Happenings around the garden

My chickens are laying an egg a day, I can't wait until the eggs really start rolling in - frittata, quiche and egg pies yum! They are getting bigger and more bossy - the hen pictured below is "yes dear" or Cybil depending on her attitude. She regularly tries to escape.

 

I bought a worm farm from Aldi for $49.00, half the price of the same model at Bunnings - so happy I have been wanting one for the past year. My worms are happily chomping away on egg shells from my chickens - I just love that, my Chickens eat greens from the garden provide me with yummy eggs then my  little wormies eat the egg shells and provide a nutrient dense fertilizer for my veggies.

My winter and autumn veggies are getting bigger and most likely I will begin transplanting them this weekend. I ordered row covers for all three of my raised beds. I have a few reasons I decided to splash out - The cabbage whites are filthy buggers and I get sick of picking them off, we get crazy wind in winter and autumn - being on an Island with wind coming off the Bass Straight can wreak havoc on vegetables, thirdly warmth and insulation on chilly winter nights. We don't get frosts but it all helps at the end of the day. In the picture you can see below the seedlings are covered in netting - that's just some cheap stuff I picked up but its keeping the cabbage whites out, just not the slugs (shakes fist at slugs).

 

Below is a garden guest, welcome any time she would like to come and feast on aphids - there actually haven't been any aphids that I have seen since winter.

Well that's what is happening in my garden at the moment. Have you made any interesting garden related purchases recently or any improvements ?

Harvest Monday - 11 March 2013

Summer doesn't seem to want to leave but I would happily say goodbye. This past week the temperature has been over 29 degrees every day. I'm personally over it, it was great while it lasted but bring on the autumn weather.

I don't have a lot of summer veggies left but what I do have is loving the heat. Above are Serrano Chillies - quite hot but have an almost vinegary tang which I like.

Still have plenty of capsicums and even though my cucumber is covered in powdery mildew its pumping out the cukes.

A lovely Marconi, I roasted a bunch of capsicums I had in the fridge over the weekend to freeze for later use.

Rosa Bianca - so pretty, productive too. The ones below are off the same bush.

I roasted these on the bbq until soft and made a big batch of Baba Ganoush, I ate quite a bit and froze the rest for later use.

The 'Wrinkled from Friuli' Zucchini. She an't pretty but she is firm and delicious, no soggy Zucchini here!

Lastly a selection of a few pumpkins from the garden.

Thanks to Daphne's Dandelions for hosting this awesome blog hop.

Saturday Spotlight - Big Rainbow Tomato

Today I'm taking part in Liz from Suburban Tomato's Blog  Saturday Spotlight- As maybe you can see this was not posted on Saturday, better late than never I suppose. Without further ado I would like to introduce you to Big Rainbow -  a large beef steak variety, not only productive but its beautiful and tasty too. I got my seeds in late as I decided after reading the Diggers Tomato book I had to have this in my garden. The seeds were started indoors mid September, surprisingly I had my first ripe fruit in mid to late January. These beauties average 200-400g. 

I mean look at them!!! as I said they were productive, the 1 plant produced over 10 kilos of beautiful, big, rainbow colour fruit. I had a little cracking in the fruits after we had about 20mm of rain one day and a small amount of catfacing.

I have at admit this was the least coloured inside of all tomatoes I've seen, I wish I took some more photos! Most have 3-4 colours marbled though out. Very pretty to look at. 

I'm so happy I read that book and made an impulse buy, Big Rainbow was my best tomato this season by far.

Garden Gobbles - Tortilla Espanola

Now that my Chickens are laying I thought this would be a great choice as I can almost make this completely from the backyard supermarket!

A big bunch of parsley and chives. I also used some spinach but its not pictured.

One of the eggs used.

Yummo!!!!

Harvest Monday - 4 March 2013

I can't believe its March! Where has the year gone so far? I have been so busy at work this past week that I missed out on Garden Gobbles on Thursday and Liz from Suburban Tomatoes Saturday spotlight, ekkk! Well I think the hectic-ness of last week has gone. Here is a quick run down of harvests(it was so busy I forgot to take photos, opps)

Lots of colours.

Basil - made a bunch of pesto and froze it.

The first Zucchini off my January sown plant.

This is a bad photo and I apologise. I can never tell what filter I'm using on my camera.

And in my opinion the most important of all, my first egg!!! so happy that my hens are laying now.

Harvest Monday - 25 February 2013

Two of my raised gardens are bare at the moment, my main bed of tomatoes is gone and the pumpkins went as they were badly suffering powdery mildew and I couldn't stand the sight of them any longer. I also had to get rid of my faithful Costata Romanesco Zucchini - in the month of January alone the one plant produced over 10 kilos. I have a back up Zucchini Rugosa friulana that flowered yesterday so out came the Costata. Im also going to start spraying with a bicarb mixture just to prevent PM forming on any more of my curcubits. 

You can see a few of the Costata's in the back of this picture, theses are very small as the plant was on its last legs. The Biet Alpha cucumber is back producing buckets of yummy cukes, although it is battling powdery mildew too. Those little round zucchini came off aTondo di piancenza.

A very green harvest, the first cutting of "round" Spinach and baby rocket made a lovely salad.

It was also the week of the Capsicum, here is a small selection of what ripened up in the past 7 days. The plants are still loaded and I may have to roast and freeze some of the excess.

A terrible photo of Eva Purple Ball tomatoes and chills. Apologies for the quality.

Heres a final shot of part of my only raised garden with things growing in it. In the front is rainbow chard to the right is Red Marconi peppers and Long Purple Eggplants behind.

I hope everyones gardens are growing well and are surviving the heat or crazy weather in Australia or the cold if you are in the Norther Hemisphere.

Garden Gobbles - 21 February 2013

We had a lovely dinner of home made flour tortillas with some mexican bean sauce (home made) scattered with olives, dolloped with sour cream and avocado. Finished with pico de gallo made from garden grown onions, tomatoes, garlic and parsley.

Its was so good.