PRE-SPRING 2012 HARVEST

November 19, 2012 No Comments

I feel like our garden has finally settled into the right rhythm. Last October we pulled almost everything out to start afresh. After we finished all the earth bag garden beds, we felt overwhelmed. We were confronted with bare earth and spring already over, beans leaves crisping from summer sun and snails nibbling every snowpea to the ground. Pansies were pretty to fill the gaps in the herb border over winter, but proved a ridiculously perfect home for snails to procreate, but now our first spring is approaching. Now finally our garden in producing a quality and quantity of produce we can be proud of,

something for every lunch and dinner.

Soon when the fruits begin perhaps for breakfast too. The perennials are really starting to flourish, bare earth is a distant memory.

So I thought I’d start documenting what we are harvesting each season, it should be interesting to see how it changes not over the months, but if I am dedicated enough, to see how it (hopefully) grows over the years. Who would have thought that we would be picking the last of the capsicums this late in the year!

Companions:
Snowpeas – Oregon Dwarf
Lettuces – Rabbit Ear
Beetroot – White Blankoma
Silverbeet – Fordhook
Chard – Bright Lights
Chives – Common
Chervil
Parsley – Continental
Dill
Rosemary
Oregano – Greek
Marjoram – Golden
Mint – Common
Mint – Orange
Savory – Winter
Thyme – Lemon
Thyme – Common
Coriander

Brassicaeae:
Mustard greens – Mizuna
Pak Choy – Red
Chinese Cabbage

Umbelliferae:
Celery – Stringless
Carrot – Red Dragon

Solanaceae:
Chilli – Pepper Fish
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Yellow
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Chocolate

Alliums:
Spring Onions

Garden

ENTHUSIASM IN A TIGHT SPACE

April 26, 2012 No Comments

Kids rendering the earthbags at the Flemington Permablitz

SSitting up with a gasp at 4am we heard rain rocketing down on our tin roof as loud as gunfire and we rush outside to make sure our newly rendered garden beds didn’t bear any rain shaped bullet wounds. We were lucky, it had dried just in time.

With a backdrop of grey morning we began to set up the garden for the Edible Gardens Open Day. As the sky darkened Kelly from our local council and the volunteers from MINTI (the Flemington Transition Group) began to arrive with 50 fliers in hand to give out, 50 we laughed, perhaps 30 people will come to have a look. Between 10:30 and 4pm the skies cleared to a glorious blue day and over 200 people passed through our front gate!

It is quite surreal to see 80 people at a time crammed into our small garden, with a bemused sense of unreality we explained our design to the group. The overwhelming sense of good will they offered us with their smiles and eager questions was beautiful. After our rush to get our garden ready, which the bees resented giving us two stings the day before, it was delightful and relieving to see everyone having such a good time (and no stings!). Even the render stood up to being walked on by children and adults alike, being used as a motorway for toy trucks and as a springboard for gymnastic tricks (children only).

My uncarefully laid plans of showing the time-lapse of our garden to a small huddle of people was unrealistic, so I will share it with you here and hope you get as much a kick out of it as me. After the first few viewing I had way too much fun watching minor details like our sunflowers growing and dying and where the neighbours’ cat is going to show up next!

Garden, Recipes

AMATEUR APIARISTS

March 20, 2012 2 Comments

The warm, sweet smell of honey was so strong it had begun to sway towards the sickly side of delicious. We thought it might be time to harvest a few bars.

Last year when bee mania hit our sharehouse the newspaper arrived on our doorstep with a front page cautionary tale of beekeeping gone wrong in Flemington. We considered ourselves safe as long as we steered clear of “bizarre nocturnal attempt(s) to move a beehive onto a roof” and “beer fueled escapade(s)” . But when it came time to try harvesting our honey, finding ourselves short of a suit, smoker and experience, we thought who better to call than our Irish neighbour of “bee bungle” fame, we bee keepers have to stick together and afterall 60 stings later he would surely be a lot wiser for his experience.

Quick to laugh and enjoy the challenges of the bee keeping experience, Andrew was a delightful addition to our little honey gang. And challenges are never shy around us, culminating in our bees having been very busy over spring fusing the bars diagonally to each other rather than in neat little lines. So the removal experience wasn’t quite as easy as we had hoped, a call to the bee man, Martin, informed us we would probably have to remove the offending combs in winter and start afresh! There weren’t many stings, although one did involve an unfortunate incident of a bee flying up someone’s pants which elicited gales of laughter from the flats above.

The gorgeous, golden Flemington honey was worth our misadventures and hopefully with a little bit of experience we will be running our bee operation in a less chaotic fashion next year.

Garden

A GARDEN COMES TO LIFE

February 19, 2012 No Comments

Our raised earth bag garden beds are rendered like a patchwork quilt, marked by dozens of helpful hands. Little details are cheeky and drag on for months and months and what began as a fun excuse to revert back to early mud pie days took gritted teeth to finish (let’s not talk about the fact that this is only the scratch coat). It was such a relief to get some green back in the garden, bare earth is something I hope has been banished from our garden for good. Luckily we have agreed to show our garden as part of a permaculture open garden scheme for our local council in April, nothing lights a fire under you quite like the fear of public humiliation!