Damn Cold Snap

Well thank you Mother Nature. Due to the cold snap we got last week I lost

2 x Butternut Pumkins

2 x Queensland Blue Pumkins

All my red kidney beans and approx half of all the other beans

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Disease on Pear Tree

Today we noticed a black part on the pear tree leaves, only a few and we cut the effected parts off, but here is some images. Any ideas of what it may be?

Disease on pear tree leaf

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From the Garden

We have been eying off the broad beans for a few weeks and Lee Ann decided that today would be when we harvested out first lot of beans. We picked beans the that were approx 15cm long. I have 8 plants in this lot and another 5 on another vege patch (but they are a bit younger). We picked what seemed like a lot.

Fresh Broad Beans

2 kgs in fact. I have never had broad beans before and the ones when freshly picked seemed a little bitter. We had two recipes picked out, a dip and a pasta dish.

Well after removing them from the pod, boiling them and removing the outer skin of the beans we had only 400 grams, while that was enough for dinner, it was not enough for the dip. So 200g have been frozen and we should get approx 2-3 more pickings of the same size from the plants. We will try the dip next week.

Shelling the Broad Beans

Dinner was great, just a simple pasta dish with bacon, onion, garlic, thyme, parsley and broad beans. We will be making it again.

Now I know how much to plant, I would probably double the quantity grown for next year and go for approx 16-20 plants.

Also today I removed the last of the broccoli (which we blanched and froze), planted some celery, fennel and water melons. And put a tray of seedlings down

• Capsicum
  • California Wonder
  • Corno Di Toro
  • Alma Paprika
  • Long Red Cayenne
• Chilli
  • Tobasco

A last comment while talking about the garden some of the Queensland Blue pumkins have sprouted.

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Last Weekend

Didn’t get home till Sat this past weekend, A long week at work in which I stayed in Sydney an extra day and then Lee-Ann and the kids headed off to my mum’s house in Bundanon on Friday, as mum wanted to pick up some shoes and clothes for the kids, so instead of going to Goulburn or Yass I jumped off the train in Bundanoon.

Got home Sat and the patersons curse has shot up. Especially right behind the house, a sea of purple flowers. That rain last week really got them going. I think we will have to get the ‘slasher guy’ back.

So on Saturday once home we hit the front yard and I made sure Lynsey the eldest came out and helped, it took 3 attempts for her to find suitable yard working clothes. Over the past few months I had built a small swale approx 10 metresinfront of the house with the clay/dirt that I dug up from my partly completed trench. The point of it is to help stop the rain water run off that goes under the house when it rains.

Also we had picked up a few native plants the other week and they needed to be placed in the ground before they died(too often Lee-Ann and I have picked up potted plants only to ignore them and they end up dead).

So with that we pulled out a bundles of newspapers that we had picked up from the local newsagent and started supressing the weeds around where the swale was. Once that was done we grabbed the mulch and mulched over the paper. Before mulching all over the clay we put the plants in with some extra soil around them, and then mulched over.

So what did we plant
For bookends on the swale Melaleuca armillaris (Bracelet Honey Myrtle), then working in from each end Prostanthere rotundifolia (Round-leaf mint-bush) and in the middle Eriostemon myoporoides. Anyone know if these are good for making tea? I do know that the round-leaf mint, when you rub yourhands over it they smell like mint.

So anyway another 10m2 of weeds that hopefully I won’t have to deal with.

Native swale in the front yard

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The Last Week

What a week. For those that do not know it has been school holidays. We had friends from Sydney and their kids down for a few nights and they left one daughter here…Anyway we then had another friend from Sydney come down for Friday lunch. Lynsey also has had two other friends from Yass stay over for a few nights as well. All I can say is that the girls rooms are a mess. That means for most evenings there had been 4 girls in the house (with three going on to teenage-hood). Also I took Friday off work so I had hopped back on the train Wed night, worked from home Thursday with Friday off.

Anyway Monday we are heading to Sydney, me for the usual week but only the day for the family and also to drop off one of Lynsey’s friends. So what did we do for the weekend? Actually not a lot. It rained most of Saturday which was good, as it filled the tanks and the girls had a mud fight.

The girls having a mudfight

Planted some more beans – Red Kidney beans and Ying Yang beans, both are for drying. Also potted the first of the tomato seedlings that have come up. Once sprouted in the trays and the second leaves are appearing I pot them in old toilet paper rolls, here I will let them grow a bit larger and I can plant them directly into the soil. Hopefully every two weeks we will have 5 tomato plants to put in the garden.

Tomatoes pottes out

Anyway here is a bit of an update from the vege patch.

Potatoes sprouting thru

Broad beans getting larger

Garlic and onions almost there

Asparagus, cannot wait until next year

Some of the raspberries have new shoots

Borlotti bean sproted

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Vege Patches

Well we now have approx 13 metres by 2 of new vege patches which have walls (on three sides) of pea straw(bales). This method will hopefully help with the wind, heat and moisture retention. Also it will provide us with lots of mulch for next year. So in total with the other vege patches I have approx 36m2 vacant (or soon to be) for spring/summer planting and I still don’t think that will be enough. I will be planting the pumkins, water melons, Minnesota melons and zucchini all elsewhere so they can just sprawl.

So in the first straw bed (approx 3×2) this will be corn, I plan to plant 4 seeds each week. This should give us (assuming all seeds come up) over the summer approx 24 – 30 corn plants.

The next 5 metre bed will be tomatoes and capsicum. The last 5 metre garden bed will be beans (hopefully we will get enough to dry. On top of that we have approx 3 other available (or soon will be) beds (another 10m2) . I still think I am a bed or three short, but we will see how they go over he next few weeks.

Two of the three straw beds

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Spring is on the Way

Spring has now hit us (and they say it will be a warm spring). And the fruit trees are now blossoming. The peaches are the first ones with a mass of pink flowers.

The peaches are first to blossom

The next is the quince with a mass of white flowers, the rest are just still budding, but I expect they too will break out in flower over the next month.

The nut trees are still basically ‘sticks’ hopefully they to will show signs of life soon. Actually we are beginning to get worried on the nut trees, they were bare root stock but there have been no real signs eg budding/leaf growth. So if anyone has any suggestions, they would be appreciated. All 11 other trees (fruit) seem OK.

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Spring is on its way

Well what have we been up to? I spent all of last week in Sydney, besides seeing the Swans loose to Geelong I also organised a stall for BikeSydney at the City of Sydney yearly festival Live Green. It was a great day, talking to people about getting on their bikes, giving people info on the best routes to follow etc.
The day was followed by a night at the Botany View Hotel, dinner, beer and a great band.
So this week was a long week without the family, me being stuck in Sydney and them in Yass, one day I will be able to say good bye to the Sydney life.

So back to this weekend I ordered a bunch of summer seeds, split between
3 providers, Diggers, Eden Seeds and Green Harvest.
So what was ordered?
Tomatoes: Roma San Marzano, Cherry Fox, Broad Ripple yellow Current,
Green Zebra, Amish Paste
Beans: Snake Climbing ,Blue Lake Climbing,Magic Bean Mix
Beetroot: mini Gormat
Chilli/Capsicum: Alma Paprika, California Wonder, Corno Di Toro,
Anaheim, Long Red Cayenne, Rocotillo, Tobasco
Cellery: Tall Utah
Cucumbers: Mideast Prolific, Mini White
Egg Plant: Listada di Gandia, Little finger
Fennel: Florence Fennel
Leek: Musselburg
Melon: Minnesota Mini Melon
Radish: French Breakfast
Water Melon: Sugar Baby
Squash: Golden Scallopini

This is on top of the few different seeds I already have.

Also on the agenda for the past few weeks has been hay of any sort. Last year on the ABC gardening show Jerry Coleby-Williams created garden beds with bales of sugar cane mulch to use as the wall around the garden bed. This year in the ABC Garden Aust mag he was telling people how it went.

And from his experience, he saved water, protected plants and it help add to the soil. The bales themselves do begin to rot down so they become this years mulch and you replace the bales.

So this got us thinking, can we do that. The issue being is that the cheapest bales in town thru our rural supplied are $17+ and I would think I need at least 20 preferably 40 bales, so basically almost $700 worth. I thought we were being ripped off especially since Jerry said he could get his at $3.50 a bale. The hunt was on. I searched but nothing came up, found a few for $11-$15 per bale, but it was Lee-Ann that found them from a small farmer in Young who had pea straw at $4 per bale. Bargain. Does he deliver? No. So how can we get them? We decided to rent a van from Hertz. So Sat morning dropped Lynsey at a friends house where she was staying the night and Lee-Ann, Alyssa and I went and picked up the van.

The farm was in a small place called Tubbul, approx 25kms past Young (which is 101kms past Yass). When we got there we met the owners and he said looking at out 1 tonne van we would only get approx 16 in there. I was disappointed at that but thought, well, we are here now, lets see how we go. Anyway in the end we managed to cram 27 bales in there and they were packed tight. The pea straw itself was slightly spoilt and not of the quality of the $17/per bale, but at that price it would do the job.

Once we got home we had to get them out, now this was a chore and half, they had settled and were packed so tight, but once we had the first two out the rest came relatively easy.

Bales of Peas Straw

So that was Saturday, Sunday was just as manic as we had to also return the truck to Canberra (also stopping to vacuum the van of all its pea straw) . Once back home we started planning a new vege bed, cut back the grass, put some lime and blood and bone down (this will hopefully help with the breakdown of the grass). Laid out the cardboard and paper as weed suppression mats and placed the bales on the three sides we cover. Only the north side got no bales.

New vege patch with pea straw

Also the two of the three variety of potatoes went in, the King Edward and the Nicola. The Dutch Cream still need to be chitted, so I expect for them to be place next weekend.

Chitting Potatoes: We all know potatoes have eyes but I didn’t appreciate they have a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ end. The ‘top’ is the rose end from which most of the new sprouts grow. When you’re putting them in a tray to chit them (encourage them to start sprouting). You should put the tray in a light, cool but frost free place (but not in direct sunlight).  I had this strange feeling my daughters Mr Potato Head was watching me as I did this.

The seed potatoes are in the ground

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Recent Plantings

Well a big two weeks, last weekend I planted the aspargus (10 crowns) and also the rhubarb (3 crowns). Both these are plants should keep on producing for 10-20 years.

So the top part of my vege patch looks like becoming where I plant the more permanent fruit and veg as this is also where I have the raspberries and the silvenberries. It will also probably end up where the strawberries will be.
During the week (once again while I was in Sydney) my bareroot apple trees turned up and so did the potatoes from Diggers.

I have the bed for the potatoes already in place and just waiting for the frost to pass before they are placed into the ground, but I did pick up a couple of bags of manure which didn’t make it into the ground this week but will hopefully next week.

While picking up the above mentioned manure from the local rural store, there was a few blueberry plants. Lee-Ann and I had not thought about blueberry plants for this year, but there they were, infront of us and I had the cash so we thought why not. The real clincher came when we figured we would place them around the Biolytix unit. Blueberries themselves bush out to approx 2 metres wide, so a circle of these around the unit would look good (and relatively easy to net so the birds don’t get the fruit.)

So we bought

• Blueberry Denise – Early Harvest
• Blueberry Northland – Early Mid Harvest
• Bluebeery Joy Blue – Mid Harvest
• Blueberry Brigitta – Late Harvest

Hopefully that will keep us in blueberries all season. So they got planted along with the two apple trees. And with those two apples I believe that is the orchard for 2008. 11 trees in total. I still have space for 5 more so we will have to wait till 2009.

The orchard so far looks like this

• 4 apple
• 2 pear
• 2 peach
• 1 quince
• 1 black mulberry
• 1 apricot

other fruit related crops are

• Raspberries
• Silvenberries
• Blueberries

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A Bit of an Apple

Checking my email this morning I had recieved an email from Woodbridge Fruit Trees, the place where I had ordered two of my apple trees from. Now the two ordered were

Hubbartston’s Nonesuch & Spartan

The email stated that they have run out of Hubbartston’s Nonesuch and as I had not placed a second pick they gave me an option of either a refund for that tree or a list of others. Now I had left my apple ordering quite late, but I was happy with my choices especially the Hubbartston’s

Here is the description: HUBBARTSTON’S NONESUCH | April – May |
The American apples of the early 1800’s still owed a lot to their European parents and Hubbartston’s has more of a character of a Ribston Pippin than a Red Delicious. It is a large and particularly dense and heavy apple with a rich sweet aromatic flavour. The skin is often bumpy and russetted, yellowish overlaid with red
and pink. It is an all-round apple for fresh eating, cooking and cider.

So  a good allround fruit. Anyway the choices they gave me were not for me, I was going to give them a call, talk about the other trees and if nothing sounded OK, organise a refund. So this morning I gave them a call – introduced myself. The guy asked me to hold on. He then came back and said that I did get the last Hubbartston’s. My order came in the same time as someone elses (who also wanted a Hubbartson’s) but they had placed in a second choice if first was not available. Woohoo. So my apple trees should be here late this week. My other tree is a Spartan

SPARTAN | March – April |
This midseason Canadian apple is a cross between McIntosh and Newtown Pippin. It has a distinct purplish black skin which polishes beautifully. The flavour is very aromatic, with whiter-than-white crisp melting juicy flesh of highest quality. Great straight off the tree.

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