Do possums eat pumpkins??

Picture from here 

 
I've never had much luck with growing pumpkins. Probably because the last 2 houses we've lived at just havent had enough sun. So I was absolutely gleeful when my pumpkins started fruiting this year. I've watched them carefully as they've grown on the vine, made Mr B mow far away from them as they took over the lawn and imagined all the lovely things I could cook when they were ready.

So you can imagine my surprise earlier this week, when I went down to the vegie garden to water one hot morning and discovered the whole lot had vanished. Into thin air :-o The vines were still there but alas not a pumpkin to be seen. And no evidence of what made away with them - no skins, no seeds - zip, nada, nothing!!

So my question is - do possums eat pumpkins?? If they dont, I have to say I'm out of ideas...hungry aliens maybe LOL??

Jenny's Garden

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Granny B works with a lovely lady called Jenny. We buy all our eggs from Jenny because she uses soy free layer and we know that her chooks are raised happily at home. Well today we were lucky enough to get an invite to visit Jenny, her chooks and her vegie garden. We are intent on getting our own chooks now we are settled at the new house and what better introduction than meeting the chookies who give us our eggs now :-)

Jenny and her husband let Little B feed the chooks by hand and look for eggs. Talk about love at first sight – he was very disappointed to hear that we wouldn’t be taking said chickens home today, but after assuring him we would get our own, he bumbled of into the garden to dust bathe with them LOL.

They also showed me around their vegie garden and fruit trees. 14 years young, the garden has 24 productive fruit trees (and that’s not including the 5 kinds of berries they also have). They have a very successful avocado tree and in a climate similar to hours I was overjoyed to hear they didn’t need another to cross pollinate nor has it grown to immense proportions (two bits of advice that discouraged me putting in a avocado this year).

Photo courtesy of Diggers

They were also keen to show me their propagating shed and how they raise their seedlings. I quite liked this little gadget from Diggers – a Bottle Top Waterer. Obviously we wouldn’t use a plastic water bottle, but it would go great on an old oil pourer we have.

It was also great to see polypipe covering a vegie garden in real life. I’ve always wondered how sturdy they would be in the wind we get, but Jenny & co have a similar problem and they hold up beautifully in the wild windy weather.

And who could resist the view. Sitting in the sunshine, drinking coffee and eating home-made cake and muffins, it was simply beautiful.

And we didn’t come home empty handed – a dozen eggs, 6 strawberry plants and a baby peach tree one of many they have self seed. They tell me that they found these peach trees to grow lashings of fruit.

It was a fabulous morning – I really do love meeting like minded people and learning from people who have been gardening for many more years than me.

Spring Seeds

Reading on various blogs how people are starting to sow their spring seeds has been just the kick in the pants I needed. You see I’ve been stuck on a bed rest of sorts….while digging over our biggest bed and filling it full of lovely things like compost and manure, I managed to step sideways, trip and hurt my hip (aah the joys of gardening).

So I’ve not been outside as much as I wanted for the last 4 weeks (read heaps of books though ;-), but with spring in the air and blossoms abounding, I’ve started sowing our seeds in our bebe greenhouse. So far just delicata squash (thanks Bec), spaghetti squash (thanks Bec again), Waltham Butternut & Kent pumpkin, and Californian Wonder capsicum. I’m also hoping to start some Little Finger eggplants and to finally decide on tomatoes. I’ve not had much luck growing tomato from seed at Granny B’s (the possums either ate or knocked over my little seedlings before they could do anything interesting).

We had hoped to have more veggie beds ready for spring but since it’s only a few days until September that’s not looking too promising at the moment. I’d be happy if we could just get one more in (ok I’m lying I’d love all 4 but would settle for 1, or 2 more).

We are however intent on starting our herb garden for this year – lots of garlic chives, Genovese basil, parsley, chamomile, and calendula – in window type boxes on our deck.

I’ve also been checking out these DIY vertical pallet beds (we have easy access to heaps of free untreated used pallets locally) – I’d love to make some for strawberries and lettuces around the edge of our back deck.

Lastly, our potatoes have finally found their way into our grow bags. We had such a great success with them last year and are going to attempt them at the new house as we get more sun. We also dedicated a few little veggie beds to potatoes so that we have a comparison between bags and in the ground. Fingers crossed this gives us a bumper harvest!!

Long Weekending

Over the long and rather brisk weekend, we managed to get outside to enjoy some much needed sunshine…

:: Raking up all the leaves (with helpers in tow)

:: Cooking some rather yummy oat & spelt biscuits (nice with beetroot dip)

:: Digging, digging and digging over one of the veggie beds so that our faithful magpies and kookaburras can eat up the curl grubs its infested with

:: Taking our budding inventor to see the Wallace & Gromit inventor's exhibition at Scienceworks

:: And when it all got a bit too hard ;-) settling down with a nice book

Hope you had a lovely Jubilee weekend as well.

Digging for Change

There have been so many amazingly positive posts to read around the web at the moment (like here and here and here). I love that people are so excited about making changes and making a difference to “humanity” (Bec and Gavin say) as well as themselves and their lives.

Here at the House of B we have been digging for change ;-) We have been digging out a base for our new 5000L water tank, digging out and over old veggie beds and digging out and putting in the pole for our new solar tracker. We’ve been getting earthy and downright grotty digging deep in the mud. And I’ve loved it…it feels like we are moving forward to the house we’d like to live in (now if only it was on 10 acres or so).

We hope from this to have another solar source, some beds ready to plant for spring and a water tank to plumb our toilet and washing machine into.

Next up we hope to trim the tops of the trees that are blocking the sun to our vegie beds in late autumn/winter and put in 3 new vegie beds before spring...I forsee lots more digging in my future!! LOL

Improvising a Garden

The thing I really miss at the new house is a vegie garden. There’s something so peaceful and enjoyable about getting out for a potter or planning what to plant. I just like being outside and fruitful!!

This is the current vegie garden at the new house, after we dug it out of the overgrown vegetation that was masquerading as a yard. As you can see it is vastly overgrown, with soil that is as hard as rocks. Over Easter I will dig in lots of manure and compost and smother it in pea straw. Then I will leave it to rot down so that I can plant in spring. I also have my fingers crossed that we can add a few more beds before spring too.

I’m lucky in that I obviously still have access to the garden I built at Granny B’s. And so far we have planted there pak choy, peas, snow peas and carrots. Not a variety but I’m not there to hand pick off caterpillars and such on a daily basis so that rules out a lot. I’ve also learnt that you need to plant brussel sprouts in January to be successful so we sooo missed that window LOL.

But it’s not the same as stepping out your back door. Little B also misses being able to watch things grow close at hand, so I have been improvising a temporary vegie garden. Last weekend I fossicked through Granny B’s looking for our stash of pots. Then along with some home grown compost, we planted a mini garden.

Little B got to pick what we planted…so we have planted some peas, spinach, swedes and carrots in these pots. They are in the most perfect sunny position next to our almond tree and will hopefully satisfy our garden urges as we work on our garden during the rest of autumn and winter :-)

In Our Garden

This is the daily haul from our sorely neglected garden at the moment. Normally I have more beans than zucchinis but overall I'm happy with the output. Happy in the sense that we are getting a goodly enough amount out to reduce my needs at our fruit & vegie grocers. Now if we wanted to put anything away (ie canning etc) I guess I'd be disappointed. But considering how time poor I am at the moment, I really wouldnt want more produce from the garden.

Our corn is growing really well and has formed husks or what have you. I havent grown corn since I was a kid so it's been quite exciting for us. Our eggplants produced nothing :-( and our capsicum plants havent even grown any bigger than when they were planted (no idea why). Our cucumber after many starts has finally fruited in abundance. It's not in the best position in the garden.

This is the first year I've experienced fruit fly in our tomatoes. I ripped out two plants the moment I realised what was happening and we havent had a problem since. I guess we were lucky that I was using bush tomatoes in pots this year, so they are spread out amongst the garden rather than localised in one spot. Otherwise I guess I would have lost them all???

We harvested all our potatoes. Our Nicola potatoes were amazing. I couldnt believe how many potatoes we had and they were so yum!! But our sebago potatoes were sadly lacking - only a handful really. I now know after reading Gavin's post that it was probably a sunshine thing. The Sebago got overcrowded by a blueberry plant and our eggplants, so just didnt get enough sun. But using the growing bags was a great success overall - we didnt suffer the rot problems we've had in the past when we've put them in the ground.

I have great plans for next year at the new house because the new vegie beds get sun all day around. Granny B's garden suffers from a lack of sun - some things grow great and others not. So we will plant accordingly and share the produce :-) That way we can cover off more food in the garden!!

Weeds into vegies??

The weather has been lovely the last few days (after those horrible hot days over New Years). So Little B and I have been getting happily out into the sunshine. Today we put in a few hours de-weeding the old vegie garden at the new place and cutting off old chicken wire that has fallen down and "grown" into the substantial patch of grass/shrubs.

Now it has been pretty badly overgrown but was obviously much loved at one point. I even dug up some teeny ancient garlic bulbs today which gave us all a smile or two. But I'm in a bit of a quandary - what is the best way to resurrect these old beds. There are currently four of them and they are heavily weeded. Should I try and till / dig over the beds? Just sheet mulch them?

The soil in them is in a pretty bad state. Hard pan pretty much sums it up. Any suggestions from you more experienced gardeners??

And in the meantime, after traversing the local library, Little B and I are are reading James and the Giant Peach. I love gardening, he loves bugs - we're a perfect pair :-)

Thriving on Neglect

Our garden has been a bit neglected of late. The most exciting thing to me that I've done has been to pick, dry and plait our first harvest of garlic. It's currently hanging on our back porch and smells delicious everytime we walk past.

Even with neglect the garden continues to thrive. We've harvested a few zucchini with plenty more growing. Our first little lebanese cucumbers are growing as well, and we have baby tomatoes everywhere. The beans have climbed over the trellis and onto next doors rogue jasmine. No beans yet but lots of little white fluffy bugs. Anyone know what they could be?? They are on everything in the garden and food and flowers alike.

All bar one of our watermelon seedlings gave up and died and I have no idea why. Lots of sun, water and love...but maybe something else was missing??

Speaking of something missing, cutting through the jungle at our new place we found an old vegie garden. Needs lots of work but it's in the perfect spot and has the potential for extension. We've also discovered an established almond tree (full of almonds), 2 apple trees, a nectarine, a lemon and one very sad sick looking lime tree.

There's also an old chicken coop, which is in surprisingly good condition since it's lain abandoned for at least the last 3 years. It just needs a good clean out and some work on the roof and door. We had no idea of the garden's promise as you just could not get in and look due to a massive dog, debris and a serious case of out of control undergrowth.

But this house is starting to feel like a really good fit. It has lovely bones and so does it's garden.

Late Spring in the Garden

The weather has been so changeable of late - cold, warm, rainy, windy, sunny - you name it, we've had it. But spring has been quite kind to our garden.

I'm so glad I planted our tomatoes early because they are growing beautifully. Those few extra weeks when the weather was warm and mild have really made a difference.

This is my best bunch of potatoes yet. I'm absolutely sold on using the growing bags and will get a few more next year. During the worst weeks of rain and a few storms, we've been able to move them under cover on our back deck to stop them getting waterlogged.

I'm still having an ongoing battle with snails and slugs. I lost all my lebanese cucumber seedlings, my first batch of pumpkin & sunflower seedlings and nearly all my carrots to snails and slugs. I gave up on the carrots in the end (we have two that survived LOL).

But my 2nd batch of pumpkin seedlings are doing well along with the zucchini. I dont think Granny B's yard has enough sun for these but we'll see. We are going to plant in conjunction with each other next year once we have the new house, and will plant what works best at the appropriate house.

And we are trying watermelon this year for Little B (seeds courtesy of Bec at Eat at Dixibelle's - thanks Bec :-) They seem to be growing really well. We've put them in half wine barrels and so far the snails have left them alone. Also means we can take advantage of the seriously sunny spots in the garden which are too small for vegie beds.

Our first pear is growing. It's only been 5 years in the making but we nursed this tree through some seriously hot droughty summers, so are very proud :-) We finally ripped out our dwarf peach tree - it's had leaf curl no matter what we did over the last few years and it was starting to affect our other dwarf trees. Now it's gone the nectarine especially seems to be recovering all on its own.

And last but not least, my beans. This seemed to be the only plant that would grow for me when we first started vegie gardening years ago and they get better and better each year. I love my beans xx

Spring Garden

It has been cold and seriously rainy in Melbourne for the last 4 days. So I didnt quite know what I'd find when I finally ventured out into the garden. Autumn / winter was sort of slow because I didnt plant much other than snowpeas and garlic. So with the warmer weather I've been really gung ho about getting out and planting in the garden.

Our potatoes have had massive growth and are growing so much better for us in these potato bags. Also when the rain got too much we were able to move them under cover on the deck.

Our almond tree is growing it's first almonds this year!! :-)

Shame you cant eat nasturtiums as a meal as we could feast on them LOL

8 of our 10 asparagus plants have taken and grown amazingly well and quickly. This is my first time / year with asparagus and other than some day to day care until they filled up their trenches, I'm impressed daily with them. Not bad considering possums dug up a few in the first weeks and I had to replant and protect the bed with chicken wire.

With all this unseasonal warm weather this spring, I threw caution to the wind and planted out some early tomato plants. And they have been doing really well too. Normally I wouldnt plant much out until Cup Day due to our climate but thought the weather warranted some experimentation. I'm also trying more bush tomatoes this year as they take up less space and they are dotted around the yard in pots. Free's up the vegie beds for other food stuffs.

The thing that has lurved this cold wet weather has been the garlic. Whether its an optical illusion or not, it looks like it grows daily. Yum!! I cant wait to eat our own garlic.

And with lots of lemons on our lemon tree, we've been making bottle loads of lemon cordial.

I've started planting carrots out (rainbows for Little B), and have one more vegie bed that needs digging over which I have ear marked for pumpkins and zucchinis. I'm intent on getting a bigger harvest this year, so am trying to fill up every space available.

Little Baby Crowns

We've been going great guns with our preparations for spring planting since my last post. I've sort of just run with the excitement and momentum we'd been feeling. Totally helped by the bizarre mild and sunny weather we've been having. I keep waiting for winter to come back like some bad joke.

I went ahead and ordered 10 asparagus crowns and then quickly put in a bed dedicated to them and got it all ready. Which was great really, since they came way quicker than I expected. In fact they had to live in the crisper in the fridge for 24 hours.

But the bed proved too tempting for local cats or possums (actually our local possums are the size of cats). After an episode or two of the crowns being dug back up again after planting and re-planting, it was off to the local hard ware store to invest in some chicken wire to close it all in. (all pics courtesy of my pint sized helper).

First little baby asparagus head :-)

And I've been rewarded with some growth from said crowns. A totally bad photo but it's the first little asparagus head poking through. Which is now all covered in compost.

Now if I could only get organised about our potatoes. I have the bags and the little seed potatoes are hiding at the bottom of our linen cupboard. I just need to dig out the compost to get it all started (hmm not feeling the urge to dig in the there at the moment LOL). 

I also need said compost to finish off preps on my other beds. They have all been dug over and manured but need some composty love. We are planning on putting in 3 more beds before spring but I want to square off everything else before we move onto those.

Maybe tomorrow...

Spring Planting

After seeing posts recently about spring gardens by Bec at Eat at Dixibelle's, ecoMILF and Rhonda at Down to Earth, I thought I better plan in earnest what we will be planting this spring. I'd already jotted down a few notes in my garden notebook and had a whole bunch of ideas in my head LOL.

Recently we ordered asparagus crowns for the first time and now we need to get the beds in pronto before they arrive. We are also putting in 2 more veggie beds this year to get better rotation and so I dont feel like I need to tear out winter crops to put spring crops in.

So far my plan for our beds are:

* mary washington asparagus

* snake climbing beans

* scarlet runner beans

* rainbow carrots

* beefsteak tomatoes

* san marzano roma tomatoes

* black beauty eggplants

* black beauty zucchini

* yellow crookneck squash

* muncher lebanese cucumbers

* pumpkins - butternut, queensland blue, jap

* spinach

* lettuce

Little B has been asking to grow some watermelon (but more out of curiosity than an urge to eat them). And I'm also trying potatoes again but this time we are trying potato bags from Green Harvest, since ours have either gotten water logged in the ground or burnt by hot summers in the past. This way I hope we can move them around a bit.

We are expecting lovely sunny weather this weekend, so we will be moving our last apple tree and setting up space for some more blueberry plants and raspberry canes. Hmm fingers crossed my brain and intent arent bigger than my green thumbs :-)

Other People's Gardens

I love looking at other people's gardens. It's so interesting to see what they do, how they do it and even why they do it. It encourages me to keep on with our own garden, inspires me with new ideas and helps me to learn.

My current fav is Josh Byrnes WA urban backyard (in the July / August 2011 issue of Organic Gardener). Every piece of space has been made useful with vegies/ fruit/ herbs/ chickens/ composting/ grey water and interesting living spaces.

I especially like his use of different pots and different heights. Granny B's garden is long and big but dominated by a massive gum and a mid sized elm tree. We've used the sunny spaces available for vegie patches and the rest for new fruit trees.

I'm now looking at big pots for lettuces to sit on the brick stumps of an old redundant bench seat (read: no seat). Some moveable trugs to use around a disused brick BBQ (great heat bank), and some different containers for herbs to line around the decking space where we cook and eat during summer.

I love the concept of useful fruitful space!! :-) But I'm also curious to see how other gardens manage to combine spaces like Tricia's nature playscape with food gardens as well.

So whats a girl to do...

when she is finally allowed out of bed?? Plant fruit trees of course. With my bed rest over and only a few aches and pains left over from my hospital test, I simply couldnt resist the sunshine :-) Mr B and his trusty post hole digger dug me my required holes and so I planted away.

We now have a dwarf black cherry, an almond tree and a Mariposa plum tree added to our mini orchard. I just need to move our ballerina apples when they finally drop all their leaves.

I'm also waiting on some more half wine barrels to come. Then I can plant some more blueberry plants and our first raspberry canes. I've been inspired by all the luck people seem to have with growing their own raspberries - so hope they will do well here.

Patiently waiting

I've been patiently waiting for our apple trees to lose their leaves, as I'm mad keen to transplant them to a different part of the garden. Our neighbours trees have grown since we planted them and they just dont get enough sun.

Our pear trees have already lost their leaves, so how are the apple trees going...

Hmm I guess I'll just have to stretch my patience just that little bit longer LOL.

In the meantime we've been digging holes for new fruit trees. We hope to get our bare rooted trees fairly soon (I cant believe it's nearly June already!!) - a plum, an almond and hopefully another peach. I've also been organising some more half wine barrels as we want to get more blueberry plants.

The very back of Granny B's block is fairly bare (other than grass) and fairly redundant, so our hope is that this area will be filled with fruit trees and just maybe one day her much dreamed about chooks.

Garden Update

Well with ill health, I’ve kind of abandoned our autumn garden (hey who am I kidding, I totally abandoned it to the snail gods for a few weeks LOL). So I’ve made peace with the fact that we only have planted what we have planted.

So our autumn garden consists of:

Peas and snow peas (I cant remember what I planted where)

Plus a bed of Russian purple garlic

I also joined in the Burke’s Backyard winter tomato challenge back in late January. The pic above is of the three seedlings that survived my neglect in the green house (I started off with 7). I’m trying to grow them on a warm concrete bench (in the vain hope that it might be a sort of micro climate during the cooler weather). So far so good – they are growing really well but probably not as advanced as they should be (hmm I was a bit slow moving them out into the sun).

These are more of an experiment since we didn’t have the best tomato growing season in Spring / Summer this year.

But we still have strawberries fruiting all over the place - they seem to positively thrive on neglect :-).

Now I just need to dig over two of our spring / summer beds with compost and manure and then let them rest for Spring. Hopefully an Easter break job but with the weather might be more of a “in a few weeks” job.