September 29th, 2010 AndrewD
I went to a meeting last week to help kick start the discussions off about a community garden in Yass.
It was held in the Yass Shire Council building and there was a good turnout of approx 30 people. This meeting was really to gauge interest in the idea and see if a steering committee could be formed.
The main idea came when a government initative Sustaining our Towns came to town a few months ago. For those that do not know Sustaining our Towns is a NSW Government funded project to help reduce the ecological footprints of individuals, homes, businesses and communities in thirteen Council areas across South Eastern NSW.
They put to us then (they called a meeting a few months ago – open to the public) that there was $10k available for suitable projects. There seemed to be at this meeting a belief that a community garden could be the go.
So next steps. A steering committee has been selected (which I am on) and we will have our first meeting in October. Hopefully we can work out a framework and some suitable land.
Land that is
- Uncontaminated
- Allows for growth
- Hopefully central to town
- Access to water
To qualify for the grant of $10k we do need to be following organic principles on the garden.
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September 29th, 2010 AndrewD
Well it looks like we will be seeing out first nuts this year.
We have planted over the past three years.
- Hazelnuts (12)
- Walnuts (1 soon to be 2)
- Almonds (2)
- Chestnuts (2 soon to be 2)
The below is a photo of a young almond from out front.
Also in further signs of spring, one of our new elderberry bushes is beginning to flower. Over winter we planted 5 elderflower bushes (Sambucus nigra). This is for future production of wine (both still and sparkling), beer and jams. We will see how these first 5 plants go and next winter look at getting a few more.
This also goes into something I have been thinking about and that is living fences. My thoughts being in when the fence out front actually falls apart it won’t be replaced, we will have this hedge instead.
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September 23rd, 2010 AndrewD
One to remember – Purple broccoli takes all winter to head – I had thought that I planted kale next to the regular broccoli, it turns out that it is in fact purple brocolli, note to self Green brocolli is followed by purple brocolli.
I had also been taking the leaves off and giving them to the chickens.
This actually works out well as my green brocolli has now flowered, and we have 3 massive puple brocolli giving us a tonne of stuff.
Purple Brocolli
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September 4th, 2010 AndrewD
One of the winter chores is to ‘control’ your blackberry, ours is a variety called silvenberry. Over summer we got some fruit from it and other than picking the fruit, generally we ignored the plant. The fruit itself is great fresh and like most berries can be frozen. But also like any bramble you need to control it as it spreads quickly. So for those interested in growing it, some information.
Blackberries are the great excape artists of plants, they want to spread, we keep ours in a raised bed and have three blackberry plants.
Blackberries before haircut
If you are going to plant some I would recommend a raised bed as they do like good drainage, when it comes to soil type they are not too fussy.
The way it spreads are three fold.
- Birds eat the fruit and drop the seed, the version of blackberry we have, has lots of thorns, so no problems from the birds yet.
- Runners, they do send up runners near the plant, these are not to bad but must be kept in check, so just cut them back.
- Vines trailing on the ground. Over summer they send out vines, if these touch the ground, generally it will send out roots. Now these vines can be long, approx 2-3 metres away from the plant.
What happens when blackberries take hold
Blackberry runner not quite as developed
This year we did prune them fairly heavily so I am not sure we will be getting to much fruit from them this summer as generally the fruit appears on 2nd year wood, but as I generally ignored them the summer past this needed to be done.
One last point is that the runners will become kindling for the fireplace.
Post haircut
Now my raspberries are a different matter, they spread via suckers and as all my raspberries are what is referred to autumn raspberries, they are much easier to take care of, in winter you just trim them all down to the ground. They fruit on new wood. If you have summer raspberries they friut of second year wood, so you only take out the parts which friuted the year before.
Raspberry Cheesecake
And the best part was we were getting raspberries till May.
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December 26th, 2009 AndrewD
So much rain has fallen over the past 2 days, over 112 mm and it is still raining. One thing is it has prompted me to create a rain page so I can track the rain fall here at One Green Acre.
Check it out here http://onegreenacre.com/rain/
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June 22nd, 2009 AndrewD
After a long layoff it is back to some fruit plantings. Last year we planted approx 12-13 fruit tree’s this year not as many. The plan for this year is mainly for plum & cherry (and a few others). So what has arrived so far, and what we have named them (remembering we name all the fruit trees).
- Presidents Plum (Obama)
- Angelina Burdett Plum (Angie)
- Nottingham Medlar (Un-named)
Now as the medlar is unnamed, any suggestions out there. The medlar is a fruit you only eat when rotten, also it has been referred to as a dogs arse amongst other names due to the look of it.
From wikipedia
“In the 16th and 17th centuries, medlars were also bawdily called “open-arses” because of the shape of the fruits, inspiring the presence of boisterously or humorously indecent puns in many Elizabethan and Jacobean plays.”
From Romeo and Juliet
Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
O Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse and thou a poperin pear!
I am still planning another apple, a sloe plum and a few more nut trees, but more on those when they arrive.
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June 14th, 2009 AndrewD
One of the trees we are planting is the Silver Birch (Betula pendula). Now if you had been reading this blog you would know that most plants here do have a reason for being planted. Well The silver birch is an amazing tree. It produces a sap which, like Maple Trees can be boiled down to produce a syrup (not as good as maple but a sweet syrup). You can produce a Silver Birch wine or beer and there is a ton of other things you can do with it. Anyway in a few years (I am hoping approx 5) I can start tapping them in spring.
I have 4 of them so far and I expect to buy another two. I think I should get a decent quantity of sap out of them and I will tap 3 per year. Wikipedia states “A small birch (trunk diameter about 15 cm) can produce up to 5 liters of sap per day, a larger tree (diameter 30 cm) up to 15 liters per day.”
As stated above you can either use the sap to make a dry white wine or a beer, in fact Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert made it his favourite drink when in residence at Balmoral.
And an old English recipe states “To every Gallon of Birch-water put a quart of Honey, well stirr’d together; then boil it almost an hour with a few Cloves, and a little Limon-peel, keeping it well scumm’d. When it is sufficiently boil’d, and become cold, add to it three or four Spoonfuls of good Ale to make it work…and when the Test begins to settle, bottle it up.
Anyway some other uses are
- Inner bark – cooked or dried and ground into a meal
- A tea is made from the leaves
- The bark is diuretic and laxative
And a bunch more.
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May 31st, 2009 AndrewD
One thing I am really bad at is labelling my seedlings. I always think I will rememebr but never do, and when you have quite few different seeds in the punnets it makes for a mystery surprise. So today at our ‘cheap’ store’ I bought two packs of over sized paddle pop sticks. Hopefully this will solve the issue and no more mystery plants.
Garden Tags
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May 18th, 2009 AndrewD
Probably a bit late, but the garlic is now in the ground. Last year was the first time I ever grew garlic and was surprised at the great crop I ended up with. I planted Festival (a small garlic with that extra bit of punch)and 3 other varieties. The Festival seemd to do the best so I orderd 6 bulbs of that variety again from garlicfarmsales.com.au. They also sent two complimentary bulbs of Aria, so we will see how that goes as well. This year I have a dedicated garlic bed, and a bit more room so besides the above mentioned garlic I also included some of mine from last yeras crop. All going well I expect approx 80 bulbs come summer.
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May 2nd, 2009 AndrewD
After 18 months and good rainfall the last two weeks of April (90 mls for the month) I decided to get a water gauge, and obviously to record how much rain we do receive her at One Green Acre. I plan to store this info in an online Google spreadsheet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs). Hopefully I will discover how to embed a spreadsheet here into the website.
Our location is higher than the actual main street of town, and sometimes it can be wet down there (only 2kms away, if that) and not a drop here, so there is probably differences in the rainfall that is recorded by the BOM. The location of mine is in the vege patch away from any trees and houses.
Of course the day we bought the rain gauge, the rain was ending and since then there has been nothing in it, not a single drop.
Rain Gauge
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