Hi All,
You may have noticed, if you are a regular visitor to The Road to Serendipity, that my last few posts have been a lot more image intensive than wordy. My usual mantra is to wordbomb the heck out of you all but lately the words are a whole lot more sparse. In saying that, there are still more words in the image captions than most people put in an average post but whatchagonnadoeh?
In homage to remembrance…
Narf is on strike. Yes, not my muses, who are busting at the bit to get out there and garbling, just narf, the mouthpiece who has decided that words are not going to be predominate in her mantra for a little while. I think I caught spring fever folks. I think I suddenly felt extremely overwhelmed by everything that was going on in the world, in my life in the peripherals of “everything” and decided to hunker down and go back to basics and get off the PC and out into the garden where dirt (yes DIRT you “soil” purists! 😉 ) was everpresent and rapidly turning to dry dust.
Breakfast for 2
Well, a cuppa each and a bowl of brown rice porridge for moi
There is SO much to do out there. Stevie-boy was able to get a bit of gainful employment last year and that left me working double time researching for two and hurling myself into studies where we would both usually be out in the garden for a good part of the week. There was no time to tame the blackberries that now think they rule the roost at Serendipity Farm in the jungle at the front of our house and I am ever reminded of their twisty and thorny grasp whenever I sit on the deck in the morning contemplating the river and my navel with a big mug of tea. I am itching to get down and into them and teach them a narfish lesson but there is SO much more to do that is even more pressing than the blackberries…
In the same family as blackberries but nice well behaved tame thornless youngberries and loganberries soon to be planted and welcomed into the Serendipity Farm menagerie 🙂
Transplanted raspberries from where we shoved them in the horse manure next to the blueberries back when they were bare canes. They can grow happily in this nice big compost heap full of tasty things for happy raspberries
Raspberry futures with a backdrop of Sanctuary
We are working in the veggie garden that I call Sanctuary. Jess, the wonderful and most passionate little rabid hippy from rabbidlittlehippy fame who has been an inspiration and amazingly good friend to me for a long time now suggested that name for what has become the main focus of my last few weeks and my own passion. Working in the soil (back to the correct vernacular 😉 ) with my bare hands has left them filthy but me feeling a lot more complete than I have in ages. I have not watched any news reports, surfed much online or been a slave to the PC. I have not studied, aside from completing our very last assignment in sustainability which we did as soon as we got it, and I have been throwing myself into planning AND doing things in our garden.
Not berries but still food futures. My rhubarb baby from Gordon down the road and Jerusalem artichokes happily growing in a nice big pile of spent horse manure
One of the other compost heaps where I bury my bucketloads of kitchen scraps. Looks like some of those delicious orange pumpkins Stevie-boy has been buying me lately have decided to grow…one of the wonderful benefits of cycles 🙂
An old compost heap full of vegetables growing from the debris
zucchini futures
We recently completed a large fence to allow our dogs to roam free out in the back yard that encompasses a small much possum and wallaby mangled orchard that Earl now patrols at all hours of the day and night. He is incredibly devoted to “his” plants and shrubs and aside from peeing on each and every one of them every day (so much so that we have had to put tyres around our little fig forest to stop them from succumbing from acid wee…) he sleeps upside down on our bed with one ear cocked in order to hear the furry avengers so that he can barrel out the dog door and teach them a lesson in just how fast an Earl can run and just how serious he is about this being “MY” patch now.
Potato flowers
My Lazarus artichoke that just keeps on keeping on despite being murdered 2 weeks ago. Zombiechoke? Note it didn’t have those 2 chokes on it when it was snapped off by the possums.
I found this little misshapen flat hearty stone the other day on my early morning walk with Earl. I thought that it was a very fitting homage to real love which is often misshapen and outside the “normal” parameters, found in odd places and what you make of it. I also thought that it was fitting that this “real love” be represented inside a coffee cup ring because unlike Hollywood love, real love is just as soul satisfying as coffee and tea 🙂
In enclosing the yard we have inadvertently managed to get a bit of orchard protection going on and we have been planting out new trees and shrubs. We rescued our Lazarus almond that had been presumed dead when we moved to Serendipity Farm back in 2010 and in 2011 we wanted the pot that it was in so I told my daughter to tip out the almond onto their compost pile and save the pot for us. She phoned me up and said “do you want that almond tree?” I said “nope…it’s dead” and she said “well, for something that is dead, it has a lot of leaves!” That almond had not had a leaf in a year and a half!
Stevie-boy cut me these tree ring stepping stones… why do I need stepping stones? Well…
Narf’s little legs are not up to spanning 3 metres so I decided to use stepping stones in order to let me reach the bits I couldn’t usually reach where the weeds flourished, nothing got planted or harvested. Now all of the garden is mine!
We planted it out in the lower garden but it was only struggling along and we decided that it deserved better so we transplanted it into the new enclosed area where it has perked up and will get regularly watered. If it survives it certainly deserves to live out it’s days, nuts or not, on Serendipity Farm as a miracle tree. I was lucky enough to get 6 rooted cuttings from a poor long suffering, overgrown with weeds, fig tree at a local primary school that we sometimes walk the dogs on the oval and all 6 fig cuttings were very long (one of them was almost 5ft tall) but all survived. We planted out the first 4 last year and we just added the second 2 that are looking happy as well. I grew loquats from seed and just planted out 3 loquats last week. Everything is looking happy but more importantly, they are all out of pots and in the ground where their real growth can start happening.
There was a spray bottle of milk and water in that wheelbarrow (I don’t know if you noticed) to treat the powdery mildew on this little quince tree seen here dripping with milky droplets much to the (sodden) ants disgust
Stevie-boy has been busy chopping up logs and splitting them into fire sized chunks thanks to our friends kind use of their log splitter. I moved that entire first pile of lots in under an hour yesterday. Now we can drive the trailer through to reach Sanctuary which means lots of grass clippings and oak leaves and manure are just about to migrate inside 🙂
Stevie-boy and I lugged our ducks ex boat pond in to Sanctuary as well as the old fridge that I have plans to turn into a worm farm with a cooling pond on the other side for happy worms in summer. Soon I will have to prick out my veggie seedlings and repot them to be planted into the main garden area. I planted out 5 red currant bushes that I had grown from cuttings taken from shrubs that were on campus at the TasTAFE horticulture site back in 2009. They all grew and it was about time that I planted them into the ground. We also planted out 7 muscat grapes that will one day give us eating, wine and raisin pleasure.
A bit of an idea how steep Serendipity Farm is, here you see Bezials paddling pond propped up against a tree because it’s the only vaguely level bit of ground available as well as the figs we planted and some of the existing fruit trees
Taken just outside Sanctuary’s door. The oak tree grew from oak leaf mould used as mulch around this lovely rhododendron. Now they cohabit this garden bed quite beautifully 🙂
I spotted this lovely Iris on the walk from the house to Sanctuary (the front way) and thought you might like to see it. If you want plants that are seriously bullet proof but that have lovely flowers, irises are your baby. My friend just threw a wheelbarrow of them on the ground and forgot about them and they all grew and are flowering en mass. Lubbly jubbly 🙂
I am about to buy a few thornless berries to plant inside Sanctuary and there are kiwi berries, some kiwifruit and passionfruit on the cards to join them. I checked my turmeric pots and they are full of turmeric roots that I am going to plant out into a protected and sheltered garden bed inside Sanctuary with my 2 sad cardamom plants that have been languishing in pots since I bought them in 2010. I want everything to get its feet into the soil and at least have a chance to grow. We have lots of nut trees but they pose more of a problem because most nut trees have the propensity to be HUGE. I grew walnuts and chestnuts and hazelnuts from seed. A very easy thing to do and Jessie tells me it is easy to grow almonds from shelled nuts bought from the supermarket. I know you can grow peanuts from unroasted peanuts but most of us don’t think to try growing them. I planted out a few beans from dried beans that I had in my pantry and so far, I have had good success with some small brown Lebanese beans but the rest of the beans were eaten by voracious snails (that ducky can’t get to as she is now unable to enter the garden thanks to netting and Earl).
What is left of our potted babies that all need planting out. At least now they form a nice small easy to water clump
Steve spotted this tug pulling something huge down the river about an hour ago…
That’s a mighty big barge! Another one came down the river about an hour later. Not sure what they are but “Barge” is a certainty 😉
THIS is why we hate forget-me-nots 😦 We had to venture down into the tea tree garden where the forget-me-nots rule and we both emerged covered in the sticky little buggers 😦
Looky what narf found on the side of the highway when I walked Earl the other day. The old saying “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need”… is most pertinent. We needed some glass for the glasshouse roof that a fat possum dropped through a little while ago and this bit of 99.9% block out UV laser-light is going to be just the ticket to fix the problem 🙂
A sunshiny shot of Sanctuary after Stevie-boy had whipper snipped and everything was looking hunky dory 🙂
Life is busy but very rewarding at the moment. I still don’t want to be “wordy” because that would mean I would have to stop being “action-y” and that’s where the real results are at the moment on Serendipity Farm. There are plans to haul materials that we have been storing in the city back to Serendipity Farm to make a long planned and anticipated wood fired pizza oven along with plans to turn a beer keg into a rocket stove. Stevie-boy is logging the remains of our last years fire logs so that we can get a trailer up to Sanctuary and deposit 3 huge trailer loads of drying grass clippings that Glad’s gardener generated next door and that will make a most welcome nitrogenous ingredient to my ever expanding need for compost. If I make the soil myself using compost, I don’t have to buy it in. Penniless student hippies have to think harder and pay less in order to get what they want. It often takes a lot more time BUT you learn so much in the process it is much more valuable than just handing over a credit card and waiting for the (expensive) delivery.
I decided to make savoury kasha for lunch yesterday and toasted some buckwheat groats and onion, garlic, tomatoes, capsicum and vegan chicken seasoning together in a big pan
After pouring water in and bringing it to the boil I let it simmer till the water evaporated down to level with the buckwheat and put the lid on and turned off the pot. 10 minutes later I had delicious hot savoury buckwheat which was well worth the effort 🙂
Aside from grass clippings there is a mountain of oak leaves below our deck with an equally huge mountain of old horse manure in which we put some raspberries that our friend Jenny gave us that we never got around to moving and they are now growing like crazy in the horse manure in front of the deck. The blueberries that Stevie-boy had to haul from our American friend Michael’s home who is relocating, were dumped in this same manure and are now covered in blueberries so they get to stay put for this growing season at least. We are going to shore up the sides of the berries and prevent the wallabies, possums and especially the blackbirds from being able to access them. This is going to be no small feat of engineering but we WILL triumph as blueberries and raspberries are worth the effort 🙂
What have we here? This would be narf napalm. I made it to “disuade” the white fly (or mouche blanche as Google translate would have me believe is the French for these miniscule little plant suckers)
To half a cup of cooking oil I added half a tablespoon of dishwashing liquid. The recipe stopped there and said “mix and add in a ratio of 2 and a half teaspoons to a cup of water” I thought that perchance Serendipity Farm mouche blanche were more bolshie than usual and might need a bit more dissuasion so I added chilli powder and garlic…
mouche blanche pesto! (note to self…remember to put the lid on properly…no mouche blanche will be landing on the wall next to my vitamix any day soon 😦 )
And here we have it narf mouche blanche napalm. I headed up to spray it and this spray bottle promptly seized up. I then broke the second spray bottle whilst falling up the steps to test it (sigh) so ended up having to bless the mouche blanche with the dripping end of my spray bottle nozzle like the Pope at Easter. The things we do!
As you can see there is a lot going on here. We also need to get up to the back acre and whipper snip it to within an inch of it’s life. We have been promised a terrible bushfire season this year thanks to a dry winter and hotter than average projected summer temperatures this year so we need to make sure we have done everything that we can to protect Serendipity Farm should a fire occur. Frank, our next door neighbour would love for us to whipper snip our whole property…actually…I get the feeling he would love us to concrete the whole lot to reduce the HORENDOUS fire risk our permaculture namby-pamby ideas have created but them’s the breaks Frank. We are, as of this moment, allowed to do what we want to do with our property and whatchagonnadoeh?
Aside from hauling a trailer load of grass clippings from Glad’s place next door we decided to create a blueberry sanctuary to protect our blueberry futures from everything that would predate them en mass in the near future. Here are our blueberries going gangbusters in a large heap of spent horse manure. They are covered in berries that are just starting to turn pink and I have been catching the blackbirds taking an interest in them. Time for ACTION!
After getting covered in forget-me-nots collecting some tea tree poles for our structure we got to work…
“Get out of the way Stevie-boy, my dear constant readers want to see the structure!” (Sigh…you can’t get hired help like you used to… 😉 )
All finished except for narf7 has to shovel a stack of horse manure and oak leaves in to ensure these babies are growing happily well into summer and we have to cover the enclosure with bird netting that our friend gave us yesterday. “Cheers Jen!” 🙂 We reused some old corrugated iron that has seen so many purposes here we have stopped counting it’s usefulness
The view from the deck. Earl has already sniffed and christened the pole closest to the deck 😉
So life is busy, words are few (but obviously still able to be extracted) and action is more prevalent than thought here at the moment. I hope you will all understand the lack of wordiness and the increase in image content for a little while. Narfs creative spirit is on holiday and needs a much needed rest. Rather than put the blog etc. on hiatus, I am putting it on “normal” for a bit and will be concentrating on the results of our actions rather than posing my usual thought based posts. See you next week where goodness only knows what we have managed to achieve but “achieve” we will! 🙂
theroadtoserendipity 
Nov 12, 2014 @ 17:11:18
Lack of wordiness? I didn’t count as I read [my multi-tasking abilities are not that well honed] but I am pretty sure there are as many words as usual here and the only thing that is different is there are a few more photos to admire. I’m quite happy to be proved wrong [I often am!] but really, this is your idea of writing very little? I’m just curious ………
I am glad you have your hands in the soil deeply [I’m a purist – dirt is dirty and probably needs a clean – soil is stuff you grow things in] My mind remains boggled at the amount of work that is being done and the sheer number of plants you are growing in Sanctuary [why, oh why, do I always hear the tolling of the bell and see a small hunchbacked man crying for Esmeralda at this name?] I feel your future[s] must indeed be rich with such variety and tastes and the ability to preserve, freeze, swap, barter and/or whatever else you wish to do with your endless stream of produce is so exciting to me!
The endless growing of things from seeds and twigs is also a small wonder that I admire deeply. It isn’t something that I have ever had much success with – I have two avocado stones in water on my kitchen windowsill. Once there were three, but one simply rotted away. They have been there for 7 seven SEVEN months and have not put out a single root or even a hint of a monocotyledon. I looked at them this morning and the thought that if they were on your windowsill they would have been potted up or put into a compost heap by now and be fine young saplings about to give birth to their first crop of big fat avocados – and here they are on my windowsill doing NOTHING!! Can I send them to you for a dose of narfish growing magic?
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:15:00
The lack of wordiness was in the last few posts. Todays post was a bit more wordy. I don’t count captions to photos as “words” ;). Dirt is just soil that hasn’t been sorted out. I consider the silty stuff that drifts around at it’s own behest and that tends to congregate in drifts on my mats and in ever growing tiny little Egyptian sand dunes to be “dirt”. Once said “dirt” is ameliorated with organic matter and kept damp (so it doesn’t escape) and some of the heavy clay that is about 20 cm down gets pulled up into the mix (by worms) it is then allowed to be called “soil”. Until that day, the nomadic silt is dirt. Tomorrows futures are today’s hard work I can tell you! We spent the day putting up our blueberry “bower” (Steve’s name for it 😉 ) and it completely and utterly knackered me. I was obviously coming down with something as today I am AWOL from duty and have a head cold but we both figure that the more effort we put into “futures” at the moment, the less effort we are going to have to put into infrastructure and futures tomorrow. I am guessing your avocado stones are kaput :(. I would be getting my new avocado stones (you will have to sacrifice yourself and eat some more 😉 ) and planting them directly into the soil. Don’t worry about putting them in a glass first, just plant them. I don’t think that there is any part of an avocado’s lifecycle that consists of “float around on toothpicks in a body of water”…that’s just so that people can watch the growth of them. I have a few avocado’s that we grew that need planting out badly (and I am just the “planting out badly” expert to do it! 😉 ) but where am I going to plant them?! Narfish growing magic is nothing to do with narfs and everything to do with the tenacity of nature and plants to get growing and populating the earth. I am often in the way and invariably stuffing up their chances but still they soldier on 😉
Nov 13, 2014 @ 18:15:31
I’m with Pauline. I sensed plenty of words along with photo representations of your extraordinary work. I love that the dogs have a larger area to play in. Your Earl stories never cease to get me laughing.
Your garden is incredible. I’m glad you’re outside playing in the dirt (soil) and look forward to seeing what your food futures (love that) bring.
I too have very little luck with floating avocados, though we did get one going this summer, only to have all the leaves suddenly drop one by one. We’ll try it straight into the dirt next time.
Nov 12, 2014 @ 17:16:27
Hi Fran, Have you lined up your pruning gurus yet so you will have all the relevant information on managing your fruit and nut trees so they remain a manageable size whilst at the same time maximizing your crop yield and minimising the pests and diseases just waiting to assail your newly planted food forest? One of the things I am learning as I move about gardens in this area is trees kept a manageable size are easier to net or enclose. I have seen small orchards completely housed within wire cages which cover an area bigger than my house – mind you my house is quite small. Other gardeners prefer to erect poly pipe igloos and drape netting over the frames at the critical times. The frames are easier to net than branches which stick out all over the place and damage the netting. Happy adventures with your fruit and nut trees!
I admired your photo of the garden where ‘Kiss Me Quick’ is flowering alongside the iris. ‘Kiss Me Quick’ is a popular garden plant in Castlemaine, it is so hardy. But so far I have managed to kill the first lot of rooted divisions my cousin gave me from her garden in Ballarat. I hope the second lot she has given me don’t suffer the same fate.
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:20:19
Thank GOODNESS we studied horticulture and know how to prune fruit and nut trees or I most certainly wouldn’t be growing them. The possums keep our poor long suffering fruit trees manageable by climbing up them and performing stunts on their branches and any that are too thin to support the average aerobic (fat) possum, snap off. Possum pruners…I wonder if I could catch the little buggers and hire them out to clueless people in the city?! ;). I hadn’t heard that plant (that I can NEVER remember the name of) called “Kiss me quick” before. We have both the white and pink varieties here and we do absolutely nothing to look after them. They just grow and flower every year. The funny thing is that when we inherited Serendipity Farm back in 2010 and moved here in December 2010, the bank in front of our home were all pink! Now they are all white. They will grow (along with irises) on a hot tin roof to be honest and you can’t kill them. I ended up with them all through my potted plants, growing through the driveway, in my glasshouse…EVERYWHERE. I don’t mind as they are pretty and good ground covers and yesterday when we were walking the dogs we saw that some clever individual had allowed their entire front garden to become overrun with all of the colours (there is a red one as well but we don’t have that one here) and it looked like a monet painting. The problem is that they die back and your whole garden starts to look deceased. I just clip them right back down and they regrow again. Excellent plants :). Fingers crossed for your new babies. Don’t mollycoddle them too much as I get the feeling they thrive on neglect and if you start to give them care they will get above their station and croak 😉
Nov 13, 2014 @ 14:20:00
Fran, My cousin calls the plant ‘Valerian’ whilst I grew up with the name ‘Kiss Me Quick’ as my mother’s family knew it by that name.
Nov 13, 2014 @ 14:38:48
It’s not really valerian either. It’s actually called Centranthus. I have the pink and the white varieties but wouldn’t mind the red one as well. When they flower the whole of Serendipity Farm looks like a meadow. It’s lovely and cottage gardeny and nothing eats them and right up till the dry heat knocks them I get my cottage garden that I have been lusting after but that the native animals point blank refuse to let me have. I brought 2 Pierre de Ronsard roses with me when I rocked up to Serendipity Farm. A red one and that gorgeous blushing pink one and as soon as I saw what the possums had done to every single rose bush here I gave them away :(. The only roses that they won’t have a go at are the old fashioned banksia roses and there is a lovely big yellow one here. I am going to get cuttings from a white one that i see on our walks and see if I can’t find a pink one as well…if you are determined, you can get a good approximation of what you are after but you have to hunt high and low for something that no-one wants to eat around here 😉
Nov 12, 2014 @ 18:26:45
I’m interested in the redcurrant cuttings. Did you take them when they were dormant in winter or when they had leaves on? I’ve failed with both methods.
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:22:10
Now you are asking me! I took them back in 2009 and after a chinwag with Steve about round about when I took them we figured I did it in September as they were removing the bushes and I wanted to have some so took cuttings. I would have taken them with leaves on but if they are deciduous, you should be able to take winter cuttings as well. Mine all grew like topsy and back then I had NO idea about taking cuttings. I just shoved them all into a couple of pots and put them on a heat bed of warm sand and away they went.
Nov 12, 2014 @ 20:37:06
I’m right there with Pauline – dirt is dirty, soil is rich and magical.
Like you, we have neighbours trained to give us their grass clippings… all that wonderful nitrogen that would otherwise disappear, for shame!
I love all your photos and am amazed by the regeneration of that artichoke – I really thought it was done for.
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:31:20
See my answer about the difference between “dirt” and “soil” in my answer to Pauline below. I have a bad head cold and accompanying headache to day and am starting to flag ;). Our neighbours are a bit nefarious and try to hide stacks of raked sticks and branches underneath the clippings so we are teaching them that you don’t look gift neighbours who remove your waste in the mouth and we are leaving the sticks in a nice neat pile for them to burn themselves ;). No-one is more surprised about that artichoke than I am. I couldn’t believe it when it rose up out of the compost heap and started to produce more chokes! I am thinking it may have rooted or something in the compost pile as I know that artichokes are intrepid things. This (obviously doomed) artichoke had previously been chewed off at the base by chooks pecking it right through it’s core and only leaving a thin portion of skin which regrew so obviously they are tenacious things. They must be, they are related to thistles and thistles are really hard to kill.
Nov 13, 2014 @ 01:26:14
Hi Fran! I think working in the soil and creating the landscape is therapeutic.For me, it awakens the inner spirit. I have been busy the past two weeks making preparations outdoors for winter – which hit here yesterday with a vengeance. I will find more days indoors now, at the computer, indulging in cooking, and partaking in “nesting” projects to see me through the long winter season.
FD’s grandmother collected iris rhizomes from all over the United States. They are planted all around FD’s mom’s house, but I have transplanted back here on our place, and I’ve found them all over in spots in the canyon. I believe she divided and transplanted for splashes of color all over the ten acres. Our generation now enjoys them scattered about the property, and I have taken it on myself to continue spreading them around. They are a very hardy plant. I wish they would bloom all year long.
I love your photos. Such a menagerie of activity and change. Even if your posts might not be packed with wordy delight, your photos and captions say much about your life. I especially love the photos that provoke laughter. Have a happy day in your gardens! 🙂
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:33:41
I am a bit under the weather today with a head cold so I am not out in the garden like I should be. Stevie-boy has taken the opportunity to go to the city and pick up a tool that he had been saving for. He has also bought me a kefir lime to make me feel better :). I am really enjoying getting back into the soil and planting things out and seeing how it all changes and grows. Irises are truly lovely things. They look so rare and precious when they flower as they are such elegant things but they are as tough as old boots and will grow just about anywhere. I bet your property looks amazing in the flowering season :).
Nov 13, 2014 @ 08:02:33
wood fired pizza oven- OH I WANT ONE TOO!!!!! On my wish list FOR YEARS- maybe some day. I have watched a few DIY ones they make out of local clay, but I don’t have any of that kind of clay on our property.
I am so cold right now + the last thing I want to do is be outside…soooo..I really enjoyed your post today talking about all the things you are doing:-) We will be getting snow soon + I can harvest some salad greens from the garden for dinner tonight, but spending time out there on a “sun-less” day is not something I will be doing. I finally turned our heat on a few weeks ago. I try to hold out until we have constant chattering teeth-lol. When I invite people over , I have to remember to turn the heat up for they are not use to freezing,Weneed new windows for the wind blows through. Just another thing that needs to be done but has to wait.
I don’t mind the winter “quiet time,” if I get to read all about what you are planting. After reading through all that you are growing you will be able to make a living off of selling some of your produce! I keep saying this, you have a farm:-)
I would love to have room for nut trees, but I don’t. I look forward to your future posts about all your fresh home-grown nuts.
I read that you can’t grow tomatoes near a walnut tree. Have you heard that?
I would love a black walnut on my property. My father has one on his + fresh black walnuts are a treat.
I did put chicken wire this weekend around all the blueberry bushes. The bunnies chew them to the ground. They also chewed two of my dwarf fruit trees. I got guards on them this year + I am hoping they will leave my blueberry bushes alone. I so want blueberries! How many do you have?
Well, I need to get some of my micro greens planted for winter greens. I have been putting it off.
I bet you are enjoying the sun on your back! 🙂
Nov 13, 2014 @ 11:50:29
I am starting to get adventurous about nuts and am looking into pecans and macadamia nuts. I don’t know if they are suitable for our climate but there has to be something positive about climate change? ;). If I planted tomatoes out next to our walnut tree (out in the main unprotected garden) the native animals would see to them MUCH faster than the walnut would so I guess this is a mystery to us both ;). I harvested all of our walnuts last year and didn’t realise that the green husks are full of tanins and ended up with orange hands! I looked like the worlds worst chain smoker and went around wearing gloves for weeks till the orange colour wore off ;). We have a motley crew of blueberry bushes from an American man that we know who is selling up and moving away. He got them about 20 years ago from someone else who was doing the same thing so these must be pretty old but they keep on producing. I am going to do my best to take lots of cuttings from them and see if I can’t have lots and lots of blueberries to plant out all over the place. As far as I am concerned, you can never have enough blueberries :). I think there are 7 plants down there? Some are quite small and weedy and didn’t set fruit this year but some are about 6 ft tall and are covered in berries. That’s why we had to put up a shelter around them as we wanted at least a few to try this year. Last year our friend gave us several pints of berries but he picked them a bit green as he didn’t cover them against the birds and so this year they will be perfectly ripe when they get picked. I see blueberry muffin futures for Stevie-boy and another friend gave us lots of raspberry canes that are running wild all over her property and most of them have flowers and fruit forming on them so raspberry muffins might be the go as well :). When I am in the throes of all of this hard work and am feeling hard done by I try to stop my grumbling by thinking about all of the “futures” that we are planting out and that makes me smile. Nothing that is worth the effort ever comes easy. I had a friend years ago who was growing micro greens to help him with his health. Giving up booze might have been a more healthy alternative but he swore that the micro greens were going to be his saviour. They are little powerhouses of nutrition and I am most interested in seeing how you go about it if you are going to do a post on micro greens :). At the moment the sun is making my head hurt and I am wearing sunglasses. Misery, thy name is narf with a headcold 😦
Nov 13, 2014 @ 14:42:44
awww…your energy is flowing so take care of yourself !You don’t want to wear yourself out! It is easy to do + you have a lot more space than I do to develop many food crops:-) soooo….I can see you working from dawn to dusk on the land. I do love that soreness from working all day in the garden + when you see it all coming in-pure joy!!!!
I was outside the other day putting soil around my new american cranberry bushes in our front yard. I have been working on getting our small space to produce more food. It really is a full-time job growing food. I will be starting the microgreens inside thurday since we will have 17 degree nights. I did get a dinner salad out of the garden but my greens are starting to freeze up-lol. It really is only about 16 weeks that our cold weather makes it hard to grow food.
The “green” stage you are in is so exciting….don’t work too hard. Watch that headcold. I have developed a terrible colds before in the spring, after working for weeks out in the garden. I have learned to slow down and take a day off once every few days. That is HARD work that you are doing!
I feel growing your own food is a full-time job. It takes up all your time:-) It also is very physical. I can see why many people choose to pay for their food at the grocery store…but once you taste home-grown …there is no going back—it is addictive! lol.
blueberries 6 feet tall- HEAVEN!
Nov 13, 2014 @ 17:44:55
The blackbirds think that 6ft tall blueberries are heaven as well ;). We are learning to pace ourselves now in the garden but it is very exciting and we are both impatient to get out there and do everything. We need to move a big water container that we are adding to our water storage in into Sanctuary and then plant out those berries and that kefir lime and then haul all of the remaining horse dung (old) and oak leaves and a trailer load of grass clippings into Sanctuary and start more garden beds…see what I mean? Exciting! :). We get colder winter days than most of Australia but no snow out here and very little frost. We are very lucky as in summer we are cooler here than they are in the city as we are on the water and get a lovely breeze most of the time. Kudos on the cranberry bushes. I love the look of them and do you need to grow them near a pond or something? I read somewhere that they need flowing water to grow? It will be exciting to read about their progress 🙂
Nov 13, 2014 @ 21:14:33
Nothing like getting back to basics and get dirt under the fingernails. And nothing wrong with more pictures (says I who is a photographer…), particularly when they are as great as these in the post. But sparse on words? I guess it’s all relative. 🙂
Nov 14, 2014 @ 09:25:32
Thankyou for your wonderful comment Otto and I am blushing about the photography ;). If you read some of my earlier posts they are like novellas. You are right, it is all relative ;).
Nov 14, 2014 @ 02:14:11
You can grow year round!!! I envy you:-) but happy for you! I can see why you are building such a large growing area for it can feed you year round:-) I am growing the american cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) which is self-pollinating and grows as a small bush(6-8inches tall).I put it in the front yard. I had only 3 plants and they are VERY small. It will take a few years to get some for the holidays here in America. You can grow it in your yard:-) I read how healthy the berries are for people. I hope it works, but we shall see. The plants survived the “hot” summer and some over grown things all around them-lol. I have problems with deer in my front yard over the winter. Yep, we have animals in the city-lol
Nov 14, 2014 @ 09:31:26
It would seem that there is always some kind of “critter” after your hard work wherever you choose to live. My daughters told me that in Iceland they have to grow all of their produce in huge heated poly tunnels (hoop houses) as the outside conditions won’t allow them to grow vegetables etc. but I bet there is some little critter that invades and makes them twitch. I think it’s part of the cycle. If you don’t have those little critters craving your hard graft, you don’t get the full measure of satisfaction at the end of the day, that you have grown against all odds ;). I am most interested in your cranberries and you are absolutely right about them being anti oxidant powerhouses and most excellent for just about everything that ails you. My poor friend who lives inland has rabbits, wallabies, possums, rats, mice, deer AND native crayfish all vying to eat everything that she plants. I think she has decided to research every poisonous plant known to man to plant out and at least get SOMETHING growing around her house ;). We are the same except we don’t get the deer or the rats and mice (we have a feral cat) or the crayfish as our property is too dry for them. We can see evidence of their burrows in the ditches at the bottom of the property though. They eat the rootballs of our friends plants like tiny little sea moles and gophers. They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. My poor friend must have the metaphorical strength of Hercules after all of her trials and tribulations with native animals 😉
Nov 14, 2014 @ 10:01:20
You are so right:-) It does make you stronger. I tend to find something like to eat and plant it near-lol. My dogs help keep them away. I do have a fenced in back yard, so the deer don’t get in my backyard. But they have been known to jump fences-I have tall bamboo against my chain fence!
I have not had any cranberries yet, so we shall see. The deer have not bothered them yet! My house is not in their path since they are a creature of habit. I do plant a lot of herbs around and they hate things that smell!
Nov 14, 2014 @ 12:39:39
The deer would hate Earl then, his mission in life is to stink to high heavens at any given time and he is always on the lookout for something dead to roll in. You never know when a sexy female will sniff you out and he wants to be the most obvious scent in the bunch ;). I have oregano growing all over the place here as someone must have planted it years ago and it loves the rocky conditions. I can walk up to the clothes line and pick oregano from the ground. Mint doesn’t do as well here as everything loves to eat it. Same goes for chives etc. as wallabies adore the allium family (HAHA Spell check wanted me to change “allium” to “Valium” 😉 )and eat garlic like you wouldn’t believe. I didn’t know that they were originally Italian ;). We go for overkill now. We over-engineer everything that we build so that nothing (aside from us) can get to it. We figure better safe than sorry and our blueberries have their own little fully enclosed grotto now with corrugated iron around the base to stop the “things” from invading. I transplanted the raspberries that were growing next to them into Sanctuary so they are now safe. I also planted out some pyrethrum daisies inside Sanctuary so that they can act as ground-cover deterrents for the pests. The top of Sanctuary is covered (literally) by the spiders. You have to be careful walking around as you could end up with a big orb weaver plastered to your face! What tries to fly into Sanctuary is predated by the birds that live in the trees next to the garden and the other day I caught a small bird inside Sanctuary. He knew where to come in and go out again so he must be a regular visitor ;).
I remember my daughter bought a punnet of cranberries in the U.K. at Christmas time. She had NO idea that they were sour and opened up the punnet and before I could yell out “NOOOO!” she had popped a handful into her mouth and was munching. I have never seen food exit someone so quickly ;). The only other time I have seen anything that funny was when Bezial was begging for one of those mint strips (remember them? Little rectangles of set minty gel you could put on your tongue to get fresh breath) and so we gave him one. I never knew that dogs could spit but Bezial certainly did ;). He made sure to sniff whatever we were holding before he begged for it from then on 😉
I am off to a concert tonight. I am going to see Bill Bailey the U.K. comedian with my son and his partner. I still fit in my “glad rags” so all I need is a spritz of cologne and a swirl of deodorant and I am off for a night of hilarity. Can’t wait :). Next time those deer head off the beaten path to your place you could try making little minty wreaths for your door and the fence. I dare say they would be as appreciative of mint as bezial was 😉
Nov 14, 2014 @ 14:21:09
LOL…too funny:-) Bezial and the mint strip! I look forward to hearing how all the crops work out:-) Pretty neat you have it all enclosed. It would drive me crazy if I had animals taking my food all the time. I do have some problems but usually they stop after summer starts. It is the worst in the spring before all the green comes in:-)
It is good you got away + a good laugh is great medicine for the soul!
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:38:27
The concert was amazing and I had a great Japanese meal thrown in to boot :). So far no animal invasions and Earl has the new enclosed yard covered (in pee and in intense patrolling all hours of the day and night) and there is actual fruit on the fruit trees for the first time in years! My guess is that the blackbirds and parrots will scoff it all (so far Earl hasn’t learned how to fly) but at least the possums won’t get it this year. Next year we work on how to stop the birds! 😉
Nov 14, 2014 @ 08:45:46
Enjoy your time in the garden Fran, though it’s busy work it’s calming work. I haven’t had much to say for myself either, just busy doing and finding no need for talking 🙂 I seem to go through periods like that. Your garden looks great 🙂
Nov 14, 2014 @ 09:35:04
It isn’t often that I want to abandon words. I feel the need to keep blogging and sharing what we are doing but more pointedly about what we are actually “doing” rather than what I would like to do. I think it is time to get off my derriere and out there into the garden practicing what I preach. I think it isn’t just us, it is the blogosphere wide. When you are in the winter months you see lots of blog posts and then they start to tail off in the spring and summer months when people get outdoors and “doing”. The northeners are all just about to start settling in for the long haul and will start blogging and reading blogs etc. all over again so I guess we keep the blogosphere going round seasonally :). When bloggers post infrequently it makes their posts all the more interesting as they tend to save the best for their blogs rather than just blah, blah, blah about “something” to make a post. I had started to feel that my words were repeating themselves and that I needed to get back to basics with my posts as people want to see and to learn so I am showing and telling 😉
Nov 14, 2014 @ 11:29:20
Yeah, I think you are right, the warmer weather gets us out and doing things…we seem to be really busy but just none of it blogworthy 🙂
Have a good weekend! I am home alone with the animals for 4 days which will feel weird.
Nov 14, 2014 @ 12:43:15
Lots of “you” time so make the most of it. You get to change the telly channels whenever you like and watch chick flicks! You lucky girl ;). I am off to a watch Bill Bailey in concert tonight in the city. My son is coming to pick me up and we are off with his partner to enjoy (hopefully) an evening of hilarity. Apparently it’s his last show in Australia so hopefully he shows his relief by really enjoying himself tonight :). I get to go out to dinner as well but no idea where and it will most likely be a veggie burger on the way home after the show as the city is full on tonight with several events clashing at once. Hopefully we get parking close by and don’t have to walk for miles! Have a great weekend and make sure to cook yourself something lovely that you will enjoy. Make it a special weekend, use some of that gorgeous soap and have a lovely bubble bath and pamper yourself. You deserve it! 🙂 Let me know how the chick flicks are as I can’t get Steve’s hand unwelded from the remote and apparently the remote is allergic to chick flicks 😉
Nov 14, 2014 @ 15:32:42
So is Roger allergic to chick flicks and I don’t get the remote at all lol. I will do, you have a great night, Bill Bailey is a funny, funny man 🙂
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:39:21
Bill Bailey was awesome and we were right up the front. Everyone had a ball and I got a lovely Japanese meal thrown in to the deal. I got delivered home at 12 and I didn’t even turn into a pumpkin! 😉
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:41:25
lol, well that’s fortunate! Gad you enjoyed it, how great to get up the front! And a yummy meal, you are lucky, lucky 🙂
I bought a tray of sushi and some chocolate, that’s my treat lol
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:49:56
That’s almost what I had but mine involved some udon noddles and veggie tempura as well. We were running late so I missed out on the black sesame ice cream but maybe next time ;). Hope you enjoyed your sushi and chocolates 🙂
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:59:09
I did, thank you 🙂 Tempura, mmmmm!
Nov 15, 2014 @ 05:03:44
God there’s so much going on and I’m glad you’re focusing on “doing”, that’s what life is all about right? Worm farms, wood fired ovens, stepping stones and forget me nots – there’s something for everyone here! We had an artichoke for years that I kept thinking was done for and which then surprised us again and again with more lovely chokes.
Nov 15, 2014 @ 13:40:39
They are perennial and will go on for years and years and keep dying back every year and regrowing. I just grew a lot more from seed and will plant them out all over the place. I want LOTS of artichoke futures as they are delicious ;). Glad you enjoyed my whirlwind of “doing”. It was a lot harder to “do” than to think about doing I can tell you! 😉
Nov 17, 2014 @ 07:42:28
Great post, Narfie, even if you were a bit spare with the words . . . 🙂
I may be able to help, if you like . . . I will sit here and think about doing while you go out and actually accomplish stuff. What do you think? 😉 ~ Linne
Nov 17, 2014 @ 10:18:04
HAHAHAHA Linne! Yeah, you draw me up a list of what I should be doing and I will do it. Sounds like a great deal ;).
Nov 17, 2014 @ 10:35:21
I don’t know why I’m missing your blog Fronkiii. This was so lovely to read and see what you and Steve have been up too. My poor blueberries got a little sunburned as I had moved them during renovations to where they got sun pretty much all day, thinking that was a good thing. Blueberries need morning sun and afternoon shade so back around the kitchen side of the house they go. They gave me so much fruit last season but I think I wont be getting as much this year.
PS I wish I had your lack of something to say problem!!!!! I can’t think of anything anybody would be remotely interested in most of the time Hahahahahahaha!
Nov 17, 2014 @ 14:36:26
Obviously only one of us got the gift of the gab and MAN am I working it! ;). We put up a shaded structure around our blueberries to stop the sun, the possums, the blackbirds, the chooks, the wallabies and everything else from snarfing the berries that have formed. Now we just need to keep water up to them and harvest! So long as insects don’t find them we are fine ;). I occasionally have to reload a blog that I follow (re-follow it) as WordPress is a bugger and decides to stop informing me about posts. They always go to Facebook as soon as I post so you could click on them every Wednesday (I post at about 4 – 5pm my time so 1 – 2pm yours) to get them. I have raspberry futures this year which makes me squeal with happiness as I am going to make those raspberry and white chocolate muffins that you posted about :). We also bought a thornless youngberry and a thornless loganberry and a friend gave us another thornless youngberry so we have lots of berry futures as well as a kaffir lime tree for curry futures as well. Lots going on in the garden and the glasshouse and so far (fingers crossed) everything that I planted out into the garden is growing including all of the loquats and the extra fig plants. Can’t wait to start getting figs. Steve hates them so 6 fig trees worth for me, I might even have some left over (after I gorge myself senseless) to dry. I love fruity futures! 🙂
Nov 18, 2014 @ 03:22:52
What do you mean “why do I need stepping sones?-“-)))) Everyone need stepping stones!!!! I think this year I got carried away with fire wood-)) For some reason I need a lot of it, I feel like it’s going to be a very gold winter. Have an amazing day dear!!
Hugs,
Yelena
Nov 18, 2014 @ 05:02:37
You are right about the cold winter and you can never have enough firewood :). You should see our pile already and we are still in Spring! The best bit about a nice cold winter is that you can hibernate with a good book, you can cook yourself lots of delicious warming food and wrap yourself up in lots of lovely blankets. We are apparently going to have a hotter than average summer which I am not very happy about but we do live in the coolest part of Australia so I should count my blessings. You have an awesome day as well Yelena 🙂
Nov 30, 2014 @ 08:23:09
Its so good to see you back on form Narf.. and the garden coming along so well.. Our Raspberries still have some berries on them we have enough frozen so these are for the birds..
Wish I had had your White fly recipe. in the Summer LOL. The cabbages are full as are the Kale and Brussels.. Great to see how everything is coming along.. I expect things are warming up now where you are.. 🙂
Love and Hugs
Sue
Nov 30, 2014 @ 11:43:10
I am having a bit of a twitch at the moment about cabbages and cauliflowers as when you read the back of the seed packet, it says to plant them in spring here but all of mine have bolted! I learned from gardening friends (who obviously pity my stupidity 😉 ) that you are supposed to plant them in autumn. What I want to know, is if you are supposed to plant them in autumn why doesn’t the packet say that! I chewed the top off a cauliflower that had bolted to give a sort of mafia warning to the rest of them but they are hard core and ignored me…oh well…at least I will have some seed for autumn 😉
Dec 01, 2014 @ 01:04:22
Well may be the seed Manufacturer didn’t reckon on everything being upside down and the wrong way about Down Under LOL… 🙂 … What hubby does if some bolt early we cut the tops of, and leave the stalk in.. you will be surprised how often little cabbages grow from the sides.. you might need 3 to make a dinner.. but they are good none the less.. Seeds aren’t cheap,.. What our pet dislike is, is when you plant the seeds and none germinate.. That really gets my goat! LOL..
Dec 01, 2014 @ 05:11:22
I had a very poor germination on some of the most expensive seed we bought which made me twitch. I also had another little twitch, the seed count. Where they said 300 seeds, we had about 50! That’s a WHOLE LOT LESS THAN 300 YOU GUYS! Rant over 😉
Dec 01, 2014 @ 22:45:22
Yes its a worry.. As we try to get Organic seeds.. And they are more expensive to start with..
I dislike the idea of many seeds now being coated in chemicals that process the start of germination.. GMO is creeping into many things, which makes me ‘Twitch’ even more.. and 250 short! that’s really Short! And you have good reason to rant.