Planting of the veggie seeds

I have been meaning to plant some seeds for weeks and have been a little unsatisfied with the seeds brought from Bunning's as much as its pretty much my favourite shop in the world I have not had huge luck with their seeds so when I met a new friend and garden helper at the school I was delighted to discover she worked for a seed company and also at the Garden of St Erth as one of their Horticulture experts.  I was able to buy through her and have now planted today the following; 


Golden Bantam Corn
Mizune/Mustard
Pumpkin Walthma Butternut Organic
Black Beauty Zucchini
Evening Sun Sunflowers
Heavenly Scent Sweet peas - to be planted Autumn

I made a mix with potting mix and sand and some sheep manure - I was a little heavy on the sand so I do hope the seedlings cope but hoping to get a lovely amount for the veggie beds.

Here is the link to the Diggers seed company: http://www.diggers.com.au/

The glass sheets on top were donated to me by a guy who brought birdhouses from my son, the white boxes are being up-cycled from Wilsons Fruit shop and the table was made from pieces from our "junk pile" about a month ago.  :)

That handy pile of junk.

Every one has one.  That large pile of rubbish the other half decides "will come in handy"  one day..... expect often that day never comes or if it does the pile has been stacked so badly you can't actually find that handy piece of junk you needed!
Yesterday we lost a rabbit, we have a pen they run in but its not fool proof and occasionally they escape to the paddock and ALWAYS make that beeline for the junk pile and know we can't get them out and its a long waiting game!  I decided we needed to completely overhaul the pile and restack everything.  It took 2 hours and 2 of my helpful boys assisted while we transformed all this useful wood/bricks/aggie pipes and we moved all old useless lengths of wood to a pile to be chopped for firewood at some later stage. First pic is the once pulled apart picture, I wish I had taken an initial picture as it was so messy and I am so proud or the effort the boys put in as I don't lift too many heavy items.   Sadly we did not find the rabbit no sign today of her either.  :(

                                                             
                                                                         During                 

                                                                     During

                                                                  After and tidy

                                                                               Even better!                                       
 

Spring Garden Flowers 2013

I do love Spring but it sneaks up on me!  Just when I think I have done all the weeding - we use no poison at all here so all paths, garden beds, veggie beds and around the fruit trees on 3/4's of an acre,  I look around and see the weed growth is manic and taking over the garden!  I was spending an hour each day for about 10 days trying to get on top of the school garden weeds and one day returned home and realised I need to get serious about my own weeding for a few weeks!  Lucky for me its school holidays so a little more time to dedicate to my garden.  I do all the weeding in this garden as hubby is not a terribly keen gardener but also has his own garden project happening in building a new retaining wall, a lot of work as all the garden plants and fencing around it needed to be removed and will need to be replaced once complete. Its intense and time consuming but all weeds get fed to the chooks and they are finally laying eggs again so the cycle goes on!

That aside the good thing about forced gardening and being on you knees tugging the weeds out is that you can inhale the scents of all the pretty Spring flowers.  Time can stand still as you smell Freesia's and immediately the Olfactory system kicks in and your transported back to childhood where my home garden had literally hundreds of Freesia's in bloom.  Or the waft of Boronia hits you from 10 metres away and you stopped by the intensity of it and search for the plant which is often quite a distance from the sweet perfume.  There is a Buddleigh in flower near a park I walk around, you can smell the scent for a good 500 metres away, its delightful and an old variety no longer available in Nurseries.  I seem to have planted lots of different Daffodils, a surprise as I don't remember when I planted them!

Here are some of my favourite flower pictures, enjoy.  :)

Potato Planting

smwalker1970's photostream on Flickr.

Today we decided to plant our Potato's a different way and use the wire method. I saw this on Gardening Australia or possibly Better Homes & Gardens anyway its a fantastic way to save space and grow a crop of Potato's. I had my eldest child search the yard for 3 steel posts, I found the chicken wire - in the chook pen and I already had straw and potting mix, and Sheep manure. I had previously brought the seed potato's and there were 14 in the pack so I will be interested to see how many we get once harvested. Basically you build you Potato pen, lay some manure at the base then straw and then a bit of potting mix and manure, then your seed Potato's, then more potting mix and cover with straw. As your Potato's grow you keep up the layering and water as required. It took about 20 minutes to build I am super happy with the end result. :)