The Berry Field

Ok, so it mightn't be a field as such, but since we're heading into Spring I thought that it would be a good time to tidy up our raspberry patch.

I bought our first raspberry (Heritage) around 2 years ago, and keep getting good harvests from it. It started to run in the first year and I was fortunate to be able to propagate a second plant from one of the runners. The patch that we had these plants in though was starting to get a little overgrown.

To tidy it up a little, I thought it would be good in a raised garden bed. Our soil is a heavy clay and raspberries really prefer a deep rich soil. The raised bed allows for a no-dig or lasagna type garden, and by using the besser blocks I can grow strawberries around the outside. Now we shouldn't have any issues with berries this summer!

To start the no-dig garden, you place a layer of newspaper down. This will stop most weeds growing into the bed. While I'm intending to remove the turf because it is Kikuyu it is near impossible to completely remove. The newspaper makes one extra barrier to at least help control it a little. I've placed the besser blocks on the newspaper simply to stop the grass growing into where the strawberries will be planted.

Next up is a layer of mulch to help with drainage and a little aeration. I'd trimmed back some hedges this afternoon so they were conscripted in for this. I also added a layer of fresh chicken manure and charcoal. The charcoal had been soaked in some worm castings and should help with the delivery of nutrients to the garden.

At this point you then start alternating straw and manure in layers of around 10cms/4in. Because of the size of my bed, I probably went a bit smaller but I've not had any issues in previous years with this.

I topped it off with a layer of mushroom compost to plant the raspberries into (rich soil, but not too rich like the raw manure would be), and a layer of pea straw as a mulch to keep it all moist. The strawberries around the outside were simply planted in potting mix.
Last year we did reasonably well with our raspberries, although lost a few (and almost all our strawberries) to birds. With the rich soil and a bit of netting for protection, we should have a bumper harvest this summer!

Oh yes, oh yes, It's Springtime!

So Spring has sprung in a big way over the last few weeks! Winter has officially left, and the plants and chickens have taken their cue and started to get more productive.

Firstly, our Rhode Island Red chickens are almost a year old and up until two weeks ago they hadn't laid a single egg between them. With the warming of the weather, between the two RIRs and two Australorps we are getting up to three eggs a day. It's an awesome feeling to be getting more eggs than we can eat at the moment!

Secondly, the plants are definitely reacting to the warm weather too. The deciduous ornamental trees (such as our Liquid Amber) are starting to shoot again, along with the stone fruit trees. I think there are about 3 flowers on the Cherry trees, not quite a bumper harvest, but it's good to see they're establishing themselves.

Today I'd planned to do a fair bit of work, but the weather's conspired against me and we're in for rain most of the weekend. In between the showers, I've been pottering a little. My main aim this weekend was to build a small retaining wall for one of my raised garden beds. Lately they've been getting "attacked" by some of the local wild birds chasing bugs and worms. I find though that the birds prefer to dig at the base of the garden beds rather than from the top. Hopefully just a single layer of 20cm/8in besser blocks will help stop them digging as much.


This is the first garden bed I'm working on. The garden slopes a little, so I will backfill with dirt on the right side of the photo, but from the house you'll be able to see the blocks (rather than just the garden bed). To make it a little more interesting though, the blocks also provide a great planting space for other small plants, so this one will have a border of strawberries. The strawberries will also benefit from a sort of micro-climate in that the blocks will warm up in the sunshine, as well as having them elevated off the ground. We lost quite a few last year to rotting on the ground.

After filling the holes with potting mix, I then transplanted and divided a number of plants from elsewhere in the garden. When we moved in last year, I really just put plants where ever we had room at the time, now that we're getting more established, I'm finding more permanent places for them.

The remaining plants in the garden bed are a row of Savoy Cabbages, Garlic and Cauliflowers. There were more cabbages and cauli's, but the birds destroyed a few searching for worms. The garlic was simply some left over shop-bought garlic from the fridge - it's really just an experiment to see how it goes.

There's still a bit of work left to do, but I'm anticipating it will be a great summer harvest!

Garden Update

OK, so I know it's been a while. Between work and the garden, it's been a little busy, so I've not been able to post for while!

Our chickens have matured, but with maturity came the realisation that one wasn't so much a chicken, but rather a rooster! Given the issues with our city about keeping chickens in the first place, having a rooster was a no-go. Thankfully we found another couple who's existing rooster was getting on a bit, so they've taken him to a big farming property they run. Here's a shot of the two Rhode Island Red girls that we reared:
My wife also had a friend who's in the middle of rearranging their garden and henhouse, so needed to get rid of two chickens. We've adopted these, and while I'm not 100% sure, I'm thinking that they're Australorps. The new chooks are a fair bit older so I don't know if we'll end up with huge numbers of eggs, but at the moment we're getting our fair share of manure!
I'm also using the slower growth now we are in winter to be able to establish some garden beds to have ready for summer. This new bed I'm using no dig principles with, starting with mulch on the bottom, green plants (old pumpkin vines and green grass clippings) then autumn leaves off our deciduous trees. Between each layer is a layer of manure. The bed's almost complete (another layer of manure and old grass clippings) and then it will sit for a few months waiting for summer.

I'm not growing too much at the moment, but have got a few broccoli and pea plants. These peas are growing on an old no dig bed that I used to grow potatoes in last summer, and seem to be doing very well despite the cold setting in early this year. The peas will also provide nitrogen to the soil, which is essentially now a compost having decomposed while the potatoes grew.


So, while the plant growth drops off in winter, the work continues! The next big projects until the spring planting season starts is really around preparing the soft fruits - clearing some space for our strawberries and dividing our raspberries to make sure that we've got way too many this summer!

Rhubarb and Apple Crumble - without the crumble!

The Rhubarb's getting a bit overgrown at the moment, so I thought that it would be a great time to get some Crumble going. Only thing is that we're out of butter, so it's just straight Rhubarb for now!

I plan in some of my writings to include recipes for cooking, along with preservation techniques. The idea is that this isn't simply about the garden itself, it's suggestions of how to deal with the produce.

So tonight the Rhubarb.

This is a really easy recipe. You start with around 10-15 stalks of rhubarb, add a half cup of sugar, and two apples. I did it over a reasonably moderate heat as the rhubarb was almost cooked by the time I'd finished slicing the apple.


In this shot you can kind of see the rhubarb's cooked already. To make sure that the apple wasn't raw, I left it on the low heat, with the lid on, for the apple to continue cooking and soak up some of the juices. It worked pretty well, about 10-15 minutes all up.

You could then take this mix and put a mixture of sugar, oats, flour and butter on top to make the crumble. Ice cream worked just as well though. I did use brown sugar for this tonight, and I think that it's made it a bit browner overall - this photo kind of looks like a chocolate pudding!

Still, I think that the kids would be able to tell that it's a little bit more tart than chocolate.

The Garden is Growing!

Well, I've been a bit quiet logging onto the computer and putting an update in. Virtually all my free time is spent in the garden trying to make sure that I've got everything up and running for the summer growing season, and I think I'm almost there!

The weather's been perfect for planting out - lots of rain mixed with a fair bit of sunshine. We've only harvested minimal amounts so far - a few bunches of rhubarb, a broccoli, some strawberries and one raspberry. Just one, not one cup or one bucket. The chickens are growing well and are now outside. My wife is celebrating that the laundry has been reclaimed for the humans!

I've gone for a semi-no dig garden. I've not been to get the copious amounts of straw and manure to do a fully fledged no dig, but the rough principles are there. This first shot is my potato bed and it's a bit of an experiment itself. We were too late getting seed potatoes from the nursery, but we did have some sprouting potatoes in the pantry. Unable to eat them, they've gone into the patch to see what happens. If it doesn't work, we haven't lost much - next season I'll be prepared for the real thing!

There's two rows of tomatoes next to the potatoes (in the 'old' vegetable garden bed). One of Gross Lisse (for salads etc) and one of Roma (for sauces).

The next bed is roughly Brassica's - at the moment the last of some cabbages and the broccoli. I've planted in some climbing beans in between, and the wood shavings at the bottom are some carrots. Peter Cundall of Gardening Australia talks about how carrots don't always germinate if they dry out too much once you sow the seeds. I'd lost quite a few (out of about 2 metres/yards of seeds I'd had around 3 carrots germinate), so figured this was worth a shot. The seeds are at the bottom of a 'trench' about an inch deep, and then covered in wood shavings. So far so good!

At the back of this photo is the rhubarb, and a row of newer (Gross Lisse) tomatoes.

The next bed along is the corn and I'm growing Baby Corn along with Sweet Corn. I've grown the Baby Corn successfully a year or two ago and ended up getting close to 8 ears off each plant. Apparently if you let the cobs grow to full size you can use the corn as popcorn, so I might try that to see how the kids like that. The beans on the left are Borlotti and are great for drying out and using in soups, stews and possibly baked beans. On the right is a Cherry Tomato - this plant is extremely prolific already and we should have a few tomatoes to pick very soon.

The final bed in this section is for melons or cucurbits. We've got a couple of varieties of Pumpkin, some Cucumbers and some Zucchini (Squash). Hopefully with lots of eggs from the chickens and we'll have endless amounts of quiche over summer!

There's a bit more to the vege garden, but this is the main portion of it. Effectively this part is simply the original dirt garden, with some extensions of the no-dig portions of it. During next winter I'll grow green manure through most of it, and then I'll be able to properly divide the beds and have a proper rotation system happening.

For now the goal is simply to get as much in before the heat of summer kicks in, and then we can have a bumper harvest!

New Additions to the Farm

Since settlement went through a few weeks ago, we've been getting right into the garden and improving the vegetable garden and putting in fruit trees. Today though was the exciting addition of three new chicks to the farm.

We have been wanting to have some chickens, but I thought that with two young children under 4, buying week old chicks would give us a few extra benefits. Although they were a similar cost to point of lay chickens (and so we've got to feed them for around 3 months until we start getting a return in terms of eggs), the chicks will grow while the kids are able to be around them.

This afternoon as soon as we got home the chicks were out running around on a rug with the kids watching. Once I put them away, our daughter ran to the table and started drawing pictures to show them! She can't get enough!

Tonight we went a step further too. Our daughter loves a PBS TV show "Sid The Science Kid" where the character learns about growth, charts, observations and heaps of other aspects of science. So, these chicks are now providing a science to our daughter. We weighed the chicks tonight (and will do so weekly) so that we can chart their growth, plus she sat down after and drew pictures of the chicks.
The picture needs a bit of an explanation. The head is on the left. The black mark on the top is a mark that this particular chick has (we're hoping it doesn't grow out as it helps identify it!). The red and purple bit on the left of the legs (in blue) is the container the chick is eating out of. The brown spot at the right at the opposite end of the head is... Well, I guess you will be able to work out what comes out of week old chicks from that end of their body.

It's Ours!

After months of planning and talking, the house is ours! Settlement went through yesterday, so now it's all official.

I've got my parents visiting this weekend, so there probably won't be much packing, moving or gardening this weekend. The removalist is booked for next weekend though, so we'll be heading into a very busy week or two.