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.