A week ago I rescued two of my sunflower patches with water from the dam, pumped by the solar panels and pump we re-comissioned. Bill was away for the week and commented on how much they had grown, so I took a photo to compare (the picture from last week’s post is the same spot). It’s good to see they’re making quick progress now. I haven’t been brave enough to check the other patch I have further down the hill, but we still have not had enough rain to wet…
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Growing sunflowers; tough through the dry
I’m inside writing for a couple of hours today because it’s too darn hot to be out in the sun. It reminded me though to post about growing sunflowers and how I’ve been impressed by how hardy they have been through dry weather. I sowed these seeds back in September when there was still some moisture from August’s rain in the ground, expecting that we would get the usual return of rains in October, but it has been extraordinarily dry. They are in a plot down the hill, two hundred metres or so…
Read MoreAnd more compost.
The dry weather means I’m not digging beds so much, and as I mentioned in my last post, my thoughts turned to making more compost. My friends Phil and Lindy have a most impressive setup, with masonry bays, chutes and what have you, but they have a lot of animals and a big family. For me, it’s just important to get started, and I can upgrade later. My resources are; waste hay from the chicken pen, hay from slashing, and muck from the bottom of the dam. To make the whole…
Read MoreCompost – dam, slashing and chickens.
The soil in my vegetable beds could do with a lot more organic matter, so I’ve been on a compost mission in preparation for the next warm season planting. I had dug in some alpaca manure (very like sheep manure) for my beets, tomatoes and tomatillos, but wanted something more like a soil conditioner for the next bed. Another task was clearing some of the dam. It is very overgrown, and in order to launch our little boat to get out and fix the pump I first had to clear 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 MoreHow do you know your daikon is ready?
With carrots you feel round the collar, same for beetroot and turnips, but daikon turn out to be easier to tell when they’re ready; they stand up out of the ground. I had no experience with them, and harvested some small ones a while back, but these, planted quite densely on a small terrace, left no doubt when I pulled the leaves back. It was good timing, as I have plenty of wom bok (chinese cabbage) to pick, although it isn’t in classic heads, so I included most of the…
Read MoreNative bees.
Spring came right on time this year, today was beautifully warm and the insects were out in force. I will have to look up what some are, including the biggest ladybirds I have ever seen. But it was nice to see these old friends, native bees (Tetragonula carbonara, I think). We used to get them in Sydney, although it is a marginal climate for them there, but here they were swarming around some Bok Choi and Pak Choi that have gone to flower. There are plenty of european honey bees…
Read MoreTurnips
Turnips are only second to radishes for quick root crops. My carrots are still tiny, the beetroots are not far ahead, but the turnips sprouted luxuriant greens and started showing their purple shoulders after about 6 weeks. I needed to thin them, and we were having salmon for dinner, so I pulled three to go with. The cultivar is ‘purple top white globe’, from Eden seeds. I put in ‘gold ball’ in the same sowing, but they haven’t done well, and have been overshadowed by their neighbours. They were delicious.
Read MoreSalad greens
The salad greens bed: Back row; Lettuce ‘lollo rosso’, Celtuce, Lettuce ‘Australian yellow’ Middle row; Rocket, Mustard greens ‘Osaka purple’, Lettuce ‘marvel of four seasons’, (fennel). Front row; Mibuna, (Mitsuba – failed to germinate), Mizuna. Tomorrow the salad greens bed will be two months old from sowing, and they are providing some nice winter salads. The rocket is stronger in flavour than the rest, but just picking a few leaves from each of the others and throwing them together makes for a nice mesclun. The fennel was already in…
Read MoreOur first hay cut and composting
One thing this property has is lots of grass. It grows very thick and long, and we don’t have livestock yet to keep it mown. We need to keep it down, so a week ago we got our new tractor, which is a beauty. It has a ‘four in one’ bucket at the front for moving stuff and a slasher at the back for mowing. So we have been out learning to slash the grass. The sun has shone the whole week too, with the result that there is a lot…
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