It's that time of year again; I'm planning for winter and spring.

The broad bean and pea seeds arrived yesterday, the bulb orders went in over the weekend, and there are punnets of lettuce, rocket and onions waiting for a chance to get planted. Another silverbeet glut is only a few weeks away :)

This year the picture is added to by the chooks who are moulting and looking decidedly autumnal. They seem completely cheerful as the hoon around looking raggedy (particularly the girl who lost all her tail feathers in one go) and retain their passion for sunflower seeds and puha.

The real challenge is working out the planting plan for the mound by the pond with the nectarine. The plants need to handle clay, but won't drown as it's a mound, need to be beautiful year round as they're next to the pond, but I still want seasonal variation.

I'm thinking about a spinossima rose as I think the hips are gorgeous, but pink flowers will need some thought :)

In other rose news the Souvenir de la Malmaison growing around the compost is still growing madly; it should be gorgeous next spring, and the Graham Thomas is also holding out against winter.

Tags: Bulbs, Veges, Beans, Roses, Chooks

Life has been busy, and the garden's been thriving. My discovery for this season has been the 'Rampicante' zucchini I got from King's. They haven't grown like zucchini, but they're very grown! Huge vines all over the boardwalk by the pond, and the strangest fruit!



This one ended up at 95cm long, which is more than I could contemplate cooking in a single go.

The raspberries also grew more than we could eat, as did the paste tomatoes and the basil. So I've been giving away eggs, silverbeet, basil, and raspberries. Oh and plenty of baby fish :)

It really is the end of the season now, only a few raspberries left, the tomatoes are slowing down and the basil is getting mildewy. On the up side the grapes have just started to ripen, and the chinese gooseberries are looking like they're going to be great in a few months. The kohlrabi are just coming through too, having grown caterpillars for the chooks they're going to be dinner for me very shortly :)

I'm hoping to spend some of next weekend planting the winter crops. Two varieties of broad beans I think, plus peas, lettuces, more silverbeet, spinach and maybe potatoes. Then I'll see how much room I've got to sneak in some treats like some beautiful beetroot and radishes.

Tags: Veges, Chooks, Fruit, Grapes

Well it's been madness here! We have genuine honest to God frogs in the pond, egg-producing chooks and raspberries.

I'm so looking forward to Easter, by then I'll be down to only one job, studying will be under control, I'll have holidayed and it will suddenly seem doable again. At the moment I'm struggling with two jobs and two courses, plus a couple of out of work projects.

Last week I got the health stuff out of the way; the tests themselves were unpleasant, but the results were pretty good. We have a theory about the iron deficiency, and we're treating it with iron supplements, so I'm back to where I was beforehand but with a diagnosis.

Tags: Chooks, Fruit, Health, Work, Study

The acid bed (blueberries, Japanese iris and rhubarb) is causing a lot of thought at the moment. The plants not only want acid soil, but also want lots of moisture; so I need acid mulch. Coffee grounds would be perfect, but my easy supply is no longer easy, so I'm searching for other options.

A week or two ago someone posted on the local freecycle with coffee husks looking for a good home, which sounded perfect except... (Why is there always an "except"? :) ... coffee husks are way to light to mulch with. I tried to work out how to make it work, but I've given up and they're going straight through the compost and I need a new acid mulch plan.



The comic relief of the coffee husk compost has been totally worth it. They're incredibly bulky and light, so I carried a huge black rubbish bag over my shoulder on the bus and through town. They overflowed the compost bin until thoroughly soaked, and looked like fibreglass once wet. They will hopefully fill the gap in my composting once I leave my current job and the leftover fruit bits that come along with it.

In other news two of my chooks have big butts, another sign that they'll be laying soon. All very exciting.

Tags: Compost, Chooks

There are baby fish in the pond and legs on the tadpoles! It feels strangely springlike for midsummer.

The big task for the weekend was reorganising the compost; using the last of one pile and turning the other. The compost got used on the main group of tomatoes, which have baby tomatoes showing; on the gooseberries, which did well this year and deserve encouragement; and on the lemon tree which produced a nice crop of lemons and needed a feed.

I took advantage of the compost around the tomatoes to express optimism by planting some vines at the feet of the tomatoes:

• Melon 'Tigger Moon'
• Buttercup squash
• Apple cucumber

I'm not convinced they'll get enough weeks of hot, but I might as well take advantage of new plantable space.

The same need to squeeze things in lead to me fitting some more lettuces in around the sweetcorn (which is still not thriving) and some more basil in amongst the rest.

Sadly I'll need to replant the fennel seeds from last week as the chooks took advantage of the compost rearrangement to get into the vege garden briefly and scratched up the baby plants. Otherwise not too much damage I think, surprising as they had access to silverbeet.

Tags: Chooks, Pond, Veges, Compost

Baby potato leaves



Kohlrabi seedlings


Bush beans, wildling tomatoes, silverbeet and beetroot.



One of my girls :)

Tags: Veges, Chooks, Beans

After finishing up the pond today's game has been renovation, pulling out spent plants and putting new ones. The gone-to-seed parsley has been replaced by basil (fino verde, Genovese giant, red rubin and cinnamon), the peas are out and shared with the chooks, and so on.

The chooks have turned into lovely friendly birds, with an occasional streak of insane panic – strangely reminiscent of Seb actually. They enjoy pottering around their section of the garden; scratching, eat and snoozing. Their combs are starting to fill out and they're starting to make grown up chook noises, so eggs can't be far away.

I'm enjoying working out what to feed the chooks. Every morning they get homemade mash, a variety of leftovers and often (their absolute favourite) cooked whole grains mixed with yoghurt and kelp powder. Interestingly they like that mixture way more than its component bits (which are still pretty special) so I guess there's something about the texture of the combination which works for them. They also get greens, sometimes weeds, sometimes some of the gone-to-seed silverbeet. Then I throw down mixed whole grains last thing so they have something exciting to scratch up the next morning.

Tags: Herbs, Chooks

It feels like the house will blow away, and I'm worried about the damson plum in the front garden. The roses are losing petals in small snowstorms (the photo is my first ever Graham Thomas flower) but there are more buds for later



The vege gardens are coming along well; the peas and beans are nearly done, the rocket is looking well, and the corn has germinated and is growing like crazy. I'm trying to wrap my head around how much change there is in the main vege gardens, they look so different week to week as I take out some big tall plants and replace them with seeds or seedlings. I kinda like this as the shape of the garden and the view on the pond will keep changing.

The pond is the big drama at the moment; today the liner is being replaced with a non leaking one, also this one will be EPDM so it should be much more robust. I ordered one group of the pond edge plants yesterday, and hopefully will order the rest in the next day or two – so the pond should be done very very shortly.

The other big changes around here are the chooks; they're loving free-ish ranging, and clearly look forward to me coming home from work and letting them out. The vege garden protection is getting more settled, the trick seems to be a visible low firm barrier (e.g. a half width of plastic mesh) coupled with a couple of wobbly looking string lines so the chooks don't feel they can land half way.

Tags: Roses, Pond, Veges, Chooks

The weekend started up a ladder, then on top of the pergola rearranging the female chinese gooseberry. I've disentangled her from the willow and now she's now draped across the supports, so if the willow branch goes she'll survive. Next week I'll feed her; which will mean pulling back the decaying branches around her roots, putting a bag of zoodoo, some blood and bone, and a couple of grow tabs down, before putting the branches back.

I've never really understood why the female was planted at the shady end, but with a little bit of spoiling she should start doing as well as the male.

In the photo as well as the pond and the chinese gooseberry there are the squash (planted by the base of the male), three Guinée roses, and the two Adam elderberries planted last year. The elderberries have survived remarkably well given the earth moving equipment that hung out there for a while.

The chooks kept me busy, having worked out how to get over the low fences on the raspberry and blueberry beds, so there was quite a lot of chasing followed by some fencing improvements. I'm trying to work out what is enough for them, I've added a couple of strings to the top of the 65cm fence around the raspberry bed taking the total height to more like 85cm.The chooks can definitely fly that high, but they don't seem to like the fact they can't land on the string so it's working so far.

I also took out the last of the spinach and corn salad, and shortened the row of carrots (carrot soup!) which left me enough room to put in a punnet of spinach and another of silverbeet. There'll also be room for a few more rows of beans, which I'm planning to plant fortnightly. The last bit of planting was a punnet of cornflowers in the blueberry bed to replace some pansies.

Watering everything is turning into a bit of a mission, particularly as I haven't found the energy this weekend to put in as many watering lines as I'd hoped. The squash, tomatoes, and black-, boysen- and goose- berries are still being watered by hand. The rest are either on watering lines or can be reached by the sprinkler. So quite a lot of hose dragging. I did manage watering lines for the herb garden and blueberry bed though, both of which seem to be working well.

On the down side I'm anaemic and overworked and spent a lot of the weekend napping, so not as much progress as I'd've hoped. I have the next two days off work, so I should be able to make a little more progress, perhaps even get more of the front path weeded!

Tags: Chinese Gooseberry, Veges, Pond, Chooks, Watering, Health

The chooks left the chookery for the first time today, very very cautiously. It's been a really hot day so they spent a lot of time hanging out under the trees, but now it's cooled down are exploring the bank under the plums.



Sometimes the way they move in a group reminds me of fish; it's not just that they stick near each other it's the way they move in sync.

As well as running plastic mesh around the garden to keep the plants safe, I got heaps of planting done:

• Grapes – Golden Chasselas, Albany Surprise, Iona and Steuben
• Squash – Rampicante
• Beetroot – Bulls' Blood seeds
• Bush Beans – Roquefort seeds
• Florence Fennel – Orion F1
• Melons – Tigger Moon and French Charentais (inside)
• Watermelons – Moon and Stars (also).

I also got the places ready for the last group of tomatoes, which will go in this evening or tomorrow depending on the weather. Not to mention topping up the pond and watering just about everything.

Tags: Veges, Chooks, Tomatoes, Grapes