Three Little Birds...

About a week ago Alfie booted the chicks out of the nest and into independence. She spends her days hanging out with the girls again and doesn't want them under her wing anymore, there is work to be done and eggs to be laid. Kentucky is very skittery and runs around like road runner but Bella and Bok Bok (formally known as Marilyn) are getting quite friendly and I can give them a pat occasionally.

They have all found their spots in the new house and the chicks particularly like the left side nest (which is good because the older girls like the right) and the perch above it. They all sit together and there is much ado until they finally settle down for the night. Alfie is rather bossy to them now and has made her own nest in the hay above the house so I leave it just as she does and grab fresh hay from the other end...the things we do huh!

I have enough starter mix for the rest of the week and then I will buy some grower mix but they don't seem to be eating much of it lately, preferring instead to eat fruit, vegetables and foraged food. They have snacked on a few of the hens layer pellets but that can't be helped unless I separate them first thing in the morning...the girls however, will eat ANYTHING and they have no qualms about bullying the babies at all.

I often see Kentucky and Bella eye balling each other in a stand off and it looks hilarious...its like an episode of feathers at dawn. Bok Bok just plods around but he did give me a heck of a fright the other day. I was out the back watching Diesel in his pool when I heard a blood curdling sound coming from where the chooks hang out. Panicking, I ran through the house followed by a dripping wet dog only to find him trying to crow, it really was so cute.

Oil Seed Blooms...

The oil seed pumpkin plants have been flowering like crazy and I just had to share some pics of these massive sized beauties. Sadly they only seem to be good for a day and then they shrivel up but while they are stretched out in the sun in all their glory they look magnificent.

Getting Down With The Garlic...

It was Christmas evening and while wandering around my garden I found the sudden urge to pull up a garlic plant to see just how much they had grown. The longest day had past and there was some browning of the leaves starting so it wouldn't be such a bad thing would it? Curiosity got the better of me and I got down on my knees and started digging gently around in the soil. Just one would tell me all I needed to know...

They might look like they would be easy to just pull out but they aren't! You cannot pull the garlic out by its leaves (well, you shouldn't) you need to dig down and get right underneath it. Once out of the ground you can leave it lying for a few days or hang it some where dry, cool and airy. After chatting with some fellow gardeners I have concluded that there are many "right" ways of growing and curing your garlic, some say cut the roots off, some say leave them on to help the drying process. This is the first time I have grown garlic and I have to say I am really pleased with the results. The one above is the first Takanue I pulled, the little bulby things growing out the bottom are called corms, apparently if you plant them, in the second year you will get another garlic bulb...yay!

It didn't stop there though...by the next day I was itching to pull up the rest. And I did. I slowly pulled them up one by one and took them to the tap for a quick wash (you are supposed to leave them for a few days but I wanted some of the gunk off and there was a few spiders that had made their homes where the leaves and stem joined) gave them a dry off and pegged them to my washing line under the veranda. It wasn't until I stood back to admire my garlic curtain that I realised I only had ten bulbs...ten good sized, gorgeously fragrant bulbs but I had planted eleven and that one bulb counts! Thinking back it must have disappeared around the time that Sugar busted through the fence, ate the tips off and demolished my rhubarb *sigh*.

Though I was absolutely chuffed with my harvest of Takanue garlic, the threat of rain coming made me wonder if I should be pulling up the Kakanui bulbs. I had planted them in the totally wrong place from the start and hadn't been able to water the neighbouring corn as much as I would have liked for fear of water logging the garlic. It was as much excuse as I needed and just before midnight I scurried down to the garden and dug up my treasure. I'm not sure what anyone would have thought if they had seen me digging around in the garden at that time of night but anytime is a good time to garden in my book. The photo above is the whole harvest, I do have some more Kakanui in the garden but they are much smaller and I'm not sure if they will come to much. Even if they don't, I have enough from this year to save for next year and to share with a few others...a very good result!

A Gander At The Garden...

There has been so much growth in the last few weeks but the weather so far this summer has had many gardeners scratching their heads or grumbling in frustration. I am just happy to finally see some rewards for my efforts!

Na-nah...here is the first and long awaited oil seed pumpkin. I am so tickled with this wee fella I can't help but smile every time I look at it. All eleven plants are still chugging along happily so hopefully I will see a good crop of these.

And this is a very small cob of the painted mountain corn. There is a few of them but I am a little disappointed in their size considering how long they have been in...I am wondering if I planted a wee bit early? Still, as long as I get enough for seed I will be happy.

 Almost garlic time...

This I am really excited about...I am going to leave mine in for a bit longer because it was planted a little later than it should have been but I must admit to having a little peek at one.

Parsley and naughty amaretta  growing below the broad beans.

Evergreen tomatoes in a hanging basket by the back door...I haven't tried this type before so looking forward to seeing what they are like.

The Urenika potatoes are growing well but will still be a month or so way from harvest. I did have a forage under a couple of plants but didn't find anything substantial.

A view of the garden taken today, hopefully I will soon be able to replace the wood with some concrete stepping stones so my big hooves don't flatten the soil. I planted radish and carrot seed the other day and already the radish has poked up through the soil. The sunflowers are as tall as me now and still growing.

My poor rhubarb has started to grow back after Sugar busted her way through the fence and ate the lot. The worst part was that my niece had pleaded the day before for us to go cut the rhubarb and cook something yummy and I has said we should just wait another few days so we got a good harvest...that goat is damn lucky she is so cute!

I haven't got to the third sister yet but the two sisters are growing great guns at the moment. I have been layering cardboard and hay to keep the weeds down and keep the pumpkins off the wet grass and so far its working well. My efforts to fix the drainage in the tub worked fantastically and they seem to love the sunny position.

The golden egg eggplant is starting to get some growth on it now. I haven't tried this one before so looking forward to seeing what it looks like. It is hanging in a large basket under the veranda and seems to like its spot there. Behind it are cherry chilli's which have been lagging for awhile but are starting to grow now with all the warmth.

Where Does Time Go...?

The last three or four weeks have just been one big blur. I have so many photos taken since my last post but once again, everything has changed so much that it would take me a month of Sundays to catch up on it all so I will just start with what I did today and go from there.

A few weeks back while I was driving into town I saw broken pallets sitting in a crate free for the taking. I noticed that the wood was mostly intact and in useable pieces so I did a uey and went to have a look. I have been wanting to update the chook coop for awhile and what better to use than free wood? There was nails I would have to pull out but other than that it was good wood so I opened up the back and fired as much as I could into the back of the car. By the end of that day I had most of it de-nailed and ready to use. Now, I was going to use it for the coop but after some contemplation, a cup of tea, more contemplation, a few measurements and a fair bit of sawing and hammering I realised I didn't 'actually' need it after all and would have to find another use for it. Anyway, here is the new nest....

This is what it looks like under the hay...wooden slats for support and then wire netting on top. Hopefully that will let all the droppings fall through and be easier to clean. I also cut a nice piece of driftwood to size for a comfortable perch. As you can see, Lola had no problem settling down in the new house...its her turn to be broody but there is no more room at the inn!

So after I had finished the chook house I still had all these bits of wood and I was itching to make something. The most useful thing I could think of was a wooden planter box so I chose my pieces and got to work. I am rather chuffed with how it turned out...this one will be for herbs and the next one I make I am going to plant with strawberries. They will probably only last a few years but all it cost was some nails and my time...

First Day In The Sun With Mum...

The chicks are doing well so far and Alfie is teaching them everything they need to know about being a chicken. Today I took them outside onto the lawn for a look around and to give Alfie some time to forage, it didn't take long for them to learn that if you scratch around long enough you are bound to find some tasty morsels.

Now they are getting quicker and it is making it quite difficult to take a good photo. Just when I get myself positioned and ready to snap...*Neeeroooom* and off they go again. Kentucky reminds me of road runner, long lanky legs and incredibly fast. Princess Bella is not quite as quick and is starting to resemble a penguin. Marilyn can move when she wants to but seems quite content just sitting back and watching everyone else do their thing.

I brought chick crumble when they started to hatch but since then they have been eating a variety of extras. First I started them with a bit of apple and some kiwifruit which they loved, especially the apple...they also liked a little bit of bread. A lot of people say their hens like greens from the garden but mine never have. Apart from carrots, peas (they love my peas!) and fresh corn they turned their beaks up at anything else.

Now I have the chicks and some greens in the garden I thought it would be a good time to try getting them into some so I grabbed some leaves of red chard and foodhook silverbeet and sliced it very finely...and what do you know, even Alfie wolfed it down. They really like the small chunks of stem I noticed and the bonus will be no waste of older leaves or stems for the garden.

Though they didn't stray far from mum today, they did wander off a little way exploring. Alfie found a shaded spot under a tall grassy plant and showed them how to scratch around and find bugs and worms...and when she found one she gave it to them until they got the hang of it themselves...and that didn't take long. Kentucky might be the fastest but Princess Bella is fast and sneaky...she knows to nab it and RUN!

They make a complete mess in their food bowls thanks to their mum, she has showed them to dig around in the crumble to get the small bits of corn so food goes flying everywhere...they do eat it all in the end so its not a problem and whatever is left when I change their food and water bowls get thrown out for Lola and Petunia...whose gas gauges are always on E. 

From The Garden...

The first pea pod of the season...there is nothing like the taste of fresh peas eaten straight out of the pod. Like the asparagus, I doubt many will make it into the kitchen.
 

A sea of purple and blue. The borage plants are bringing so many bees and bumbles to the garden, it must be like a pollen paradise for them.

The Urenika potatoes are growing quickly and will need mounding up soon. These ones were planted earlier so are a little more established but the ones I planted a couple of weeks ago have started pushing their way up through the soil now and hopefully will take over the raised garden bed.

Lipstick happily munching in the sun, never far from her goat buddy Sugar. They have become such good friends that she stands on Sugars back occasionally and tries to groom her.

The Moment We Have Been Waiting For...

First came Kentucky...

Then came Princess Bella...

And then Marilyn...

Oh Catnip...How I Love You!...

I've had to put the nip on lock down...someone was getting a little too friendly with it!

"Your Garden Looks Awesome!"

It was the highlight of my day when my eldest niece hopped out of the car and declared "Oh aunty, your garden looks awesome!". Moments like those are just magical...Its a reminder of where you started and how things have evolved.

The start of the three sisters garden (only two sisters at the moment) used by Native Americans for many, many generations. A combination of beans, corn and squash are grown together...the corn giving the beans something to climb and the squash keeps the soil and roots of the corn shaded, therefore keeping maximum  moisture in the soil during warmer months. This is honey and pearl saved seed from last year.

Well, I'm not sure what happened last year but here are the successful oil seed pumpkin plants...all eleven of them!!! Lord only knows what I will do with them all but I am absolutely freakin chuffed.

Four little Luffa's growing slowly but steadily...I will have loofa's if it kills me!

Waste Not, Want Not...

It was pouring with rain when we woke up this morning so after a cup of tea we all snuggled back up and had a sleep in. Not wanting to get soaked to the skin meant finding inside jobs to do today and there are always plenty of those. I did prick out some seedlings I am growing for my Grandads garden, vanilla ice sunflowers and mixed carnations but there wasn't much dry space under the veranda and I ended up as wet as a shag anyway.

One thing I needed to do was make some hardy name tags for in the garden so I grabbed some of the pieces from the old trellis that had fallen apart and cut them to size. Ideally I would have liked to use paint but I keep forgetting to buy a small pot for it so I settled for a vivid marker instead (sharpie pen). The few I did at the beginning of the year are still clearly visible so I am happy that they will do the job until I remember to stop at the paint shop. Best of all, they didn't cost anything...

Garden Love...

Over the last couple of days I have been digging over the smaller raised garden. The soil had compacted so much it was as hard as the hobs of hell, no wonder the onions and garlic I had planted couldn't grow. Because I had been spending so much time on the other garden and all the seedlings Ive been growing, I just hadn't had the time to get into it.

I didnt want to waste the plants so I decided to carefully dig them up and replant in the new garden, hoping that they would flourish and not curl their toes up...and I also found this lovely big beet but that made its way to the kitchen. Today I finished digging it over and planted purple beans around the edge and some Urenika potatoes (that i had completely forgotten about) in the rest of it...hopefully I will get a good crop of yummy spuds from them.

Last week I removed the soil from an old concrete tub, put some drainage in, added some compost and planted the first of the pumpkin plants. These three are butter pumpkins, I haven't grown them before so I am looking forward to seeing what they turn out like. They seem to have settled in there despite the chooks having a scratch around which sent me running across the lawn waving my arms like a mad woman, they now have a plastic sheet fencing them off.

A trade of blackberry jam for grapefruit put me on a marmalade mission earlier on in the week. I added some oranges and lemons, finely sliced a mix of rind and wallah...nineteen jars of a semi bitter-sweet marmalade.

Months ago I planted the last luffa seeds and was disappointed nothing ever grew from them...until a few weeks ago when up popped four luffa seedlings out of the blue. I waited for them to get a teeny bit bigger before putting them into their own pots and so far they are happily growing in full sun under the veranda...maybe I will get some loofah's this year?

Petunia and Lola...double trouble!

One of the cape gooseberry plants in the new garden. I can't wait to see them covered in those lovely little paper lanterns with the golden orange berry inside, so delicious and apparently make very nice jam though my berries wouldn't make it out of the garden. The coriander I planted has gone nuts so I need to give it a trim and dry some out...I haven't dried many fresh herbs before so it will be interesting but the smell of it is divine and coupled with the cumin I am growing it will be a delicious addition to the pantry.

Here is another pic of the Takahue garlic, it has grown so big that if it wasn't in my garden I wouldn't believe it. The strawberries are growing very happily next to it too. The rhubarb on the right is looking so healthy in its new spot, I can't help but wonder if its the garlic nearby that it likes.

While hunting through my seed box recently I found my last packet of Austrian oil seed pumpkin seeds so yesterday I planted them. They are the hull less pumpkin seeds that you eat but I had no luck with the other seeds I planted last year so fingers crossed this year they will grow for me. There was ten seeds in the packet but even if only one grew I would be completely ecstatic!