Nearly end of Winter

And we've been hit with 1 degree C and frost this morning!

The Greenhouse project has started - I spent a lovely Sunday clearing out the area marked for the greenhouse, just behind the carport next to the big shed.

It will be wonderful once it's built as it would enable the planting program to run more smoothly (as much as I can anyway!).

Vegie Garden zone is doing well - harvesting lettuces, spinaches, broccoli, peas and herbs. I also harvested citrus fruits - mandarins, oranges and lemonades. Lemon Butter coming up! The mandarins are great this year.

The Fruit Grove had a haircut a few weeks ago and looks lot better now. We just need to fence it to deter rabbits and mulch it all over before Summer hits us.

The Banana Circle's getting very crowded and we will have lots of bunches to munch through very soon! Time to work on the circle before snakes come back.

We've got kittens, both gals - in training to be the 'barn cats' for our big shed to get the rodent problem fixed and scare off the pesky possums. At the moment the feline sisters are inside the house as they are only 12 weeks old. Kids just love them to pieces - the kittens are really great, quite laid back and affectionate!

Not much else has been happening as it's the maintenance period for this property. Hopefully within 2 weeks I'd have something interesting to report and share photos.

Cheers till later!

Oh, what a frosty morning...

Last Tuesday (12th), it's minimum was -2, according to the outdoor thermometer!

First I saw this on lawn

Then I realise it was a nice and light frost so took photos.

Thus it is mainly a photos blog, rather than an informative blog...

Blades of grass

Beaded daisy flower - Gorgeous!!

Jonquils (hoped I spelt it correctly)

Then I checked out the vegie beds zone and discovered they were dusted as well...

Ice beads on broccoli leaf

Dusted spinach leaf on dusted mulch

Even some potato plants were dusted

The edges of lettuces were laced with frost - colour isn't good here.

Another beaded kale leaf

You can see some ice on this leaf!

It was gorgeous to see very tiny ice cubes on the red cabbage leaf

Once again dusted baby spinach leaf

A geranium leaf really shows it attracts frost really well

The front were dusted as well...

Not easily seen but almost all lichen were dusted but as sun hit, all dissipated...

Nicely laced leaves of weeds in lawn

View to South - frost all the way

Lovely yellow rose - all beaded

One of first two plum trees flowered for the year

Magnolia - ready to open soon...

View to West - frost all the way with Tassie following me

Finally went inside and saw this lovely sunlit fake flower arrangement so thought I'd add as well...

So I hope you've enjoyed all this.

Teralba report: 6 baby pears are growing out of two pear trees (the only pear trees I can see have flowered and fruited - seems to be a while to grow, etc); plum trees flowered - two trees so far, but already other three are not far behind; several apple trees budded; an old nectarine tree all budded and a few flowered. Harvested another bucketful of Lemonade, oranges and broccolinis.

Cheers till later!

Today's photos!

Just thought I'd share some photos I took today as it was a lovely and sunny day.

Gorgeous little broccoli head

My dear DH came out and helped with weeding!! Such a rare sight so fortunate I've got photos to prove that he can weed! :D

Weeding the oldest boy's bed

The north side of the beds - see potato plants!

Mid beds - all green eh?

I think all the rains have helped a bit...

Another potato plants bed in front

From ALS, I thought I'd have a go with making home-made lemon oil vinegar for both cooking and cleaning.

My Lemonade tree's full of fruits and its' still flowering! So gotta lighten up its load and used the peels for this special project.

Lemonade oil infused vinegar

The idea is to infuse the vinegar (in this case I used cheap white vinegar) in a glass jar with citrus peels for two weeks to allow the oils to leach out into the vinegar. From 5 mins after peeling lemonade skins into the jar, the vinegary smell has been replaced with lemony smell! So it will be interesting to see how it goes over the time.

I will juice the lemonades for juice and freeze them for summer - lemonade sorbet anyone? :D

A bucketful of citrus fruits from our Citrus orchard - lucky us, eh?

Cheers till later!

Greening the wicking vegie beds

Here it is. The photos were taken almost 4 weeks ago and now it have doubled the sizes and growth rates. Yah! Will take photos later the week when sun's out again.

Let's go on a wicking vegie beds tour now...

Here we see the first bed, with its baby or english spinach plants, celery and beetroot seedlings growing. I am hoping to plant in carrot seeds next week here. And you can see bed #10 at the back, it's full of allium spp. (onions, garlic, shallots) along with a couple of curly-leaf parsley plants and a small number of purple carrot seedlings.

Bed 1 in front and Bed 10 at back

Move along to the next bed, here we see the same stuff as bed 10 but we have leeks growing in the middle. Everything's growing great here, it remains to be seen if it's successful though. The bed at the back has a climbing thingo there for peas and snowpeas. In the bed, there are lots - swedes, broccoli, cos lettuce and a sage plant.

Bed 2 in front and Bed 9 at back

Now to the next bed, here I've planted only two things - potatoes and lettuces! Pretty dull but I am interested in how well potatoes do in wicking beds. Hence a trial here anyway. The bed at back is full of root and big leaf plants - red cabbage, broccoli, swedes...

Bed 3 in front and Bed 8 at back

Now we've reached the slim vegie beds and they belongs to kids. Bed 4 is for my oldest boy Nat while the other bed, bed 7 is for my baby boy and my only girl. So far all's doing well, but kids got bored as it's a slow growing season. They're waiting for spring/summer... In both beds they've got a good mixture of leeks, shallots, lettuces, beetroots, spinach, silver-beet and chives. My baby boy got a strawberry plant growing in his half and he can't wait to munch on the fruits as they'd be all HIS.

Kids' - Bed 4 in front and Bed 7 at back

This is the non-wicking beds area, bed 5 and 6 at the back. We decided to have those beds free draining so we can be more experimental with what to grow because there are certain plants that may not do well in a wicking bed. At the moment, there must be over 50 potato plants growing crazy along with 10 lettuces, and a row of peas at the back. It is interesting to see that wild mushrooms grows more on those beds than on the wicking beds. Location or something else cause this?? Something to keep an eye on anyway.

Non-wicking beds - Bed 5 in front and Bed 6 at back

The rest of photos here are self-explanatory anyway so enjoy the rest of the tour...

Bed 8 - red cabbage, broccoli seedlings

Beetroot leaves

A purple carrot seedling growing between onion seedlings

Celery seedling

East side of the area, facing south

The west side of area, facing south

Garlics!! Lots of them

Thought it was a lovely photo to share... garlic sprout

Bed 7 in front and Bed 4 at back - kids'

Kiwifruits of 2010/2011 awaiting to be harvested

Leeks, lots of them - yummo!

onions, garlic and leeks everywhere!

In Bed 9, snowpeas, swedes and cos lettuces growing together

Potato plants growing like crazy from Bed 3

Onion and garlic seedlings growing next to each other in rows

Baby/English spinach leaves - there are 5 plants of two types growing well - harvesting this for a while now.

Any questions or comments?

Cheers till later!