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April 2008 |
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We are well into autumn now! The last days of March and the beginning of April bring heavy rain. All our water tanks are full again. The winter creek runs again and the sky is grey. It's getting a bit colder, too. A good excuse to spend the evenings in front of the woodstove! |
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Rain in autumn is the signal for the potatoes to be dug up. If we would
leave them in the ground for much longer, they might rot. We had planted
Pink Eyes, Kennebec, Dutch Cream, Bintje and Tasman in three eight metre
rows. The total harvest was 112kg. The October plantings produced twice as
much as the earlier ones! From now on the main potato crop will go in around
the middle of October.
April 2nd, 2008: lots of tomatoes are now ripe as well. We use an old fashioned mouli to make tomato sauce and Silke had brought her grandmother's preserving unit from Germany last year. It works very well with our first batch of tomato sauce! |
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Our new chooks One of our brown chooks died. It was only a little over a year old and hadn't seemed sick at all. These first chooks were ISA Browns. They lay large brown eggs and are very gentle and affectionate birds. At least, ours are (were). We researched ISA Browns a little more and were surprised: ISA Browns are a designer breed and were bred for the production of large eggs, more than 300 in the first year. After that, the birds will die or the egg farmers get rid of them. Not really a good situation, and absolutely not what we stand for. We want to have healthy birds that live longer, and it doesn't matter, if they lay less eggs and smaller ones. We found a free range poultry farm not far from Hobart, that breeds Australorps, White Leghorns and Crossbreds, a cross between White Leghorns and Australorps. We bought 3 Crossbreds at point of lay. Let's see how we go with this breed! More about chickens |
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April 21st, 2004: these Dutch Cream potatoes were planted very late on October 21st. Even though the plants haven't withered yet, we harvest them. It's just getting too late in the year. The soil is very wet and we don't want them to rot! We used organic potatoes from the supermarket, because we couldn't buy any seed potatoes in October any more. The result is terrific: 30kg from 2kg of seed. |
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| Autumn in the vegie garden: almost everything is harvested now, corn, pumpkins, squash, zucchini, cucumber, capsicum, eggplant, potatoes and most beans. The asparagus is starting to yellow and we'll cut it down to ground level in May. The tomatoes are still going strong, lots of fruit on the plants, but the plants are starting to die off. We'll use those tomatoes that won't ripen any more to make chutneys! The strawberries are full of fruit as well, but not much is left for us. It's late in the year and the Green Rosellas and Currawongs are very hungry now and much faster than we are. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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We rotary-hoe the empty beds in the vegie garden thoroughly and plant green
manure. Even though we rake soil back over the seeds and cover the beds with
a thin layer of hay, the birds just love the green manure seeds! The scare
crow and reflective tape make hardly any difference.
Green manure: we use a green manure seed-mix containing rye corn, oats, tic bean, blue lupins and grey peas. Green manure is all about putting something back into the earth after we have taken out our harvest. Most of these plants are "nitrogen fixers", they enrich the soil with nitrogen they produce. They also create bulk when they are slashed and turned back into the soil. |
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| Home | Donations | Poultry info | Garden Diary |
Alphabet of Gardening |
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Orchards | Kitchen Garden | Vegie Garden | Tasmania- the dark side |
About us | Contact Resources Disclaimer |
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