The Early Autumn Update

Well It's been an interesting Summer, the heat is still hear turned into humidity down in Ballarat but we are starting to get the cold mornings and evenings so Autumn weather is certainly here to stay.

This year I got a absolutely massive crop of plums but due to the fact I lost the crop each year to the birds, and it's literally overnight I picked the lot early hoping that they would ripen. I had about 20 kilos of plums and they didn't ripen so Ivé certainly learnt a valuable lesson there. The other plum tree I was able to pick early and all went well although there were only about 10 plums of that bush, anyway a lesson learned.

I have been getting a good crop of gold nugget pumpkins although they are so little deseeding them and peeling them is tedious!

The yellow zucchinis are ripening nicely they don't seem as prolific as the traditional green ones. Strawberries are coming along nicely, carrots good, although with both these things it is so hard to determine how much they produce as I have 3 children constantly raiding the vegie beds! Still it's better than eating processed food.

I don't think the cucumbers will ever produce fruit unsure why I think though the soil in that new bed is not quiet good enough yet, needs more manure added. I have recently been sent 10 large 30 kg bags of cow manure at $3.50 per bag, I am going to save so much as normally I buy about 10 kg's at $7.00 from Bunnings, although moving 300 kgs of manure was not that much fun!

Silverbeet is going rampant and it's a big shame no one likes it here!! It was more grown for the chooks and they love it so get fed it regularly.

Had some really bad luck with some plants as one of the chickens escaped into the vegie garden and was pretty much in there for hours. She ate most of the lettuces although some of the purple coloured ones seem a bit more hardy. They also got to the radishes, all the spring onions, Japanese turnips and the rocket and the rhubarb. Also the celery is going well, I tend to break that off and feed to the rabbits, they love it.

The next plans for the garden are to break up the taller beds and half the height size and by doing that I will be able to add 2 new beds so I will have 5 large beds in the vegie garden, the horse water trough bed and a smaller long pot bed.

Also managed to find a male Kiwi fruit plant and I brought some trellis and planted that with the female, it's in the area the chook range free though so Ivé had to fence it a bit.

Have started to move the vegie beds since first started this posted, very heavy work and one spot I wanted to put a bed gets virtually no sun so rethought that placing and have placed it in a more suitable position.

I love Autumn, there's so much potential for the garden now the heat is lessening and we can actually miss a day here and there of watering, all that water Victoria recently received has topped up the tank to a fantastic level.