Capertee Valley

We have spent the last few days in a beautiful place called Turon Gates at Capertee Valley. Turon Gates accepts dogs so it's perfect for the family. We hired one of the mountain cabins, but intend to go camping there soon too. We spent ages by the river yesterday, looking at the local wildlife (photos below!). The landscape shot is our view of the deck of the cabin. It was spectacular and highly recommend it to anyone nearish Sydney or NSW really.

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(to see the full landscape picture click to load)

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From summer garden more

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This one is a witchetty grub. Good bush tucker to eat if you are stuck believe it or not. We weren't.

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From summer garden more

From summer garden more

This log we picked up from our stay - we are going to incorporate it into the water feature somehow. It has a perfect water channel in it.

So much rain - good for the garden, not the holidays

It's seems like it's been raining forever. I can only remember one full day of sun in the last three weeks. The garden is doing really well. The kids aren't - not fair for school holidays. The Wii Cricket is getting a good workout!

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From summer garden more

Tomatoes! Cucumbers! Pumpkin!

Here are some photos of the amazing Tomatoes - so many are fruiting - now just need them to go red. Also our cucumbers and the pumpkin plants (although quite young still) are looking healthy. Also what I think are our sweetcorn!

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From summer garden more

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New Summer Harvest

I have harvested my carrots and beets - another failure - kind of. The button carrots were ok - but not enough to do anything with except for 8 year old to pick and eat for about three weeks. The photo below shows my total efforts! I am determined to get a carrot garden happening as they are the most popular food around this home. Below that photo are my far more successful first harvest of beans and cucumbers. They are harvesting regularly now - my first real experience (apart from the salads) of having enough to continually pick. We are getting around 2 full cucumbers or more per week - and they just keep coming.

From summer garden more

From summer garden more

From summer garden more

New Summer Garden

A wonderful day to create a new garden bed! After getting about three raspberries on my first cane which is now in it's second year, it was a little disappointing. We then went down to the community gardens and saw their wonderful raspberry crop and so we have decided grow many more canes for next season along the side lane fence. Which means getting rid of the succulents along there (that weren't working anyway) and creating a NEW garden bed! - I had been thinking about sitting in our little nook that looks out on to the deck and studio and have decided the studio needs to a bit of 'sprucing' up. If we are going to look out on it through those french doors we may as well have something lovely to look at. So that's where the succulent garden was planted today. We are also planning on getting rid of the cupboards and garden stuff directly along the wall and plant a type of fernery. See below for some pics.

Our second Spring

We are well underway into our second spring in the garden. The difference between this year's harvest and last years is so encouraging I can only wonder what next spring will be. (click here to see last year's attempts!) A year of soaking up the knowledge from my mum and A, and pouring all that (and the 4 tonnes of mushroom compost) into this years vege patch have totally paid off. I read it a million times, but proof is in the pudding - "garden bed preparation is essential!" The potatoes are going mad and the new front vege garden, is now producing yummy produce, which we are hoping will last into the new year. - if we keep picking from it. The first crop has been salad greens, lettuce, rocket, spinach, with the celery slowly growing in the background. Our next crop growing are Tomatoes and Beans. I have also just planted some Cucumber for a summer harvest. The back vege garden is producing some peas, but the carrots and beetroot just aren't working. So I am having to rethink that area.
I also have an ongoing struggle with snails and slugs - particularly with the new shoots and the amount of rain we are getting. I have tried Beer, I have tried going out there in the rain, at nighttime with my touch and manually collecting them. I am currently trying an organic (safe for wildlife etc) bait. It's awful to see the bean shoots doing well one day , for the next to have all of them chewed to bits! I will continue to trial new things - still to come, garlic spray, molasses spray, but I wont resort to salt. It's just too, too, well, yuk.

The other suprise has been the revelation of the the Valerian plant - and it's come back this year! Valerian is used as medicinal herb, taken for insomnia and stress. (not related to Valium!). It's one of two plants I am trialling for a medicinal section of our garden - the other is Echinacea. The Valerian had totally died back over winter- ie you couldn't see it! - But in the space of about 8 weeks - it's grown to a triffid sized 4 feet - and still growing. Eventually we will use the roots of this plant to make the medicine. (if i get around to it - if only there was a herb for procrastination - but then no one would ever grow it!)

See slide show for a few pics.

Red gravel and new limelight plants

Mum had ordered about 30 'Limelight' (Helichrysum petiolare) plants from her regular nursery for us to develop into a small hedge along the front path. I collected them from her on Wednesday and by Friday we had them planted. Over the weekend we ordered some red 'terracotta' gravel and got carried away with our own backyard blitz on the front yard. A and I are very very excited with the result. And it all started with these little green plants - now I just hope they don't die!. The weekend work included long overdue weeding in the front garden beds and A spent quite a bit of time 'edging' the beds to tidy them up. I have also placed red gravel along the new side vege patch. It's looking great. We ordered one ton of this stuff and every last bit of it was shoveled by moi! into wheel barrow loads and moved into place. Probably all up about 20 - 30 loads.