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Still not oodles to report. But things to report none the less. But I’ll try not to blow a gasket doing them all in a day and string them out for a bit more breakfast reading for you all. First up though, some freebies appeared around the place – leftovers from last year.

The most colourful would have to be the poppies and cornflowers. They’ve extended their reach over the effluent field by about 300%. And extended themselves quite a long way into the grass behind them. But the mower’s taking care of them so far.

And then there’s the coriander. Lots of coriander! Half of one whole garden bed has sprouted coriander, along with random plants in the compost heap, between the pavers, and even in the grass by the gardens. I have to confess that pretty soon after this picture was taken all this coriander was dug up and dumped to make way for potatoes.

But probably the most surprising has been the explosion of self sown flowers along the front of the deck, right where pretty much no water manages to fall. But they seem to like it, so until we get the paving sorted they’re more than welcome to hang out there. According to what’s affectionately known around here as “The Daffodil Press”, I think they’re Snow Daisies (Chrysanthemum Paludosum to be precise).

My tummy is starting to rumble! There’s a couple in this state, and many more just starting to swell.

The planters in the poly-tunnel are definitely helping things along compared to the outside bunch.

Will try harder for more exciting news soon…

Ok, so it’s been a while. A very long while! But then it has been winter, and there hasn’t really been that much going on around the place to report.

Until now.

Regular readers may remember the addition of the strawberry patch about a year ago. Here’s how it looked then:

And here’s how it looked last week:

Ah. Not good. Not good at all. So a quick trip to grab a couple of strawberry pots later, myself and my able assistant filled the pots with mix, shoved a well drilled pipe in the middle to assist with watering, and potted up a few small plants that “we” located under the weeds and general detritus in the patch.

So there we have it. A couple of new vertical gardens currently hanging out in the tunnel house. Hopefully going to provide us with a few tasty morsels through the summer.

But the thing is, I thought the original patch was pretty much a goner and the idea was that the pots were to replace the garden. But once I’d dragged a few of the extra plants out, ripped out the weeds, and then weed-eatered around the plot it’s actually not looking all that bad. I think I’ll keep it there for this year and see how it goes.

The poor natives in the top corner have been a bit of a continual battle. Between frosts, weeds, snow, hares, rabbits and drought they’ve had a bit of a hard life. Every year about 25% kark it, while the rest soldier on for another year, awaiting their turn for a decent burial.

So a few weekends ago when we were trying to escape a bit of cabin fever we headed down with all the cash we could scrape up – $32 (and I was actually very surprised we could find that even that much hard currency around the house. Cash is pretty much MIA in this household now) – and headed to one of the local nurseries. Why cash? They take cheques (no cheque book here), and the hard stuff. Fair enough, but a bit limiting on occasion!

A good bit of jaw-jaw later (which was good, as the longer away from the cabin the better!) we returned home with a further selection of natives to try in the corner. A couple of days later in they went [camera reports picture taken on 11 July, so I’ll assume that’s right]. Hopefully with appropriate protection from wind and nasty critters. Although as the protection was recycled from previous failed installations I’m not going to bet the farm on them!

Let’s see how many of this lot make it through a year. Or hopefully much longer!

Well, it’s winter, so not much happening around the place. The only real news of the last month is that we finally depleted the remaining garlic stocks. So looks like we’ll have to double the crop in future to even attempt to make it through a year. Luckily the cloves we sacrificed eating to plant have started to pop their heads up, so in another four or five months we should have some replacement stocks. I’m pretty sure we planted more than last year, but just can’t remember how much more!

The netting’s been vital to stop the kitties deciding that patch was the best patch to spend a bit of time digging in…

We’ve had a courtyard type area very much in need of the garden that it was designed for. Very much in need! So now a few other bits and pieces have been crossed off the very long list it’s almost time to focus on it. First up we need to work out where to plonk some rocks, so what better to help us try to visualise things than plant pots and a milk urn!

And I think it has helped a bit. Leaving them out there for half the day has given us a rough idea of what things would look like. A very rough idea! Now we just have go get some rocks and moving them in. Not looking forward to that! That’s gonna be a long, sore weekend…

Well, it’s not quite the shortest day, but today was such a lovely winter day (once the frost had disappeared, of course) that this year’s garlic and shallot planting proceeded ahead of schedule.

About 45 garlic cloves and 12 shallots were sacrificed from the remaining stocks from last season’s crops.

Nothing like a picture of dirt! But they’re in there somewhere, taking up the 2 front squares. Well, there’s room in the back of the shallots for a sneaky row of radishes, but not much else. Now we just have to keep the kitties and birds away until they’re settled in.

Yesterday was a sad day. It was the day we used the last of our home-grown onion supply. The last little tidler.

Given that the harvest was only on Christmas eve last year it would appear that if we’re serious about eating our own we better plant a few more this year!

But at least we’ve still got some garlic and shallots left. At least until the shortest day coming up when some will get planted out again for next year’s crop. And of course there’s still a few potatoes. Just a few…

Polly better want a potato, as that’s what she’s gonna get for dinner for quite some time, I suspect! As will we all! Today was potato harvest day, quickly before any frosts appear.

After much scraping, forking, and cursing, 43.8kg of potatoes were hauled kicking and screaming from the earth into random pots. Yes, we did weigh them. That’s a fair few bloody spuds!

Considering we’ve been both eating and gifting potatoes since the middle of January I’m guessing we’ve managed at least 80kg for the season from 6kg of seed spuds. Not a bad return, even though they did take up a bit of real estate. And there are some awesome chippers amongst them too. Wish I’d kept the biggest aside to weigh and measure it individually, but I was more interested in just getting them up and out.

Now we just have to find something resembling a dark, cool place to store them. A bit lacking around here, so I guess we’ll just have to find new and inventive ways to ingest carbohydrates…

Regular readers might remember last year’s fruit harvest as being something of a non-event. We hoped this year would be better, and so it proved.

Yes, that’s right! We’ve managed to increase our production 200% in a year! Three whole apples this round! Yippee!

Once again the main culprit for the miserly production was the grass grub beetle munching everything around November time. This year we might resort to a few nets as well as the spray. Either that or a very large flyswat!