Our 1 Acre – One Veggie Patch at a Time

The First of the Broccoli

May 17th, 2008 AndrewD

I came home on Thursday nite and Lee-Ann told me the first of my Broccoli is beginning to form a head, Always excited with the first one.

Also 21 garlic have now appeared.

And the cold is beginning to set in (the past few days), while the morning temperatures have been 8 or less for the past few days, it is really because the days have been overcast. Good thing we have the gas heater now – so lets see how many bottles of gas we chew thru.

Happy Birthday

May 12th, 2008 AndrewD

Lee-Ann, yes it was Lee-Ann’s 40th bitthday last Friday. We had some friends come down with their kids. Once down we headed off to the Ewe’n Me in Yass (located in the Thunderbird Hotel). Here they have the biggest meals. Word of warning don’t order an entree and a main. Ordered the steak and I am sure half a cow was delivered and cooked like I wanted it. After that we went back home and downed a bottle of good port and a few more bottle of wine. A good night was had by all.

Anyway one of my presents was to to build a rose garden – so expect to se that in the next few weeks.

What’s in the Garden

May 12th, 2008 AndrewD

Some Broad Beans

Broad Beans

Some Broccoli

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Cauliflower

And Garlic

Sprouting Garlic

Whats been happening

May 11th, 2008 AndrewD

Sorry about the delay, just get caught up in the little things day to day – Also discovered this great thing called invoicing. You see I have a small web hosting business www.blinddog.org. Anyway I am really slack with the invoicing side of things, so two weeks ago I started making an effort to invoice my customers and what do you know they started paying as well. So if you are reading this and you are a customer of mine expect to get an invoice soon ;-)

So what else is new? Besides the apple trees we now have a quince in the ground (Champion Quince) and I have just purchased a J.H. Hale Peach plant as well (that gets put in the ground tomorrow morning before work). We have decided to try and buy a fruit tree a week in our orchid section of the 1 acre. I think we will have space for 12-16 trees. With the orchid we will need to leave some space in the centre as we want cherry trees, a lemon tree and maybe an orange tree. The issue with the cheery is that where we are it is pretty windy. If I place it on the side closest to the house hopefully the wind will be cut down by the other trees. With the citrus they are not friends of frost so by placing them in the centre I am hoping for a bit micro climate – hopefully keep some of the chill away.

Our nursery has also two acer saccharum (sugar maple) on order for us and some nut trees. First the sugar maple. It’s really quite simple I love maple syrup and when petrol gets too expensive, that will be one of the first items to go. So as it goes once a tree reaches 25cm in diameter you can tap the sap in late winter early spring and I should get up to 40litres per tree (40 litres makes 1 litre of maple syrup). The downside I have to wait 30-40 years to tap the tree. Well my daughters will have some at least.

The nut trees on order are a almond, a chestnut and a walnut – one tree of each. But also these will be a few years till producing nuts. I think the almonds will be the first one to produce with the walnut taking approx 10 years,