Filed under: Garden
A reasonably solid year in the garden this year, red rascal potatoes doing well, and we are fairly self sufficient for salad greens. Have pulled up the garlic and it looks like it should get us through the year ok. Here is a wee sample for Beau, not much use to him at the moment but hopefully his Mum and Dad can enjoy it. Congratulations Emily and Glen.
Filed under: Garden
I harvested the first pumpkin from the garden today, up until now we had only had a few squash from the patch. Very excited about the size, now we just have to figure out how to eat it all.
Filed under: Garden
I’m really happy with how the vegetable garden is going this year. Not everything has been a winner, but plenty of things are going well. This is our first proper go at growing pumpkins and as you can see they are spreading out well. I have been trying to give them plenty of water so hopefully a bumper crop of pumpkins is the result.
This is easily the best year in the glasshouse. We got in a load of soil and everything is growing in pots and containers. Plants include chillies, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes courgettes and strawberries. We have been pretty good at keeping a supply of various lettuces going and there are other tomatoes, courgettes, celery and cabbages growing outside. A mixed bag from the garlic. Planted some in two different beds, one ended up with really small bulbs the other had bulbs of a good size. I put the bigger bulbs on top in the photo! Haven’t grown spring onions before either but this has been successful. The potatoes have gone really well. We planted Maris Anchor and Ilam Hardy. We were eating really good sized potatoes before Christmas. Crops that haven’t been successful were beans and peas (so far ) and I have found the seeds that are still in the packet haven’t done so well either. Weeds are still growing well though.
Things are really dry so there is water going on something everyday.
A bit of a flurry of activity around the place lately. Spring is starting to show itself but there is no doubt plenty of winter left.
With the first daffodils starting to show, we needed to get onto the construction of our roadside stall. My handy friend Clayton came out and in no time we had one whipped up, I just need to get a roof on it and then get it painted. It is anticipated that we will be selling other goods such as walnuts and quinces from it as well. There will be a picture when it is finished up.
Earlier in the morning of the stall making we had a spreader truck come around and put a bit over a tonne of lime over the paddocks. Unfortunately no picture of this as he was pretty quick and I was busy making sure stock were out of the way as well as opening and closing gates. We don’t think our paddocks have had anything put on them for many years, so we had a soil test done and the advice we got was to raise the pH a bit and that might unlock some of the nutrients in the soil. So this was a first step and we’ll have to see how it goes.
There has also been another set of twins born. Their mother doesn’t seem to be quite as maternal as the other ewe but the lambs seem to be doing ok despite this. The four lambs have had rings put on their tails and the one boy has had one around another part of his anatomy. I certainly feel for the poor bugger, can’t be nice, but they seem to get over it pretty quick. The sheep have been eating much more hay and lucerne this season, we were getting a bit low so Noah and I went and picked up 10 bales from a neighbour who owed us some in exchange for the help I gave him bringing it in last summer.
I am also hoping we have more success with our vegetable garden this year as I believe I have made it Toby proof! A gate has been installed at either end which will hopefully do the job.
The other thing we finally got done was getting the sheep shorn. The plan had been for them to be done before lambing, but due to a combination of early arrivals and some bad weather, it didn’t get done until this weekend. A friendly neighbour came round to do it and did a fine job.
So now we just have to wait for the wool cheque to arrive! One thing that the shearer did point out to us that the matriarch of our flock probably doesn’t have a lot of years left on the property. Her teeth are getting pretty worn, so we probably won’t put her out to the ram again as she may not be able to eat enough to sustain a couple of lambs. That news was a bit sad, but she will be left to live to a good age even if she isn’t breeding.
We think we are getting organised, still plenty to be done though. I’ll leave you with a picture of our neighbour going past our place in the weekend.
Filed under: Garden
I have now had 3 pruning sessions, and think I am starting to learn something. I have made a start on the roses. 
Also on the pruning front, Bob came along yesterday on his crazy mad max style tractor and trimmed our front hedge. He does a great job, but unfortunately leaves the prunings behind for us to pick up.
The daffodils that we planted are all starting to come up, so hopefully not too long before we cn start selling them, and warmer temperatures mean we are starting to see a bit of grass growth.
I hired a rotary hoe yesterday from Smiths Hire a place with many great machines. After throwing a trailer load of well-rotted horse manure over it I gave the north end of the vege garden a good going over.
I then took our first step towards becoming flower merchants. My mum has given us a couple of sacks of daffodil bulbs and it is now time to get them in the ground. The ground is very hard due to the lack of rain, so it took quite a few goes to make any progress, but eventually we made some rows in the house paddock in preparation for planting. I also mixed in manure and some blood and bone.
Filed under: Garden
The walnuts have started falling again. This is our second walnut crop so we think we know what we are doing. 
Last year we purchased a walnut picker upper, that’s the technical term. It rolls over the ground picking up walnuts but leaving the leaves and other stuff behind.
The cage then gets lowered over the piece of wire over the bucket and all the walnuts drop out.
The walnuts then get sorted and are given a wash on one of the frames I made, before drying for about 3 days. We then bag them up and will sell most of them to the Walnut processing place.
Last year we sold 160kg and still had plenty for ourselves and friends.
I realise my vege garden is a bit of a shambles, but it seems we have at least one successful crop this year. I harvested the garlic today and I think it looks really good. 52 cloves in total, surely one a week will do us until the next crop is ready?
I gave each clove a quick wash and it is now drying on one of the trays I made for the walnuts. Obviously Toby had to be involved again.
Here are the roses that we have here around the cottage. I gave them all a prune near the end of winter, and then my Mum arrived and we pruned them properly. Thanks Mum, they are looking great.
Archway between vegetable garden and orchard
Excuse the weeds.
'Golden Future', my mum gave this rose to my wife for her birthday a few years back.
Rose at entrance to driveway.
Filed under: Garden
One of the big jobs I’ve had on the list of things to do for a while is getting rid of the spa pool in our back yard. It was an in ground, very 70’s looking, old school spa pool. We aren’t really spa pool people and I think the running costs of this thing would have been shocking.
Before the arrival of the digger
So it has been ignored up until today when I decided to hire a pump to get it emptied. The water was a lovely brown colour but we got it all out ok. I did have visions of digging all around it but then we decided to call the neighbour who has a big digger to see if that might be the way to get it out. We decided we didn’t care if it got smashed in the process as we figured it wasn’t worth anything. It turns out the digger owner was out of town but there was another guy who could drive it who came around. I had to cut a couple of pipes and pull down a fence to allow the digger in but within an hour the digger was here. With a rope around it the spa pool just popped out of the hole and onto a trailer.
The huge bonus was the digger driver was on the hunt for a spa pool and so has taken it away! We are wrapped to have the job done and we will get the hole filled in tomorrow. We are looking at using the area as a dog run.
A Cottage in Clarkville 