Windy winter gardening

For almost a week now I have been feeling under the weather with a cold/flu thing, not helped by my chronic sinusitis. Luckily it was only really bad yesterday and I'll hopefully be back at work tomorrow. My house is too cold because of the wind!

On the weekend we spent an afternoon in the garden, planting out some more beds and getting the flower bed prepared. Here is the new bed:

It contains mostly greens and is in the old roots bed. The other bed we planted out 2 weeks ago is chugging along nicely.

And here is the flower bed, which we left under black plastic for a while. Seems to have done a good job.

I am trying a few things with the peas, the climbing ones I replanted and they are going on my new and improved rio trellis feat. bird wire.

I also planted some bush peas along the fence. According to the packet they need to be kept out of the wind (oops!) so ours were a bit stunted. I'm going to try and secure them to the fence and see how that goes. The cumquat tree is so close!  Maybe in a week or so we will be able to start harvesting fruit.

And our seedlings are still going well, sold some more last week. Probably need to get some more going now. We are going to be inundated with greens in about a month, I can't wait for our garden to look beautiful and I'll take some nice photos then.

Our cauliflower is ready to harvest and the broccoli's are starting to head after being hammered by moths. We will have some more cabbage soon too.

Our potato boxes are going well too. We haven't had much success with potatoes before so it is a bit of a trial.

And my permanent broody laid an egg on Saturday! I was very excited. She has probably now reached double figures this year lol.

Have a nice week.

It's DEMO DAY!

On Sunday last weekend we went to OH's Mums and started their reno of their vet clinic. It was done by a dodgy builder 10 years ago and now it's really showing its age. The whole concrete floor needs to get ripped up and replaced, and then the walls reinstated. As it is attached to their small house they are going to take the opportunity to put in some extra bedrooms. So we had to knock down a couple walls and destroy a previously external wall. It had a small rock wall, then a window on it, then on top of the window was bricks! It was very poorly built. So we got to smash the window and know down heaps of bricks, which was a nice change to office work.

While we were away, it absolutely bucketed down all over SE QLD and our garden got a good old drenching. It is going great! We planted some seedlings in the middle of last week and it was a good choice. Only a couple of them are struggling. Our cauliflowers are going especially great and we should be starting to harvest them this week.

Here are some of the seedlings we planted. We are trying a a bit of mixed planting and putting smaller plants in between bigger ones etc to try and cram more in. We'll see how it goes. There are small silver beet and coriander in there too.

Our cumqaut is groaning under the weight of the fruit, and is still producing! Here is a photo of it with fruit almost ripe, some smaller fruit and a flower.

This is our radish experiment. We left one out to see if it would grow seeds. I read today that carrots take 2 years to grow, so I have a feeling radish might be like that too. Oh well, we got an interesting root out of it though!

OHs seedlings are going fabulously, he seems to really have nailed it now after previous failures. The ones we are selling out the front haven't been flying off the table like we hoped so we might have to plant them out. Some of our own seedlings are already getting root bound so its about that time.

Our rio experiment with climbing peas hasn't been going so well. They seem to get knocked off a lot and two of the plants have died. I think I might plant some at the base of the fence and climb up there and see how that goes. It's basically like chicken wire which can be seen in the photo so might work a bit better.

Have a nice week!

Wet and Windy Winter!

On the weekend we were smashed by the East Coast Low. We got 93mL on Saturday, and were greeted by strong winds on Sunday. Very wild! The farm got 300mL and my parents are overseas, so I am a bit concerned. I will probably go there next weekend to make sure everything is ok.

Saturday was spent knitting and staying warm inside. We didn't get up to much, but it was nice to relax for a whole day. We had a friend over for dinner, with whom we are heading to Canada with in November. Not sure if we'll spend the whole time with him yet but it is definitely a good way to split costs if we get an RV. I made two beanies in the same colour and pattern. It was very easy and very comfy.

On Sunday we went to the farmers market as usual, and it was nice to get out of the house. We also spent a bit of time in the garden and cleared out the tomato plants. This is what we got out of it:

Our seedlings are going swimmingly, mostly because they are well protected and watered in the new enclosure.

Selling them out the front has been going well, nothing to quit your job over but enough to buy some seeds and other bits. The cauliflower has EXPLODED and makes the garden look very productive. Hopefully we'll get some produce out of them soon.

This is our compost. We were having difficulty getting it fully broken down in the plastic compost bins but have since found out that the piles are the best. Doesn't it look glorious??

Today in the mail I got my package from my swap partner on the DTE forum, and she crocheted me 4 beautiful dishcloths. She says she is only learning but I'm having a hard time believing that!

OHs bread making adventures are going well, and he made two really good loaves of spelt bread in the bread maker. Have a good week!