Pictures of my first garden

The backyard when we moved in.

We had the typical Aussie backyard to start with.  Grass, Hills hoist and a lemon tree.
Luckily, there was also a cute little house, very well built, which was used as a cat house by the previous owners.  That later proved to be a perfect little chook house.

It's weekend time, get the Victa!

While thinking about and planning our veggie garden, my husband had the pleasure of mowing the grass on weekends.
Why didn't we think of saving all that grass mowing for later, for the building of the beds?

soil, compost and worm castings waiting for their turn

 Then, one day we had lots of soil, compost and a special addition: worm castings delivered.  The building of the veggie garden had started.  We were learning as we went on, as we'd never done anything like it; having been always apartment dwellers.

 I was reading about no-dig gardens (wonder why that appealed to me?) and permaculture principles.  That's what we wanted to apply at our place.

stacks of newspaper being soaked in the wheelbarrow

So first we put down wet newspaper, several sheets thickness.  I didn't want straight edges, but curvy ones and optimize the area for planting.

Something like this.  The paths were covered with wood shavings.  The plantings were mixed even with flowers among the veggies.   Surprisingly lots of plants could fit in as by the taller ones we put in small shade loving ones and next to the slow growing ones went in quick ones like lettuces which would be gone by the time the big ones grew big.
Permaculture is a great system, and there are lots of  books about it with detailed, well researched instructions on how to go about it.

The newspaper layer was covered with soil and decomposed manure.

Next a layer of thick straw.  Sprinkled that with Dynamic Lifter  which is a complete natural fertilizer, and watered it down.

The hat was a present from a friend with Vietnamese origin.  It seems to be a military hat, I hope it will not offend anyone.

Onto the straw was put another layer, this time a thick layer of compost.

advanced seedlings planted

On the very top we laid biscuits of lucerne hay to completely cover everything.

When planting the seedlings, we made a whole into the hay which was about 10 cm  thick, put in a couple of handfuls of worm castings, and planted the seedling into that.  We did the same for each seedling.
They were doing very well.  But only seedlings or plants; we had to wait for next year to sow seeds.  By then, most of the layers would brake down into a compost-like  material.

The boys also started on the chicken run; to build a fence around the lovely little green house.

As you can see, it was all very professionally done!

Kookaburra

And look who was watching the whole time!  A regular visitor.

My edible garden

It's time I write about my edible garden, in which I am trying to incorporate permaculture principles.

This is not my first garden, we'd had one, similar to this, about ten years ago, before we moved away for some years.  

Then, we had to pull up everything and put down a new lawn - what a heartache it was to watch! - so the house could be rented out.  Here are some pictures of my old beautifully productive  garden, towards the end of its first summer season:

we had three white leghorn chickens, they were regularly let out to graze for themselves
here, they are still very young, probably just coming onto lay

herb garden, comfrey and the steps built by my father who was visiting us just then

the pumpkin, ready for picking
we had them grow over an arch

Here are some more pictures about the creation of that no-dig garden.

Hot weather

The forecast was 37 celsius for Thursday.  Thankfully it did not eventuate; the southerly came through very early in the afternoon.

The heat is very hard on the plants and the chickens; they all switch into survival mode and they need some help from us to make it through alive.  Yes, I believe it is that serious.


What I do first of all is I try to provide some shade.

For the plants:

young plants covered during the middle of a hot day

We made some arches from irrigation pipes which are held up by some casually placed bamboo sticks, and over those I draped some old curtain material, held in place by bulldog clips.

Raspberries don't like being in very hot sun, they are more a temperate climate fruit.  They are just kind enough to fruit for us in warmer temperatures provided we help them through when needed.

Freshly planted seedlings can't survive being out in the sun even on a moderately hot summer day.   These are some of my casualties, and it wasn't even a very hot day when I took these photos.  Fortunately they did survive.

   

After the plants are well established they can usually cope better.  Lettuces like buttercrunch and the red type lettuces however, they will always need extra care in the sun.
Watering them weekly with some seaweed solution strengthens them so they have a better chance of recovering.

Tomatoes, cucumber, raspberries I also cover when it's above 32 celsius, they seem to stress or even burn to death otherwise.

I water by hand at the moment, sometimes in the morning sometimes late afternoon.  The irrigation systems I've tried so far just don't seem to work, this is something of a future project for me to learn more about.

For the chooks, well, that will be another post I think - chooks in the heat.

The other day when it was so very hot, luckily I was home all day, and kept checking on them.  I even let the gate open so if they wanted to find a cooler spot anywhere else, they could.

I watered the grounds a couple of times for cooling. put blocks of ice in their water, put frozen water bottles around the run so they could sit next to it if they wanted.  I also switched the hose for mist and left it there propped up for a little while, hoping they might go under it for cooling.  They didn't.  Somehow we survived though.

Funny, how guilty I felt to turn on the air-con inside.  So I saved a lot of electricity, because I didn't, apart from half an hour twice on that day. LOL.  It just seemed not fair, me, sitting inside nice and cool, them, hanging onto their life outside.

In summer I keep different sizes of blocks of ice in the freezer for very hot days.

Also some frozen water bottles to use around the run.

“Stop whining and get on with it”

After this long break I am restarting my posts.  Lots of changes occurred around here, one major thing is that I stopped working; my condition worsened so that I just could not push on any more.  My work was too physical and despite all the help and support from my colleagues and my boss, at the end I had to realise it was time to stop.

I went into a kind of really low time for a while.  I could not see the point to anything.  A big, heartfelt thank you and appreciation for my husband for all the support he gave me during that time … and since.

However, things are looking a bit better now.  I still haven’t given up on getting back to ‘normal’ one day, but for now I have stopped pushing against … well, whatever I was pushing against, and accepted to live with it at least for now.  I am taking the medication and do as much as I can.

Problem is that I like doing a lot -

Developing a natural, sensible lifestyle as self-sufficient as possible is my dream.  I have been reading and studying a lot about this.

I am trying to do some meditation and relaxation every day.

My garden has really taken off.  Gradually the whole backyard has been taken over by food growing.

Part of the garden with the chook house at the back and a herb spiral at the front

I have taken up some craft activities again, like sewing, waldorf doll making, weaving and possibly knitting.

My sewing room before the update

My interest in cooking and baking, natural food and fermenting has been going through a renewal.

Preserve of tomato, capsicum and basil

I can’t do too much in one go, need to have frequent breaks, but who cares?

One of the reasons I have decided to restart this blog is that I don’t know many people with the same interest, and I often found I needed advice on a problem I had encountered. 

Maybe some people will read this blog and could provide some advice or solution to a problem I will have from time to time.  Gosh, I spent so many hours reading through forums and websites trying to find out why my chicken looked the way she did and what to do about it, or why my sourdough starter gone smelly and bad.  And I’ve found that there are many people in the same situation to mine.

Once there will be enough posts in many subjects, I want to organize them in groups, so information could be quickly accessed by anyone looking for info on that subject.  I will also include the links to all those wonderful blogs/websites I found most useful in my dire need of advice and inspiration.