The girls of summer

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Cheeky Chickens, Eating Green, Vegie Garden and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Summer rocks my socks! Last night an incredible deluge of rain followed a cracking good thunderstorm, during which I made ratatouille for 11 people at work almost entirely from veg from our garden!

One of our favourite summer things to do is to let the chickens out for a scratch around the garden, pick some veg for our dinner and enjoy a beer on the patio. Tonight, after work, in my suit, I sauntered out to the garden to check up on the girls and I noticed there were quite a few more toms ripe for the picking. Well.. an entire basket .. FULL to my delight. In fact, I was so distracted by the tomato harvest that I somehow stepped in dog and chicken poo at pretty much the same time, and we don’t even own a dog! Way to punt the cherry off my sundae guys!

I also noticed a few other things going on around the garden:

An unknown animal has decided to munch on one of our pumpkins (and quite a few tomatoes), so we will have to perhaps try to deter a possum or plant some rat bait, depending on whomever is the culprit. We have also tried an experiment with our tomatoes, trying to force their ripening by putting them in a zip-lock bag with a banana- and it worked! But even still, we’d rather they ripen on the vine! Since our tomatoes have been going gang busters, we have either made them into a delicious roasted tomato pasta sauce, or ate them raw in salads with a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper. However, I recently noticed something quite peculiar when I bought some tomatoes to work to give to a friend who is also a qualified chef. She said thanks and asked me “What type are the tomatoes… Are they ‘Truss’ tomatoes?? I started thinking about the apathetic supermarket veg section which has sometimes two varieties of tomatoes- a disgusting hybrid tasteless variety they oft call ‘gourmet’ tomato (sometimes sold for twice the price with the truss/twig still attached) and roma tomatoes, both tasting like garbage. This makes us feel a little sad for consumers who don’t know what kind of yummy amazing heirloom non-hybridized tomato varieties are out there!! This summer we are growing around 8-10 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, not including the random ones that have sprouted from last years seeds, and each are tastier than the next! So we highly recommend that you get out there and try to grow some old-fashioned varieties like Zebra, Tigerella, Amish Paste, Black Krim, and see for yourself how delicious tomatoes can be!

Not only are our tomatoes going great guns, so are our girls! Our chickens recently had a holiday, during which time we went to New Zealand. No, not with the chickens. But they came back with more feathers and a penchant to scratch up any green patch they could find. However within days of our return, we found ourselves with two escapees and again had to re-fortify the chicken pen.
It won’t be long until we change their run to the side of the house, to provide them with a new area to peck around, and also some protection from the whipping autumn/winter winds.

Summer has also provided us with some new skills and inspiration, since we constructed our side fence (see pics above). We’re pretty proud of it since we’ve had no previous fence-building experience but since completing it, our next step will probably be world domination with mad skillz like that! We are looking forward to the culmination of our ‘catch crops’ of cabbage, kohlrabi, tomatillos, beans, spinach and silverbeet that we planted around the same time as the tomatoes.

Hope your summer has been a rad one & get planting for autumn!!

November Rain

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Cheeky Chickens, Fruit Trees, Gardening, Solar Energy, Vegie Garden and tagged with , , , , , ,

Yesterday it rained. Hard. Like the movie… Hard Rain.. except Christian Slater was replaced by Craig with a dirty, dirty Movember moustache. Most of November has involved sprinklings and torrents of rain, which have worked wonders for most of our garden and flooded some other parts. The rain & sun have also brought extraordinary growth in our veg garden and it’s all bursting out into flower & fruit, which is fine by us. November has seen heightened security around the perimeter of Fort Cluck since our chickens tunneled out, strutted up the street like a bunch of D-list celeb’s trying to get into a nightclub, towards a semi-busy road and pecked around in our random neighbour’s garden, before our other neighbour’s grandson’s promptly escorted them back into their yard where they pouted for three days like the cast of the dumbest series in history: Prison Break 3 ‘Back in Prison Again?’. Give those girls an inch… they take over half of Belmont and then take a steaming turd on your driveway.

Things that happened in November:

  • Pulled out 6 trees along the North side of the house, ready for some deciduous trees (white & black mulberries, fig, quince) to go in to provide us with some summer shade (and fruit!) and winter sun to warm our house with some passive solar planning. Beats looking at blinds any day!
  • Harvested LOTS of broad beans (leaves starting to get a few ‘rust’ spots), aka Fava Beans, lettuce and our first onions!
  • Permanently planted 5 blueberries after residing in pots for aeons (Denise, Northland and Brigatta) and also our resilient Mananzillo Olive
  • Finally got a smart meter installed!!! After only 10 months wait. Pfft!
  • Finished our back garden tiers, Eco-Oil stained and mostly planted out with companion flowers, amaranth grains, Jerusalem artichokes, alyssum, marigolds and rosemary
  • De-Mited our chickens after an outbreak of Red Mites, brought in by flying rats aka Festy Pigeons
  • Some of our lovely friends & family have caught the gardening bug, which is just awesome to check out their blooming gardens and swap seeds
  • Watched our Tamarillo’s grown another foot in height!! Yowzer!
  • Much more goodness… see below:

As we’re not quite sure when the globe artichokes are ready to harvest, we’ll have investigate further before we chop the heads off. Maybe we’ll have the artichoke hearts with some Fava (Broad) Beans and a nice bottle of Chianti, like a vego Hannibal Lecter.

Recently, we’ve tried a method of planting – The Three Sisters – that is supposed to be the ultimate in companion planting, derived from Native American folklore which places a focus on symbiotic plant relationships (we hope Pachamama is happy). Planting all together Corn (tasty, stalky support sticks for…), Runner Beans (who grow up the stalks and fix nitrogen into the soil for…) Squash (pumpkins & zucchini who provide large-leafed mulch to ward off competing weeds & keep the ground moist). We’ll know in 9-12 weeks how it all goes.

We are looking forward to December when its a little sunnier, and a lot more veg are ready to eat! We are hoping to have a summer harvest party to celebrate a whole year in our …well.. not-so-new place.  Our house is modest, a bit old-fashioned, but warm- we’d like to think that’s kinda like us too! We love it here. More updates closer to festivus for the rest-of-us!

Rocktoberfest in our garden!

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Fruit Trees, Gardening, Vegie Garden and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Spring is here, and about damn time! After a long, cold, dark, boring winter, we have reached the best season of them all- Spring! As the title of this post subtly hints, our October has rocked! Lots of stuff has happened. We played a gig in our band, which was very much rocking & we had a blast!  We’ve also almost finished building our back terraced garden bed- a good learning curve for us both.  We also bricked a path up to the second terrace and the garden is now in full swing with enough lettuce to eat most nights for our salads & some good companion ground covers and bee attractors (nasturtiums, alyssums, salvias) for when our tomatoes go in.

Its been a time for firsts as well. First blossoms on our Snow Apple, first Nectarines on two of our old trees, first Peaches on two established plants we thought were infertile, first asparagus spears, first Banana Passionfruits, first time making Beetroot Relish- with our own mini- beetroot harvest, first plants to die (Bananas, Blueberries and a Fig! Noo!!). Oh yeah, and I (Bel) won first prize at the Royal Geelong Show for my Tea Cake, and second prize for my Fruit Cake (own recipe). Hooray for everything! Here’s a photo diary of stuff thats been going down in the past two months:

So, the start of November will involve planting seedlings, seeds, trees, maybe building/digging a pond, acquiring a bokashi bucket and if I can convince a certain someone- get some bees in time for the holidays! We can’t wait to have our friends and family over to check it out & help us eat our produce & rock out with us!

Hope your Rocktober was … rocking! If not, crank it to 11, grab an air guitar and kick out the jams!!

A is for August

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Garden Design, Vegie Garden

After doing a double take of the date, I realised August is almost over!

Broad Bean Patch

Broad Bean Patch

Perhaps its such a shock since we’ve been hibernating for almost an entire winter. How did we do it? Mostly jamming on guitars, making home brew, watching conspiracy doco’s, sewing & woodworking (new gate!), and themed movie nights (you know the ol’ Japanese Samurai movie + Sukiyaki; Pulp Fiction + Kahuna Burger & $5 shake). All of a sudden, 3 months are dust!

Parsley and Coriander Patch

Parsley and Coriander Patch

Each weekend we kick up our heels and run to the garden to attack the ‘to do’ list, and lately we’ve been finding some new veg has decided they’re going to make a bolt towards the sun & evidently- onto our plates!  Meanwhile, our new herb garden is exploding with some amazing parsley & coriander but the Lemon Verbena, Sage, Mint and Marjoram have decided much like its patch owners to never grow up.

Back Veggie Patch with Dirt

Our new veggie bed has dirt!

We’ve also come a long way with our raised vegetable garden beds in recent weeks, staking the redwood sleepers into place, painting the insides with eco-creosote & the outsides with Eco Wood Oil Stain to prevent rotting, and with Bel’s dad’s help- moving some serious amounts of dirt in. Amidst the planning for our latest garden bed, we were met with a particularly malicious foe- Couch Grass, aka Bastard grass on our turf. It creeps over & under, getting into everything, its tougher than Chuck Norris’ beard.  So after abandoning our original Couch-be-gone solution of fly-kicks, a backyard screening of Dannii Minogue videos and some back-breaking weeding, we realised our attempts at removing this invasive grass were much like a Mary-Kate & Ashley tween lingerie campaign- just plain wrong. Instead, we devised a combination of methods (all organic) from the Urban Food Garden website, to avoid its return.

Weed Matting

Weed Mats over Veg Patch near the espaliered apples

Our methods included digging a trench 1.5ft deep, laying galvanized roofing iron into the trench, acting as a barrier to the garden, and also digging up the couch grass in the perimeter near the raised bed edge and sprinkling some non-invasive grass as a second barrier.
We also laid some weed-matting on our garden bed in the old chicken pen aka Cluckingham Palace in preparation for spring sowing.

Shirley scratching for worms

Shirley scratching for worms

Our chickens have been enjoying their extended run a little too much, scratching under and plotting escape since the grass is always greener metaphorically and quite literally since they’ve chain-sawed every last blade of it in their run. They’ve also helped us de-weed the back veg patch with their almighty claws and stealth scratching skills- thanks girls!

Broccoli Galore

Broccoli Goodness

Unlike our sloth-esque Broad Bean patch, our broccoli is again coming thick and fast and all at once too- our brassica patch is starting to resemble rows of Seth Rogan silhouettes. Is it a bird? a plane? Kirk Cameron? Tom Hanks? No its another Broccoli head!  Good thing we love to eat them!  Other goodies that have been popping up include: bok choy, red and green cabbages, silverbeet, onions, and radishes.

Most of our fruit trees are starting to develop lovely buds and even flowers on our espaliered Japanese Plum so with any luck we should be having a ahem.. ‘fruitful’ Summer! Looking forward to sharing our home grown goodies with our friends and family & if you’re in the neighbourhood, drop by for a cup-o-tea!

Mid-Winter Blues

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Compost, Fruit Trees, Garden Design, Propagation & Seed Saving and tagged with , , , ,

Winter officially sucks. Leaving home in the dark & getting home in the dark. Not much to plant in the garden. Gardening limited to the weekends. Icey winds, frost-bitten mornings, frozen hands & faces. Even the chickens hate it, covering their eyes from the torch with their little wings when we lock them in each night. Thelma is starting to resemble Robert De Niro with her cheek mole & ‘I-just-ate-a-turd’ malicious sneer every morning when she’s ‘forced’ to jump out of bed in the dark & beat the pigeons to her breakfast.

Now that whinge-fest is out of the road, some good things that have kick-started our winter include:

  • making our first Mötley Brüe (our home brew) for this house
  • seeing the Eclipse
  • making home-grown Pumpkin Soup, Nettle Soup, Apple Chutney & Sourdough Bread for lovely friends & family
  • building a gate for the secret garden with recycled old fence palings
  • building raised/terraced garden beds for fruit trees and vegies along the new back fence (still in progress & yet to fill in with dirt/plants)
  • ditching the overgrown rock-filled patio garden (except the violets & lovely pink-tipped ‘Peace’ Rose which has been moved) with a plan to plant a mini kitchen garden in its place

We have also acquired a new energy-efficient fridge, new compost bin and herb garden (thanks Bel’s Mum & Dad!), a Diggers Garden Club Membership (thanks Nicki & Tom!), more fruit trees, berries, rhubarb & asparagus beds, and two walk-in mini greenhouses (thanks Craig!) for raising our seedlings in preparation for Spring! Plus to fill our seed trays we brought lots of seeds from Diggers (very slow), Cornucopia (mega fast!) and Little Miss Seedy (great heirloom variety).

At the moment we’ve planted: Broccoli, Bok Choy, Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, Peas, Snowpeas, Onions, Leeks, Lettuce, Swede, Radishes, Carrot, Garlic, Spinach & Broad Beans.

We also have some purple sapphire potatoes to plant but are reluctant to establish where they’ll go since you can’t plant any solanaceae (tomatoes/eggplants/chilli) family plants there for a few seasons otherwise the dirt gets filled with tomato-eating zombies, apparently. We might put them in a container instead! We’ve also resolved to try and plan our plots by succession planting to avoid gluts & voids in our harvests. The next day we planted 100 snowpeas & 30 each of peas, lettuce, kale, onion & silverbeet. Dammit! Alongside driving the speed limit to Pantera & watching Home & Away without an urge to poke your eyes out- half-hearted seed planting  just can’t be done.

The next projects on the cards, apart from finishing our new terraced beds include: recycled fence-pailing herb planter boxes for the kitchen window sill, bricking a pathway up to our 2nd tier terraced bed, making a gate & steps up to the side of our old chicken run (now veg patch). We will also hopefully get our new front & side fence installed, although our fencing contractor has suffered a back injury and contacts us as often as Matthew McConaughey wears shirts.

Hurry up Spring & bring Daylight Savings Time with you!

All the leaves are brown & the sky is grey

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Fruit Trees, Garden Design, Gardening, Vegie Garden and tagged with , , ,

During our first autumn in our house, we’ve had quite a few working bees and afternoon teas with Bel’s parents as they have helped us hack down and haul away the overgrown mess that was the shiny leaf and dead ivy-covered trees. So now, all but one tree (holding up our old-school clothesline) remains, we have ripped down the old paling fence and our new higher back fence has been constructed!

Our broccoli crop has come and gone, while our tomatoes and pumpkins (10 this summer!) have been ripped out and been replaced with two crops of brassicas (bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts), alliums (onions, garlic, leeks) with some random spinach, turnip, swede & carrot plantings in between, and a crop of peas and snow peas. We have had a few dramas with our little cluckers, including Thelma and Louise tunnelling out of their new pen, absconding to the neighbours backyard, eating their grass, scratching up their garden and somehow avoiding being eaten by their dog!  Hopefully their new fortified ‘Fort Knox’ pen with a run down the back of the house will keep them happy through the winter months. We are getting the impression that they dislike the frosty dark mornings as much as us since the egg laying frequency has dropped off in the bitter cold snap we’ve had throughout May (Update: the girls had started laying in the tiny space underneath the water tank stand- the things they do for privacy!).

The lovely previous owners who built our home in the 70′s also had an immense affection for concreting rocks into garden borders and we’ve had a few days of hard yakka smashing them up with a crowbar and carting them away. Probably should’ve bought some shares in Lion Nathan, as we’re putting away our fair share of James Squires in the process. We are aiming in the next month to replace the concrete & rocks with raised garden beds with hardwood sleepers around the perimeter of our backyard, 2-3 metres deep so we can plant a vegie bed in front of our fruit trees. Probably should’ve bought shares in Bunnings too since we are down there almost every weekend, mostly to eat sausages and ask directions from the overly descriptive & articulate sales assistant at the Waurn Ponds store -’You’re looking for bolts? Well, simply trace your steps back to aisle 5 and venture downwards. When you reach the midpoint of the aisle, just before the crescendo of the first segment of shelves, cast your eyes to the hinges that lay around 1-2 feet from your waist, append your gaze further yonder and whilst spinning your torso approximately 180 degrees, you shall envisage said bolts that you are pursuing amidst your quest in this vast store’.  What a total dude!

Our deciduous fruit trees are losing their leaves, and our established pears, nectarines and apples are getting a trimming back and fertilizing to help them repair for spring. We are hoping that this will increase the harvest and fruit quality, especially for our pear which is a bit diseased and produced no fruit suitable for eating this summer. We have just bought two more mandarin trees to extend our winter fruit harvest with early (Imperial), mid (Emperor) and late (Ellendale) fruiting varieties, and will probably be snagging some strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus to plant in perennial beds over winter. After having a crack at making Quince Jam (such lovely flavour and fragrance!), one of us may or may not be trying to convince the other that a quince tree may be the next necessity in our ever expanding collection of fruit trees! You know what they say, go hard or go home … which I never really understood, since if you go hard, you probably will still go home after, so its not really such a polarized ultimatum of dualistic options, is it?

Until next time- keep it real… unless you’re referring to fur or Bert Newtons hair.

Summer in the suburbs

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Vegie Garden, Worms and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

After a very bizarre bunch of weather patterns from severe storms to stinking heat, our garden has emerged from the dust with a few goodies for us during this summer! We have been regularly harvesting black beauty, yellow, rond de nice & crookneck zucchinis, squash, tomatoes, non-hearting and hearting lettuce.  We are also patiently watching 4 pumpkins take on some gnarly shapes in our back veg patch, and it’s been great to kick back with a beer in hand and watch our garden piranha stalk the backyard.

We have also discovered a few new pearls of wisdom:

Since we pulled out a few of the old overgrown trees- we found that our back fence needs replacing, so that’ll be the next project on the cards, after all the trees are torn down. Summer has also seen its fair share of lovely visitors help us christen our new digs, some amazing concerts and music festivals, alongside lots of colour bursting out around our garden with Marigolds, Alyssum and Sunflowers making an appearance. Also, after a few short months of feeding our 1000 worms their regular vegie-scrap frappe, our Worm Farm is finally becoming productive, producing a whole lotta worm juice for us on a weekly basis, which we add to our potted plants and veg to help them grow faster than Justin Bieber fans. We’ve added the second tier of our  RelnWorm Factory for our worms to move up into, so hopefully it won’t be long till we can raise our seedlings using some rich worm compost!

So now that our busy Summer is officially over, and Autumn is here, the next plantings on the cards for us include: more Broccoli Silverbeet & Pak Choy, Cabbage, Onion, Orach (Mountain Spinach) Carrot and Kale. Hope your patch is rocking this coming Autumn!

Food Glorious Food!

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Eating Green, Gardening, Vegie Garden and tagged with , , , ,

Since moving into our new home, we decided to get cracking ripping out the lovely old garden and putting in a new, more productive one! After much hard work, many trips to Bunnings, we are excited to have our first vegie patch in our new home up and running!

So far this summer, we have given away a few zucchinis, eggs, nectarines and had  still enough to add to most of our meals. We also took some of our produce down to the inaugural Belmont Food Swap and swapped our goods for some Lemons, Mizuna (yum!), and Rhubarb,  and bought some Borage Seedlings, Leek Seeds, and some Plum Syrup super cheap! We have also swapped vegies/eggs with our lovely neighbours over the back fence, and will hopefully be swapping tips on how to grow vegies as amazing as theirs! The concept of sharing and sense of community has been fantastic, especially talking to locals about the climate/seasons, hearing their stories, and seeing the excited faces on kids who have come to visit our chickens!

While we are in the process of tearing out trees and overgrown carpet roses & shrubs to make way for our new garden design, we are also madly trying to propagate seedlings for the next season- autumn/winter. More to come on seed raising later! We recently stained the existing trellis at the entrance of the ‘secret garden’ using Bio Natural Wood Oil which is non-toxic, environmentally friendly, smells amazing and seeps into the wood to protect it from the elements- great stuff. Also at the entrance, we have placed two metal arches that were given to us (thanks Bel’s Mum & Dad) and have started to weave our grapevine/passionfruit/kiwifruit over  the structure, although with recent rains and heat- our wayward pumpkin is taking over. Next on the list- building a permanent gate to prevent our sneaky chickens Thelma & Louise, and Laverne & Shirley from escaping out of their pen!

Welcome to the Jungle!

Posted by greeningtheburbs in Compost, Garden Design, Gardening, Solar Energy and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to our Bloggy Blog about trying to be ’green’ and eat organic goodness on our 904 m2 plot-o-land amongst our humble suburban home, Vegie Garden, Fruit Trees and Gallinas (Hens) !!

Backyard of our house

Our backyard in its original state

We have started this blog with a view to keep track of our ‘green’ garden makeover progress, as its harder to lose a blog post than a scrap of paper!   Oh yeah.. the ‘we’ part… consists of  husband and wife team- Bel & Craig, born in Country Victoria, moved to lovely Melbourne for work/Uni then moved back to Geelong to “live the quiet life” (to quote Rambo).

After hosting a rocking eco-friendly wedding (featured on Offbeat Bride), we decided to buy a house on a big block in a quiet court in The ‘burbs, as it was so excellently depicted in the movie of the same title starring Tom Hanks and Corey Feldman. Turns out its almost identical, people mowing their pristine yards every 2nd day, someone else’s dog crapping in our yard, except for no Klopeks or Feldmans as yet.

Our shed-side garden bed, after removal 100s of Agapanthus & Oleanders

We had barely walked up the drive before being greeted by our wonderful & friendly neighbours, and after cartwheeling through our new abode, we were met with a lovely letter and box of chocolates from the previous elderly owner who had built the house! Super nice! When we finally got to the backyard, we were so excited to have so much space to work with (including a water tank, gorgeous soil and a secret garden at the back of the shed!), and were greeted with much work to be done.  Overgrown Echiums covered in bees and 3-ft high stinging nettles, 100′s of Agapanthus (harder to dig up than Gary Buseys career), Geraniums, Ivy and Couch grass creeping 6 ft high amongst trees overhanging neighbouring properties were just some of the things we had to contend with.

Nonetheless, it was ours!

Within a week, we had hacked down the chaos in the secret garden and planted our first crop of pumpkins/zucchinis, tomatoes/eggplants and some basil. We also signed up to get a 1.5 kW solar panel system installed and within our first month, we had some cheeky Chickens at their new home.

We had also started a new compost heap, and dug up the previous owners compost bin so we now have two compost bins! Upon our first visit to turn the compost, a flipping huge redback made its presence aware, and from then onwards, our efforts of putting scraps in the compost bin looked like Muggsy Bogues making a 3 pointer shot.

More updates to come soon!