It's been a while...

Some photos of our garden...a long time after my last post.  A second gabion wall has been joined by an arbor built by Geoff from instructions found on the internet.

Wasted space between a group of four garden beds has been dug up and used to make a herb/veggie garden with good bug mix planted at each end.   Recycled jetty timber has been used to make stepping stones and retaining walls utilising old star pickets. (Very little in the way of flat land here!).

My pride and joy (reluctantly built by himself) is the greenhouse (ex chookhouse) made with recycled windows.   The french door is our old shower door.  The other windows are a combination of old wooden windows and more modern aluminium windows tricked up with glued on beading.

We made the pavers ourselves out of left over concrete utilising flagstone moulds.  Just like baking a cake!  You even spray the moulds with cooking spray.

Not enough hours in the day to both build and blog!  Have promised hubby the last garden bed is in....

The challenge...

The challenge for the coming year is to eat something from the garden - either fresh or preserved - everyday that I am home.   Today rocket, tomato and red onion in a salad sandwich for lunch.  Spring onions in tonight's stir fry and fresh figs with yoghurt and honey for dessert.

Currently expanding the native beds and constructing a dry stone creek bed.  (Geoff just shaking his head in disbelief!). Planted a rose I'd grown from a cutting in the furphy bed together with purple 'stick it in the ground', also from cuttings and sweet peas grown from last year's saved seed.  Put compost around the fruiting trees (orange, lemon, mandarin and pomegranate).

My work contract draws to a close this week so more time for other pursuits!  Am about to join the local sustainable energy group as well as the Halls and Rec committee.   The local food imitative also needs some brainstorming and planning.   As for golf....

How to make a difference?

I have come to the conclusion that living a simple frugal lifestyle that enables me to produce food for my family and community is the way I can best make a difference.   Many of our older people have nuked their veggie patches - and I mean nuked, neat round up is the weapon of choice - as they are no longer able to cope with the physical labour.   When I turn up with home grown tomatoes or silverbeet, the smiles are heart breaking.  In return I am learning much about their lives.  Many of my neighbours remember the Depression years and find it difficult to not to give something in return.   Sometimes I come home to find passion fruit or a cake on the veranda!

Every month Transcoota have a stall where local produce is swapped or sold.  There is never enough produce for the stall.   Many of us are working or do not have the land for mass crops.  Herein a plan is being hatched.   Michael has five acres and is happy to have a few trusted friends grow crops on part of the property.  Last year we met but could not agree a way forward, our plans were too ambitious.  We are now thinking of starting small - a square metre at a time.  We can plant our surplus seedlings and raise money from the sale of veggies for the various inputs needed for constructing and maintaining garden beds. Crop rotation would be easy and many plants only require minimal care.

From this idea comes another.  Perhaps those that used to garden might allow a square metre plot in their yards?  They could get share of the produce and have a bit of company once or twice a week. (We can also check the well being of those on their own!).  The more I discuss this idea, the more ideas emerge!  Why just the elderly?  Why not space in the gardens of younger people who are struggling to make ends meet and who could learn some new skill sets along the way?  We may even end up with a community self sufficient for veggies!  

A related idea is that of seed saving.  If we have heritage non-hybrid varieties of veggies, we need never pay for plants.  I am still harvesting dill, celery and tomato seeds and have plenty more to harvest.  (Our supermarkets need not fear - there is still a market for those items that don't grow well here and there are many who will reject an unshapely cucumber or slightly blemished tomato!

Literally food for thought!

This week in the garden:

• Harvested spuds, tomatoes and zucchini
• Saved the seeds of celery, dill, corncockles, granny's bonnets and rocket
• Harvested the first pumpkin which is now drying on a sheet of corrugated iron preparatory to winter storage
• Cleaned up after next door's horse!  Now have a wheelbarrow of horse poo to start off the next load of compost.

This pumpkin wanted to see the world from the gabion wall!

Massive spuds!

The perfect permaculture plant - spring onions!

I think this might be a heritage Bohemian pumpkin!

Another heritage pumpkin - wrinkled butternut

Yummy beets

At work in one of the perennial flower beds - salvias, penstemons, borage and lavedners abound!

Some value adding....

Arbour View

Poor Geoff - just finished one stone wall (albeit mock cheaty gabion type) when he has to build another!  (By way of balance!).  Then Eric from next door comes by and says 'You know, you need some kind of arch to connect the two walls!". 

Just to digress - I have this theory that I call the 'Rocket Science Theory'.   If I had a degree in nuclear physics and a question re rocket science came up my hubby would check with his best mate Pete the Painter that what I was saying was correct.  So if I want to get something done, I usually find a couple of blokes to suggest to himself that 'such and such would look good'.  (I love it when a bloke says something is a good idea - off his own bat - saves me having to round up 'em up!)

Anyway, needless to say I was well pleased when Eric made this suggestion, especially as I hadn't thought of it and it was, indeed, just what was required.  After googling and e'baying, I decided that I didn't want an arch but would prefer a simple wooden arbor that would reflect the materials used in our house and garage.  Degree of difficulty of execution increased ten fold but I knew Geoff was more than up to the job!  Further googling revealed plans for just the right structure.  Much sawing, hammering and conversions from imperial to metric later - voila!

Didn't Geoff do a great job?  I have already planted some Chilean jasmine to climb over the arbor and am now searching for some pretty shrubs for each side.  Himself has also used more of our lovely old jetty wood to line the bottom of the arbor.  Plans for the arbor can be found here  http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/build-an-arbor.aspx

The garden is looking a bit cluttered at the moment as we have had to chook proof some of the garden beds until plants are established! 

Today I planted heritage pumpkins (Wrinkled Butter and Bohemian) and beetroot.  Yesterday I transferred sweet corn seedlings to the newly chook proofed garlic bed.  After attending a Spring garden day at Oaklands Pambula, I planted bean seeds either side of the sweet corn and pumpkin near the base.  The idea is that the beans will use the corn stalks for trellises and that the pumpkins will thrive as well.  As I don't have as much real estate for planting as I 'd like, seem like a great way to make the most of existing space.  

Another tip was to plant radishes, carrots and lettuce in lines.  My lovely neighbour on the other side (sounds like something out of Dr Who!) works for the local IGA and has been giving me polystyrene cartons which are ideal for crops that don't like competition from weeds.  So far the radishes and lettuce have germinated but no carrots!   The carrots may well germinate when they get shade from the fast growing lettuces.  As the radishes - a quick growing crop - are harvested, more room is freed up for the carrots.  I've also used the polystyrene cartons to grow red onions - easy to weed!

Plans for tomorrow include trying to discourage the kikuyu from invading the asparagus bed without resorting to poison!  I may need to lift the no-dig materials from around the asparagus and put more newspaper down to (temporarily) discourage the kikuyu.  I've also grown some annuals from seed which I will use to plug gaps in the flower beds.  Hopefully they will self seed!  I also need to pot up more tomatoes and eggplants.

Some photos beneath of plants in bloom - criteria for my garden - tough perennial or self seeding annual!

 Grevillea Misty Pink

 Not sure!



Cistus Rose 

Peony Poppy (self seeded) 

 David Austin rose - this rose has been transplanted ten times and followed me around four houses!)

Irises from my lovely friend Alaine 

Geraniums (or is it pelargoniums?), a cutting from Dot, with lavender grown from seed.



The Salviation Garden

I love my simple life in this small country town.   My lovely friend Janice dropped in this morning an invitation to the monthly health and wellbeing day.  The day comprises yoga, meditation, story telling and mandala art.  Each of the sessions is run by a local expert and we all share a yummy home made lunch.   Janice also brought oranges from a one hundred year old tree that grows on a property on the Wallagaraugh River.   The tree was planted from the seeds of oranges that washed ashore from a wrecked ship in the 1800's.

Sadly I will miss the monthly Transcoota dinner this Friday.  This is a pot luck 100 mile dinner - the aim is to incorporate as much locally grown/caught produce as possible!  Even though there are times of the year where every second dish contains zucchinis/silverbeet or cucumbers, the range of dishes is inspiring!

I call my garden the Salviation garden.  There are lots of salvias and most of my garden infrastructure is made from recycled bits and pieces!   We made our concrete pavers using moulds.  In addition to the concrete we mixed ourselves, each time a neighbour had a concreting job we scored the leftover bits of cement mix!  Over time, this adds up to a lot of pavers. 

Over the past few weeks we have been the lucky recipients of old hardwood timber planks that had to be replaced as part of a jetty renovation.  The planks now have a new lease of life as garden edgings and a cold frame that also utilises our old shower door.  The chook house is also getting a new roof - the ridge pole is from another recycled piece of timber and the gables are from materials left over from the house build.  Work is commencing on the second gabion wall and Geoff is cursing our neighbour who suggested an arbour connecting the two walls would look good!  (I've already downloaded plans from the Internet!).

Finally I've commenced my first upcycling project!  We've had an old cabinet under the house for yonks.  Done up it will be the perfect home for our collection of Perfect teapots.  (These pots date from the late 1920's and have a lovely art deco shape.   You could collect labels from your Robur tea and purchase an EPNS silver teapot at a discounted price.  There were also cheaper ceramic versions which are now worth much more than the EPNS versions as the ceramic pots were more breakable.)

I've removed the flaking Masonite top (supervised by King Parrots!) and will replace with a new MDF version.  The middle shelf will be replaced by glass and our wonderful local cabinet maker Greg will make me a new glass door.   Finally I'll repaint with leftover wall paint, letting the old colours show through - very shabby chic!

Our curved gabion wall (mock!)

We have a sloping block - it slopes every which way!  There is a two metre drop from top to bottom overall and various hills and dales!  I didn't want to build retaining walls as I have seen many come to grief during wet weather.  I love the look of dry stone walls but don't have the skill sets or resources to build.  Solution - our mock curved gabion wall.   Total cost (including the slab of beer for the friend who donated the rocks) - $300.  We used galvanised star pickets and gal fencing.  Geoff cut the fencing with a angle grinding into four lengths and painted the bits that were going to be in the ground with gal paint.  We used recycled wire ties from a friend who used to do concreting throughout the structure to stop the sides from bulging.  (About four ties spread evenly from top to bottom throughout the length of the wall.)   Voila! 

Trouble is it looks so good that another friend - a landscape architect - thinks we should build another one by way of providing 'balance'!  Geoff just shaking his head.... his task list is never ending - pitched roof on the chook house next! 

The Gaming Squad!

Red Cross meeting today.  Seems units are now to be called branches!  AND beware those not for profit organisations that run fund raising raffles incorrectly - Loch Sport Red Cross was 'raided' by the Gaming Squad recently!  (Bet they had their fishing rods with them!).  Visions of little old ladies in handcuffs being man handled into the divvy van.

Mallacoota exchange website now up and running.  Great initiative by Gordy.