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December 2008 |
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| The orchards in summer: fruit and berries | ||||
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Strawberries as ground cover |
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Plum President |
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Plum Prune Splendour |
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Apple Braeburn |
Protection against diseases and pests By the middle of December the apples, pears and stone fruit are well developed. We have closed the orchard netting now to protect the fruit against birds. We had left one side open to make access easy for bees, but when we observed the bees, we saw that they made their way through the netting without any trouble! Some of the leaves of our apple trees started to develop black spot, a fungus disease. We sprayed our trees with a limil and kocide (copper) spray which we mixed ourselves. This is a spray that can be used by certified organic growers. Coddling moth is another potential problem for apple trees. We hope that we have minimized it by having let the chicken forage in the orchard in winter and spring. They need to be kept out from now on, because they really like the taste of strawberries. We also use an insect zapper light near the orchard to attract these moths. And we have set up pieces of old timber next to the trees which we will check for larvae later in the year. |
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Apple James Grieve
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Apple Bramley |
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Apple Pine Golden Pippin |
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Apple Belle de Boskoop |
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Sour Cherry Morello |
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Cherry Lapin |
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Sour Cherry Kentish |
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Jostaberries |
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Red Currants |
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Raspberries |
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Loganberries |
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Blueberries |
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one day's harvest |
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Chickens and........ ducks! |
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A Barnevelder pullet at 11 weeks |
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Plymouth Rocks at one month |
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Welsummers at seven weeks |
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| We don't intend to breed Plymouth Rocks as a pure breed, but we want to keep a few pullets with the Welsummers. They are supposed to become broody very easily and we hope that they can sit on Welsummer eggs and raise the chicks. We are also thinking about raising chickens as meat birds and a cross between Plymouth Rocks and Welsummers is supposed to result in good table birds. | ||||
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Our Salmon Faverolles at eight weeks. Big, impressive birds! |
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Vegetables in the vegie garden and the kitchen garden |
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Something that did not work: we were very proud of our idea to make
our own liquid fertilizer in recycled drums full of water, manure and other
goodies. After we had "watered" our plants with our special brew
many of the leaves turned brown and looked burnt. Too much of a good thing,
unfortunately. We had to replant a few of the beans and peas and a lot of the
"treated" plants recovered. In the future we will dilute the
fertilizer a bit more.
The greenhouse is not going well this year either. Many of the capsicums died back and the cucumbers didn't take well either. It's still early in the season and hopefully things will improve. Something that worked very well: Silke spent a lot of time planting and looking after her beds of onions. Onions aren't that easy to grow. The beds need a lot of weeding and the small plants look like grass. But the work paid off and Silke harvested buckets full of onions this year and strung them up for drying. |
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The onions shortly before harvesting |
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two rows of Dutch Cream potatoes |
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Experiences with heritage varieties and hybrids Last year we planted a lot of heritage varieties of corn and cucumbers. They didn't taste quite as good as we had hoped. The Golden Bantam corn needs to be harvested at just the right time. If you wait too long, then it turns starchy very fast. We had planted F1 corn as well and it tastes much, much sweeter. The cucumbers we planted were mostly heritage varieties as well (Straight Eight and Marketmore). This year we planted hybrid corn and cucumbers. What a difference! The hybrids may taste better at harvest time, but they need to grow to harvest size first. The F1 corn struggled and the hybrid cucumbers did not take at all. We harvested broad beans from the two empty beds in the photo below left, and we planted a full row of Golden Bantam corn. Almost every single seed took and we now have a bed with vigorously growing heritage corn. We are still experimenting with the cucumbers. The Straight Eight and the Marketmore aren't all that good for preserving. They have a rough skin and very large seeds and much of them is wasted by cleaning them. |
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from bottom to top: potatoes, corn, zucchinis, tomatoes |
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F1 sweet corn in the vegie garden |
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from left: broad beans, onions, strawberries |
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onions and dill |
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last years seven year beans growing again |
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the kitchen garden in December |
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Passion fruit |
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F1 sweet corn in the kitchen garden |
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| Home | Donations | Poultry info | Garden Diary |
Alphabet of Gardening |
Our Recipes |
Gardening Calender |
Orchards | Kitchen Garden | Vegie Garden | Tasmania- the dark side |
About us | Contact Resources Disclaimer |
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