Spring is almost here

It's my birthday today and Spring is almost here. For my birthday A gave me 4 tonne of topsoil mix with mushroom compost. So I am getting my spring planting plans ready and getting ready for my second year of fruit and vege planting. Hopefully it will yield more produce than last year! Below is a slide show of little buds of spring taking off.

Yummy food

It's been a while since i posted - the onset of Winter. It seems to stall....life a bit.

Well I just wanted to share this wonderful site I found through Design*Sponge. It's a website by a couple of guys who like to cook. Some yummy recipes to be found here. I promise you this is worth it - check it out here: http://www.lottieanddoof.com/ Lottie and Doof.

Mrs Fatso has died

It seems my skin is getting thicker the longer I live up here in the mountains. The current count of animals is currently 5 chooks, 3 dogs, a mouse, 3 gold fish.
So far fatalaties are 1 chook (stolen or eaten), 3 chooks slaughtered by fox, 2 gold fish (killed by me as far as I can tell - bad pond habits...getting better) we also recently buried one of the kids guinea pigs (but the guinea pig resided elsewhere, we just took it in on it's last very sick day). The Guinea pig is buried under rock by the fish pond at the 9 yr olds request.

But the most recent, awful death was that of the old time chook Mrs Fatso. She of "I have survived 3 fox attacks". She of "I am the boss - get out of my way". She of "You will not put flee dust on my bottom or I will have a heart attack and die!" protest. And she did. She was old. She didn't move much. And we suspect she was not well, as, like and old dog she would wander across the yard..have a sit down...wander more...have another sit down.... So A decided to dust all the chooks, and while the others fluttered and put up with it...Mrs Fatso fluttered...then fluttered less...then quite gradually her neck started flopping. The kids and I were watching...then kind of worried. Then A looked at me - and oh dear...Mrs Fatso was having a heart attack! She died pretty much there and then. But the wonderful way the children dealt with it was to come up with the appropriate burial theme (rocks, wooden sticks for cross and a few flowers - all totally creeped me out!) So she was duely buried in a very sombre ceremony - and I barely cried. Thus my skin is getting thicker. I'm not sure how I have lived over 40 years and never had a burial in the backyard. Then in the space of 1 year have have had two! Interesting times ahead. I love every mintue of it.

I trust as the years are moved through, I will plant better crops, raise lots of animals and just become part of the fabric of living in regional Australia. A say's it's not exactly country, but it is. My country anyway.

New growth and my special carrot

Well I have had my very first carrot harvest. There were two and they were about the size of a marble. (granted they were the button carrots - not long ones). But still. Another grand failure in this wonderful first year attempting gardening. I am hoping of course that the massive carrot plot that I have planted will yield greater produce - however I can give you a tip about that plot - of the 30 or 40 I planted along each row - then thinned out - there about 4 or 5 left. I am not sure what happened to them all - but I suspect the same thing may have happened to them as the fantastic 17 bean stalks (now just one) - birds. There is a slide show below - including the carrot, as well as the echinacea plant (3 flowers!) the every growing herb garden and my passionfruit. I have also included a shot of our chooks in free range mode. We have tested with complete success letting them wander around the back yard with the dogs. The dogs, including the mad kelpie just look and occassionally threaten to round them up in good farm dog fashion. But they are all friends for the most part. The chooks just completely ignore them.

If you want to view the slide show in full screen mode click on the big play arrow in the middle of the screen - then click on the icon on the bottom right corner of the slide show, then when you want to come back just hit the "escape" button".

Echinacea

Echinacea
Originally uploaded by Catch That Mountain View

The wonderful thing about starting from scratch is we are almost randomly learning what works in this cool mountain climate and what doesn't. So gradually over many springtimes we will enjoy here, our garden will hopefully, slowly, start having lots of vibrant living life in it, rather than some fairly poorly looking sad droops. One which has absolutely thrived without much help was a small tube stock plant - Echinacea. I have a small dream of having various medicinal plants around the place to slowly work through their various benefits and the echnicea plant was a good obvious one to start with. Well! It took off and quickly. It's now well over a foot tall with the wonderful purple flower at the top. A & I have decided somewhere to make a little feature row or garden of these lovely herbs.

Echinacea

Echinachea
Originally uploaded by Catch That Mountain View

Vege Patch # 5 - AFTER (aka "The Great Carrot Plot")

And here is the latest vege patch. It's in the north side of the house in our side garden. A & the kids eat carrots morning, noon and night - so I have decided to grow an entire bed of carrots. - This shows the vege patch right after planting. I have also placed some more purple king beans in the back as they are doing well in my other vege patch.

I ordered the seeds from Select Organic company (from the Eden Seeds company) and they boast their seeds as "Old Traditional Open Pollinated Seeds,
No hybrids & No GMOs, No chemical treatment,
World's Finest Certified Organic Seeds"

From left to right the six rows are:

1. Dragon
2. Nantes
3. Amsterdam
4. Top Weights
5 & 6 Chantenay Red Cored

It took me ages to work out how to even get carrots started - they seem to have different rules than a lot of other veges. Like
1. Don't use compost.
2. Watch out for rocky earth or the carrots will 'fork'

One rule I have broken already is dug up a new garden fresh from grass. - There will be many weeds and grass coming back up. I did however place some really good top soil in raised mound rows to help with that and then placed sugercane mulch all over.

The other thing I haven't done is left room for staggered planting. However It's really the end of the planting season for carrots being later summer so I will give this a go and then think about better solution next spring. One thing that may help with the "harvesting all at once" is that A's 7yr old girl will apparently just raid them as soon as they are ready to start digging up. I have been warned. I will keep the blog updated with "The Great Carrot Plot"

PS: The trunk in the middle is surrounded by the start of a new succulent garden. I'm not sure how quickly the roots go down and if they will be deep enough to avoid the carrots. I can but try.