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

Posted in Gardening | No Comments »

Been a while

I spent two weeks in Sydney, you see I normally return to Yass on the Thursday nite, but there were a few bike things I had to do last weekend for one the of the groups I am still a member of (BikeSydney – http://bikesydney.org) and I wanted to make it to at least one Sydney Swans game at the SCG (turned out to be the last Sunday game for the year at the SCG). Lee-Ann came down for the weekend and the inlaws stayed with the kids.

I’ll just say I drank far to much beer for two weeks. I need a couple of weeks detox.

Anyway all has now returned to normal and I returned on the Thursday nite train to Goulburn, Lee-Ann and the kids met me at the station and we had some chinese for dinner.

So whats happened, there are now 37 garlic – woohoo, now as long as they last till harvest. Some of the onions of sprouted. Broad beans seems to be going on OK. I have never grown broad beans before so not sure what to expect. Is 8 plants enough? I have planted a second lot of 5 plants (approx 4 weeks behind).

The other news being that we ate our first home grown broccoli and how fantastic it was, I waited until 30 minutes before we needed it so It was the freshest possible, and just steamed it with some butter. It was a side to a casserole I made.

The cauliflower is also coming up nicely (you can see it hidden behind the leaves) – I say we will be eating some in a week. We are doing grub patrol, as we have some green grubs on the plants. And every time we see one it gets the under the boot treatment.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »