Well, I'm not getting around to writing much so thought instead I'd post some photos and hope that makes up for the lack of words! Since the last post on May 4th we've had two nice falls of 24mm and 42mm of rain….quite an exceptional start to the season for us. I'm looking forward to posting photos of the wildflowers in a couple of months. In the meantime here's a glimpse of what's happening in the garden.
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It's three weeks since the photo in the last post and the veggie garden is
powering. I am picking lettuces, Asian greens, radishes, silverbeet, coriander
and parsley. I'm having a few issues with caterpillars on the broccoli and
red cabbages and the wind snapped some of the beans which were about to
flower. The beans I planted under the poly tunnel didn't germinate very well -I
think they rotted- so I've taken it off and resown and will replace when it is properly
cold. I've planted quite a few flowers in the veggie garden this year so it should be
very pretty in about August.
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The Spud Towers- I made a mistake in my last post saying that you
should cover the spuds when the green shows through. Apparently
you cover the green when it is about 30cm high.
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| Tom's newly planted lucern patch. This will be a valuable source of greens for the chooks in summer and also for mulching material when it is cut and
dried out.
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I went into town the other day and found this coffee bush at the nursery.
I think it might be very tricky to keep alive in summer but I love
a gardening challenge! I've put lots of water saving crystals and compost in the
planting mix and covered the hole with some heavy duty 'mulch' to stop the chooks
scratching around it.
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This is a mini wicking bed made from a foam box. In it
I've planted water spinach and laksa leaf/Vietnamese mint.
Tom and I are planning to make a large wicking bed from
timber later this year.
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Another gardening challenge!! I'm not sure how this
blueberry (planted yesterday) will grow here
but I'll never know if I don't try. Fingers crossed!
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This simple tool (made by my Dad) is the best thing ever for
cutting through and extracting weeds. It's a piece of flat stainless
steel curved and attached to an old broom stick with gutter bolts.
With this I can weed the garden without having to bend over.
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This is the bacon hanging in our homemade smoker. You can just see the
smoke seeping out of the inlet pipe at the bottom of the drum. I left the meat in
the smoker for about 3 hours. It could have had slightly longer but I'd rather
it is slightly under smoked than over as it tends to be a bit overpowering
and slightly nauseating if overdone!
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Our home made smoker is a bit rough and ready but it
does the job! The rocks on the lid of the fire pit (an old road sign!)
are to hold it down so that the smoke is forced to go up the pipe
and into the 44 gal drum-the smoking chamber. As you can see,
some smoke escapes! The pavers on the right are nothing to do
with the smoker, they just happen to be stored there.
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This beautiful creature has nothing to do with anything Outback
Larder (we certainly didn't eat him!!) but he's pretty cute and I
thought you might like to see some of the local wild life . When it
rains here the country bursts into life. This tortoise would have been
buried deep in the ground, hibernating until it was wet enough
to dig his/her way out. We found it on the road in the middle
of the day, travelling between water holes.
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