Tag Archives: gardening

Sharing the Bounty

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We try to grow enough food so that we can share some with our extended family.  Some of our efforts are more successful than others.

Here are some mandarins and avocados that I took to Belle.

2012-06-16 01We usually have plenty of eggs, although this depends a bit on the season.  At the moment we have an abundance so I can give them away to various family members.  There are always many more lemons and limes than we can use so I have taken to putting them in the wheelbarrow outside the gate with a sign on a piece of cardboard indicating that they are free.

One of my planned projects is to make a more permanent arrangement using a sandwich board style of sign with the option of changing what is ‘advertised’.  I hope to be able to show it to you once I get around to making it.  Don’t hold your breath waiting, though!

It is great to be able to share.

Garden Planning

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After a few weeks of mostly wet weather, our vegetable garden is pretty well non-existent.  While the weather was fine on the weekend, I took the opportunity to examine what is left.  The cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes all need to be pulled out.  There are a few corn growing and I don’t know whether the cobs will mature but I will leave them for the time being.  The same goes for the button squash which have weathered the wet conditions much better than the zucchini.  There is Greek basil still going under all the weeds so that will stay.  The cherry tomatoes are wild and threatening to take over the garden.

I also was able to pick some figs.  There are a lot more on the tree so I am hoping to get enough to make some fig jam (my favourite) and perhaps to try drying some as well.

2012-02-06 01Next weekend I hope that the weather is fine and we will remove all of the old plants and start preparing the beds for our winter crops.  It is time to get some more mushroom compost again and hopefully some mushrooms as a bonus.

Although it is still most definitely summer it is time to get prepared as we have a relatively short and mild winter.  I will be planting onion and leek seeds this week as it takes about 10 – 12 weeks before they are ready to plant out and that takes us through till the beginning of May.  Although I have grown onions successfully in previous years, our winter is not long enough for the tops to die down and dry off.  I have to pick the onions with the tops still green so they do not store well.  I have diced and frozen the onions previously but this year I hope to dehydrate at least some of them.

I checked the seeds that I have to see what else I need to buy.  I keep my seeds in a container in the refrigerator.

2012-02-06 03I buy my seeds from Green Harvest so am going to spend some time checking out the catalogue.  Fortunately for me, Green Harvest are located in Maleny, near my home so I can pick up my order in person.  I need more broccoli seeds and am going to try to grow cauliflower and cabbage from seed as well.  I may have another go a growing carrots which are my nemesis.

2012-02-06 02My ideal is to plant my first crop of broccoli seedlings around St Patrick’s Day (March 17th) so I want to get the seeds planted as soon as possible.

Don’t Cry For Me…..

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…because I have finished preparing and freezing the onions.

We grew onions this year from a punnet of seedlings I bought at the Yandina Markets.  From 1 punnet of seedlings bought for $2.50 I had 90 seedlings.  They were tiny but I separated them and planted each one individually.  74 survived and here is the harvest..

Here they are drying on a rack after I pulled them up today.

We do not really have an ideal climate for growing onions as you should really have dry weather when they are maturing so that the tops die off completely and then they can be stored.  Since we are coming into our wet, humid weather I decided that since they were a reasonable size I would harvest them and then dice and freeze in packs of 150g (about the size of a medium onion.

Thanks to my wondrous food processor I now have 7 kg of diced onion in the freezer as well as another 1.5 kg of the lower end of the stalk sliced and bagged up.  When I get time I will use this to make stock.

By next year I hope to have a dehydrator so that I have some more options.

Despite the less than ideal growing conditions I will definitely be planting onions again next year as a harvest of  8.5kg of onions for $2.50 seems like a pretty good return on my money.

Through a Child’s Eyes

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I mentioned yesterday that this simple living can be darned hard work – gardening, planting, harvesting, preserving, storing and cooking from scratch – not to mention the million and one other things that need to be done.

A sure-fire way to rejuvenate the enthusiasm is to see the ‘chores’ through the eyes of a child.  Our granddaughters stayed here this weekend and spending an hour or so in the backyard with them was a sheer delight.

2011-10-02 01Collecting the eggs.

2011-10-02 02Checking out the onion patch.

2011-10-02 03Splitting open beans to retrieve the seeds.

2011-10-02 04The excitement of finding a bean seed.  We will be letting them dry out and saving to replant.  We have also saved snow pea seeds.  Miss O had fun sorting the bean and pea seeds into separate containers.

2011-10-02 05Helping with the harvest.

There were lots of other things that did not get captured on film.  Pulling up the spent broccoli and cauliflower plants and dragging the up to the compost bin as well as pulling the old snow pea vine off the trellis.

Miss O helped me cook and we made a fruit slice with passionfruit icing as well as currant, orange and poppyseed muffins.  The girls took some muffins home to put in their lunchboxes for daycare tomorrow.

I also managed to get a little sewing done.  2 pairs of shorts are finished.  Here they are on the models.

2011-10-02 06And the second pair.

2011-10-02 07It is a pleasure to see the sheer delight on the faces of my grandchildren when they can help with the jobs we do every day.  I am reminded that what I am doing is ‘right’ and I look forward to sharing many more things as they get older.

A Little Bit of Everything

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Today I weeded and watered my garden, sewed, and of course, bottled the Worcestershire sauce.

While I was in the garden I discovered the first hint of spring.  I noticed the very first blossom on the peach tree.  Can you see it?

Here is a close-up.

I picked broccoli, bok choy, a lime and some baby spinach.  I used the bok choy, some broccoli and the lime for dinner.

We had salmon grilled with lime and sea salt on potato mash with stir-fried broccoli and bok choy with soy, ginger and lime sauce.

There is still quite a bit of broccoli so will be having that with meals this week.

I bottled the Worcestershire sauce tonight and here is the result.

The residue after straining will go into the compost.

I used an existing oven mitt for a pattern to make a new one.

I cut 2 pieces from some cotton fabric – leftover from a dress that had been unpicked and refashioned.

2 of calico for the lining.

2 pieces from an old towel for the wadding.

Here they are layered together.

The Duke cut a piece of metal edging to help me to keep the quilting in straight lines.

Quilted and stitched together.

All finished apart from binding the edge which is only pinned

I also made another pair of trackpants for Izz and as well as this top.

I have nearly finished a summer skirt and top for her, but will post those photos another day.

Markets & Gardens

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My plan for this weekend was to buy seedlings for our winter vegie garden.  So, we were up early and off to the Yandina Markets.  We are spoiled for choice of markets on both days of the weekends.  While it is a little further to travel to Yandina than some of the others, it is definitely worth the trip for vegetable seedlings.  I dream of being able to grow all of my produce from seed but for the moment it is far more practical to let someonelse do the seed raising.

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We also bought some local pineapples, bananas and zucchini as well as some beans.

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Then we headed for home with a slight detour to Caloundra.  First stop was K-Mart to get the makings of another batch of home brew, followed by Aldi to get a few things and finally Bunnings.  We bought a large bag of potting mix, some seed raising mix, 2 more hanging baskets for the verandah and a tin of paint stripper.  The paint stripper will be used by The Duke when he starts restoring the silky oak dressing table that we bought a couple of months ago.

We spent the rest of the day in the garden and we now have our winter vegetable gardens all planted up with what will hopefully be a great harvest over the coming months.

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First things to plant were baby spinach, bok choy and cabbages.

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Then broccoli, cauliflower and beetroot.

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A trellis for the beans and snow peas.

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Finally, the celery and onions.

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Since we do not have the vegetable garden area fenced we have a variety of fencing/covering methods to exclude the chickens from the very tempting new seedlings and mulch.  Fencing is on the ‘To Do’ list.  One day…………it will happen.

A Sunny Day

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After a summer of rain and only a handful of sunny days it is a delight to have a real autumn day, even though autumn is nearly over.  Winter is only 5 days away.

These photos were taken this morning, I hope you like them.

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2011-05-25 03These zygocacti, in various stages of flowering, came from my mother’s place over 6 months ago.  I have to confess that they had been left sitting on the concrete at the back of the house.  They had absolutely no care, got drowned in flooding rains but have still managed to put on a great show.  The Duke hung them up on the verandah last weekend along with a couple of other hanging baskets.  I am looking forward to adding to the collection in the future.

Those of you who are particularly observant may have noticed that the photo on the header of the blog has been changed.  The Duke has been pestering me to put a current photo on the blog header, so while I was outdoors with the camera I also took an updated photo of the house showing the solar panels and also the solar hot water system which have both been added since we have been living here.

The weather today will definitely allow for some generation from the solar panels.  The wet and overcast weather during the summer has really limited our capacity for generating power but hopefully the winter months will be mostly fine and sunny.  Our electricity reading is due within the next few days so I expect that we will get our bill in the next few days.  I really must stop referring to it as a bill as I am confident that we will once again have a credit balance.  We will then have records for 6 months of our electricity usage and generation from the solar panels so will have a pretty good idea of how much credit we can reasonably expect.  I am then going to request that the credit be forwarded to us as the funds are better being put to good use here than earning interest for Origin Energy.