Our ten marans chicks all made it to 7 days, albeit with a couple of near-tragedies. The hen has been marvellous, and it’s fascinating to watch them in action and how they respond to her cues. They are housed in a shed with a door we made to fit, with a small yard outside that I wired in and part-covered with old weed-cloth. I had all sorts of worries; that they wouldn’t be able to get over the threshold, or that they would get out through the chicken wire and…
Read MoreCategory: Country life
21 days later. Marans chicks hatch.
It was 21 days on Saturday since I got my fertile Marans eggs from friends Phil and Lindy, and put them under my broody hen. Right on time, 9 of the eggs hatched, and another hatched a day later. Ten out of twelve is a pretty good success rate, so fingers crossed that we can keep them all well. As the hen went broody under our house stairs I let her brood there, but had a shed ready to move them too, with weed mat over the concrete and a…
Read MoreGrowing carrots; not the easiest vegetable
Maybe carrots are a veg that some people grow easily, but I’m having trouble with them. At least the few that I have pulled have been nice ones, but it would be nice to have more. The local ones at the community market tend to be gnarled, with as many arms and legs as a ginseng root, so I was expecting something similar. These are the ‘All seasons’ cultivar, which, according to my seed merchant is the most common commercial variety in the region. I also planted ‘Little finger’, which I…
Read MoreFertile eggs.
We have a broody hen. She was the last of them to insist on laying under the house as I was re-training them to use the laying boxes in the coop, and that was OK since it’s easier to collect those eggs. But then one evening she was still there, sitting so still that I thought she was dead at first, as she didn’t even move or cluck when I went to pick her up. I put her in the coop for the night, but next day she was back,…
Read MoreOnions
By all accounts the Winters here in northern NSW are too warm for standard bulbing onions, but the good news is there are other types we can grow, namely the bunching onions and shallots. That’s extra good news since I preferred to cook with shallots in Sydney, but they came at a premium price compared to ordinary brown onions, and of course here I can buy brown onions cheaply anytime. So to clarify, as there’s some confusion in terms used, shallots are the long bulbs, either golden or red, that…
Read MoreNew beds planted.
It rained on Saturday night, not a lot, but a heavy thunderstorm that got the ground moist again. So I got into the new beds and sowed a new lot of seeds. In this pair of steep narrow terraces I put in a repeat crop of brassicas; radish champion, radish early scarlet globe, daikon, and turnip gold ball. In the rich looking level bed next to it I put a second sowing of some of the salad greens that have poor shows from the May sowing; mustard osaka purple, endive…
Read MoreNew beds
These beds will be a change. Flat land is not a feature of this property, and here I’ve tried making two small terraces with a goat track in between. This is the last of the beds made by the previous owner, which have sat covered in black plastic and cardboard for some time. Mum and Dad helped me pull that off, exposing this sloping plot beneath a corrugated metal retaining wall, but inside the old fenced area. There was at least one big ants’ nest underneath, so we pretty much…
Read MorePerformers at 4 weeks
It’s four weeks today since my first vegetable sowing, and there are some standout early starters. Choi sum is up and going; it’s used as flowering stems. Bok choi is looking good too; it’s used as little cabbages. Behind it is Wom bok, the tall chinese cabbage. And also a Brassica, Mibuna is looking like it will be ready to pick for salads in a couple more weeks. Some vegetables that I expected to be quicker, particularly the radishes, are still coming along, although looking good. The bed was very…
Read MoreNursery and gift plants
It’s been a week of plant nursery visits, and fortunately there are a lot to choose from around here. We took my parents to Kingscliff, a beach town, on Saturday, because the markets were on and it’s just a nice place for coffee anyway. The markets were true to form and we picked up some shade-loving plants for the South-facing front of the house where we will make a formal entrance. At the moment it’s a bit wet underfoot as it sits at the base of a cutting and is…
Read MoreNew veggie patch.
We have fenced the veggie garden. It became a priority because the broad beans I had sown in a rough bed came through earlier than expected, and the sprouts were being eaten by chickens and possibly night -time visitors. Fortunately my parents arrived on Thursday, and they have more experience than I with fencing, so they helped get a chicken wire fence round the developing veggie patch. It’s not your classic patch, as there is no level ground of any size, so the far corner of the rectangle goes way…
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