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| January 2010 - we are in the middle of a long, hot summer | ||||
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Harvest time in the orchards and gardens Everything grows well this year and we spend a lot of time outside harvesting |
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mixed berries: we eat them every evening with yoghurt and still have enough to freeze |
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zucchinis, squash, peas and beans |
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The apple trees are full of apples and we harvest this season's first apples early January. We eat them from the tree and use the windfall apples to make apple cakes or dried apple slices in our food drier. They are delicious and make great nibblies for dark, cold winter evenings, when these hot mid summer days will seem like a distant memory! |
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Left: Prune Splendour will be ready for picking at the beginning of
February
Right: plum cake from Victoria Plums |
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Some things that worked and some that didn't... |
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Success with onions!
A rotation bed full of Red Sheffield onions. They are thriving in this warm and dry weather. We could harvest them now, but we will leave them in the ground a bit longer so that their skin will toughen and they will keep better. |
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Problems with the potatoes
Right: The soil was still very wet when the potatoes were planted in spring. These two rows are sloping slightly. The tubers on higher ground are growing fine, those on the lower ground on the right side of the bed have rotted. Left: Our hay bale potatoes! They are doing very poorly indeed! Their growing cycle is over now and the plants wither. The plants never reached a good size though and there aren't all that many potatoes that have developed. Is that due to the lack of nutrients in the bales? We had applied liquid fertilizer at time of planting the tubers. Just not enough it seems! |
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Great results in the Pumpkin Patch
Golden Nugget pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. These are early pumpkins and can be harvested from January onwards. |
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No success at all with our mini pigs!
The mini pigs left on the last Sunday in January. Selling them was a difficult decision. We really like pigs. They are so good natured and social. They were great to have around. But they did not help us preparing the ground as we thought they would. The problem is the type of soil on our block of land. Soil quality is poor here. There is a lot of clay in the soil. Right: the pigs got rid of the bracken under the trees, but they turned the clay into a deep layer of flour-like powder. The rain will wash this out and the next drying cycle will turn it into a concrete-like substance Left: the pigs worked this area in winter but the summer dried the soil out. Now it is so hard that the pigs are not able to dig it up again. Our mini pigs found a new home in northern Tasmania. The soil up north is very different from the soil down here. We will keep in touch with them and see how they are going up there! |
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The chooks and the ducks |
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Left: a flock of layer hens who are all from traditional breeds
rather than commercial hybrids! We sell organic eggs from
traditional breeds of chooks at Salamanca Market, Hobart and by 10am we are
usually sold out.
Right: a flock of pullets (young hens) in the green manure paddock which is watered from our greywater that has passed through the sand filter. |
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Left: Aylesbury ducks
Right: this season's Runner ducks |
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Alphabet of Gardening |
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Gardening Calender |
Orchards | Kitchen Garden | Vegie Garden | About us | Contact Resources Disclaimer |
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