Spring haz sprung

After the success last year of growing the butternut pumpkins I was definite that I wanted to put in another lot.

In the previous post you can see that the spot I had planted the pumpkins in last time has now been used to plant my dwarf orange and mandarin trees.  I had to set about clearing another patch!  It is hard work but luckily we have a mattock which helps.  There are so many thick roots and grass runners going in all directions.

Pumpkins and some spinach down the side for good measure.  You can never have too many spinach.  We use it all the time.  Even my fussy 10 year old will eat baby spinach!

So that was done a couple of weekends ago and I was thinking that there is still a lot of potential space in the front yard if I clear it.  This weekend has been spent clearing a third tier and also the space around my rose bush.

The rose has been here as long as we have and it produces such beautiful luscious smelling blooms so I wanted to keep it and I will find something to plant around it.

This weekend's efforts

Earlier in the year we also won that little green raised garden bed in a competition.  It came with some seeds and a $20 Bunnings giftcard.  We decided we would use it for our strawberries this year.

Mini Orchard ;)

After my summer of successfully growing butternut pumpkins, tomatoes and Lebanese eggplants in my front garden the season came to an end and I was thinking about what to plant there next.

After some discussions with Mum and a good friend (and after my new lemon and lime trees in the backyard) I decided to get two more citrus trees.  This time I planted a Valencia Orange and a dwarf Imperial Mandarin.

Swinging the mattock to dig the ground is heavy work but I am gaining muscles hehe. I had some leftover pavers so I made an edge.  It won't keep the grass from coming back but at least it will give me a barrier to work with.

It was a bit of a family effort.  Mum got in on the act and watered them in.  She is super for advice too having had many years of gardening experience.  Laila likes to potter around and help too so it was a three generation gardening day!

Feeling Fruity!

I was super happy to receive a Lemon tree for my birthday from two lovely friends just recently.  I decided to plant it in a half-wine barrel  and I was extra blessed to have another lovely friend give me money for my birthday so that I could buy one.

I got my husband to drill me some drainage holes in the bottom of the barrel then I threw in some gravel in the bottom to further assist drainage.  I also moved the kids' cubby house so that I could put the tree in a sunny position out in the back yard.

This is a Lisbon type of lemon which is fantastic as my other lemon tree is a dwarf Meyer.  Now I will have two varieties!  I think I'd really like a Lime tree now too hehe!

In other news - I was able to taste my very first rockmelon this week.  It had come away from the vine and was quite a bit smaller than the ones you get in the shops so I was a little concerned that it wasn't properly ripe.  I cut it open and it was the most beautiful deep orange colour and it tasted divine!  There are two more on the vine that will hopefully have time to ripen before the cold weather sets in.

Rockin' Rockmelons

I am always looking for things to plant in my garden that I haven't grown before.  When I saw some Rockmelon seedlings at Bunnings I jumped at the chance to try them out.  They were planted out a month or two ago and they have really taken off and are trailing all over the place.

There are lots of little yellow flowers on them and like pumpkins there are male and female flowers.  The bees have been doing a marvellous job so I was hopeful that we might get some fruit.

The other day I was out watering and was very excited to see one little fruit on the vine!  Hopefully there will be more over time too :)

Party time for the worms....

I had been wanting to get a worm farm for a little while....  I love the idea of being able to turn our kitchen waste into compost and fertiliser for the veggie garden.  On Valentine's Day my darling husband brought one home from work for me (how fortunate that he works in a building supplies store!)

Laila was very excited by the whole business and soon set about helping me put it together.

First of all you soak the bedding block in a bucket of water until it turns into a nice sludgy consistency,  We also tore up the packaging and placed it into the bottom tray.  The worms will eventually eat through this!
The kids loved stirring the sludge mixture hehe!

Next we emptied the mix into the tray and tipped in the box of 1000 worms (so it said - I didn't actually count them!).  We also got a worm blanket for the top which keeps it all moist and dark.  Lower right photo is Laila saying goodnight to the worms under the blanket.

Just had to have one more peep at the worms and have a hold hehe.  Standing very proudly with the farm!

We have had to shift it from this spot as we found it wasn't in the shade at all times and with this boiling hot weather lately it needed protection from the sun.  We now house it under the back porch which also makes it very handy and close for putting our food scraps in.

Laila told her teacher all about it and then was asked to stand up in front of the class and do a little talk about it.  It has been and will be a valuable learning exercise for her and all of our family.

A Plum In Your Mouth

Every year around this time, a neighbour from across the road turns up at our door with a big bucket of lovely Satsuma plums to give us from his tree in the backyard.  Two nights ago he didn't disappoint and we received a HUGE amount for which the kids were very excited about.

It was perfect timing because over the last month or so we were very lucky to have received peaches, nectarines and grapes from another friend who had grown them all in his backyard too.

The supermarket fruit just doesn't hold a candle to this homegrown stuff!  The nectarines especially were a real highlight and we all gobbled them down greedily hehe.

So with a big bucket of plums on my kitchen bench I set about deciding what to do with them all.  The first thing I thought to make was some lovely jam.  I do love making a bit of jam!  In the past I have made orange jam and strawberry jam and I also like making my own tomato sauce (but that is another story).

I used two kilograms of the plums and I was able to make ten small jars.  We have already given one to Mum and one to a friend.  I also owe a home-grown pumpkin to this friend so hopefully this will sweeten the deal until my next pumpkin is ripe hehe ;)

Tonight the kids and I marched over to give a jar to the neighbour who gave us the plums.  He wasn't home but his wife said he will be thrilled with it (even though he also makes his own!)

I also found a cool website called Jamlabelizer which has funky templates which let you customise and print your own jam labels.  I had lots of fun making these!

Last but not least - today I decided to make a Plum cake from a recipe another lovely friend had passed on to me.  If I can resist cutting it tonight I will take it for morning tea at her house tomorrow!

I still have at least another kilo left so I am open to suggestions on how to use up the last ones!  Leave me a comment with your ideas or even links to recipes you have used :)

Grow Food Not Lawns

I have been following this facebook page - Grow Food Not Lawns for a while now and really embrace the philosophy.  I now look at my front lawn (well lawn is an optimistic word - more likely weeds) and picture all of the lovely things I could plant in its place.

If you have followed my blog for a little while you may have seen my post about digging up some of my lawn and planting pumpkins.  This has been a roaring success with us having picked around 8 pumpkins to date and there are at least three more growing.  I have turned them into pumpkin soup and roasted veggie frittatas among other things.  I have also been able to give a couple away to friends which was great.

So, with that success in hand, I set my sights on turning another patch of weeds along the driveway into a productive extension of my veggie garden.

It took quite a bit of digging over.  The existing soil is virtually sand so I added in some compost and a bit of potting mix too.  Then I planted some silverbeet and a couple of beetroot plants.

I will take pics in a couple of weeks to show the progress.  I hope they will flourish.  I noticed today that they get all the morning sun but are shaded in the afternoon so we shall see if they like this spot or not.