Individual blogs

My sweet potato is out of control, it loves the rain and produces heaps of vines, but needs encouragement to put forth roots and therefore create tubers. Every so often I go and bury them by chucking a shovel load of dirt onto the vines.

Well, it's been a while since my last blog post. This rain we've been having has been fantastic for most of the plants with only a few plants suffering from too much rain.

The beans have really taken off and we've been harvesting a couple of handfuls or more a week. The luffa is now taking over and growing through the beans and across the ground. I also planted some cucumbers next to the beans and there is one baby one starting to grow.

The zucchinis have been suffering from the wet weather - they have mildew and the fruit are rotting early - not sure if it's calcium deficiency or fruit fly or just the wet weather. I've been picking them early so we can eat them. I've got out there once with the milk and water mix to combat the mildew but with this much rain it's hard to find a dry enough spell for it to dry on the leaves. The plants are doing much better in this spot and are almost the size of Donna's - oh the wonders of cow poo : )

This is the luffa flowering - thanks for the seeds Donna! Hopefully it will bear some fruit soon.

Despite being mowed back to a couple of leaves, the pumpkin has revelled in the rain and is spreading its tentacles again - there appears to be some fruit but I'm not sure if it's setting. Once the rain is over I think I'll plant a new vine from some seeds I saved. The chooks don't seem to eat it - guess it's a bit spiky for them.

Here's Gonzo and Hetty is in the background. The have quite a large area to free-range in - we've fenced off the backyard from the passionfruit vine back (so from a few metres from the back of the house). They have plenty of scratching space so they haven't turned the back yard into a mess just yet. Hetty has jumped the fence once but didn't complain about going back.

The water chestnuts are flowering (you have to look really closely to see the flowers). I'm guessing after that they'll start to die back for harvest. They seem to have spread well through the tub so I'm hoping to get a few corms. The kang kong ? is next to it - waiting for the rain to stop before I put it in the other half of the tub. Thanks Cass!!

Goldilocks the bantam wants to be big chook and won't lay in her hutch, only in the big chooks' cage. If she needs to lay in the morning she races out of her cage and runs around in circles until I let the big chooks out of their cage then races in to the nesting box. So cute! She has only just started laying again after an early moult, pause for a clucky period, then finishing the moult.

A honeydew from seeds saved from a market bought melon. It has lots of fruit and is enjoying the rain. I think the fruit is just about ripe.

Corn! Viv definitel love his corn. I find it a little hard to grow - they don't seem to pollinate all that well and have had problems with possums in the past. This one is pretty much ready to pick though.

This is my jungle patch up the back - it has the corn, honeydew, self-sown tomatoes (big ones this time!), peanuts, sorghum and giant sunflowers. I sowed one row and got two! Must have self-sown from last time. No complaints. These are massive - I estimate 8 feet tall.

One of the newest additions to the family - a blueberry I bought at the markets. They were only $12 (instead of $25-30 at a certain hardware store). My neighbours had given me their azalea which I subsequently managed to kill, so I used the potting mix for the blueberry. It's growing quite quickly in it's new pot.

We've mapped out some spots for fruit tress in the front yard - we have enough space for six along the front and then maybe some more up the side of the house. We're just waiting on cooler weather (which we are getting now), some more bricks for the surrounds so I can raise up the soil (stupid clay) and some moolah to buy the fruit trees with.

It doesn't look like it in this photo, but the hedge is growing quite well with the wet weather. One plant is up to my waist - woohoo! Was thinking about getting a tea (for drinking) shrub to finish off the rest of the hedge as I hear they make good hedge plants.

Some volunteers from when I was seed saving on the back steps - pak choi and sunflowers. They are both rather small as they only get a flick with some water and rain and there's stones so the root systems are tiny. The chooks LOVE pak choi so I rip one out to give them every now and then.

Well that's all from me for now. Hoping to do some autumn planting soon.

I have planted a whole heap of chicken seedlings in the clothesline bed and they are starting to grow, think there is millet, sorghum, wheat and a few others. The idea is that I will successive plant and always have some green and some seeding to give them as a treat.

The cubby house bed had some late planted snake beans which I cut off and left to decompose, and as it was looking very empty and dry I tried to transplant a few of the mustard/ marigolds from the bed next to it for a bit of green manure. I really need to pick up a whole heap of lucerne bales and add more to all the beds, top off the piles of compost laying around to help decomposition and put at least one bale in the chicken run for them to sit on - hopefully next weekend!

The front new garden is doing well, and finally the banana pup has produced a new leaf (IM had given up and wanted to rip it out and try again). I pruned/ decimated the two passionfruit next to this bed and dumped them on the top as a mulch and will cover it will lucerne when I get more. Amazing that they are still green as that would be at least three weeks ago now... think that is what finally helped the banana pup as it now gets a bit more sunlight.