. I then added pine needles as a form of mulch around all of the plants. As the pine needles break down they'll help to keep the soil acidic, which is how blueberries and strawberries prefer it. Our garden was then finished off with some new compost and strawberry straw. This helps to feed the plants and also keeps the fruit clean.

Growing From Seed

This year is my first year growing my own fruit, vegetables, flowers and herbs from seed. I've developed a love for buying different varieties and learning how to grow them. My three favourite brands so far are Kings Seeds, Koanga and Yates seeds. When deciding what to grow I took into consideration what we eat a lot of, some different varieties I wanted to try that you can't purchase in the supermarket e.g. Zephyr Zucchini; as well as things that are fun to grow with children e.g. giant pumpkins, sunflowers and popping corn. We've learnt so much already and can't wait to continue sharing this adventure with you all.

Happy gardening everyone x

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Our First Ducklings

While I was cooking dinner one night last week, I noticed these cute little balls of feathers running around the paddock with their mum. These are the first ducklings we've hatched here so we were pretty excited too! We crossed our fingers and hoped that they'd all survive their first night. 

One sadly didn't survive so now we have six balls of feathers left. It was looking a lot weaker than the other ducklings yesterday (you'll notice it wasn't even in yesterday's photo because it wasn't keeping up with the others). I went back down to the large chicken enclosure where we'd put the ducks and ducklings last night. I'd decided that it would be best to bring the little duckling in overnight, instead of leaving it outside in the cold. Unfortunately it had already passed away. The other ducklings all seemed happy and were trying to go under mum so I left them with her. At 2 am I couldn't sleep because the rain was so heavy and again I thought about going down the paddock to bring them all inside. 

The next morning as soon as it was light we collected them up (including the mother duck) and put them in a large plastic storage box with a blanket. They were put in the bathroom until they dried out and warmed up. Around lunch time I set up our old rabbit hutch with fresh hay, shallow bowls of water and food for them. I then put them into the hutch in the backyard. We have a resident hawk so this will be the safest place for them for now. It also means that I can keep a closer eye on them.

Today they're a week old and are all doing well. The love splashing in the shallow dish of water and have happily taken to eating chick crumble mixed with water. Over the next few days I plan to move them onto a proper meat bird crumble. We also have a few clucky hens sitting on fertile duck eggs so hopefully there will be some more ducklings arriving over the next couple of weeks. 

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