Busy few days... and Boys V's Girls

 

 This time or year is so busy, time just gets away, this last week has just flown by and I'm left wondering what I did? On face value it seems like I've done nothing but if I think about it ALOT has been done this past week!

I've picked LOTS of zucchini's and I mean LOTS I now have several lots of quiche in the freezer and gave some quiche away. I still have the large one I picked a few days ago waiting to be stuffed. I have 7 others still waiting to be used I picked today, I'm wondering what other people do with all their zucchini's?
Who cares to share their recipe?

We picked our first cucumber yesterday and it quickly found itself on sandwiches for lunch. Today we picked our first capsicum and although small was very tasty in tonights stirfry, can't wait for more.
The Bok Choi was also great in the stir fry tonight, although I found a white moth enjoying some earlier too! We get a handful of beans every few days, I didn't plant nearly enough it seems, (live and learn). Think I might plant some more tomorrow.LOTS of green tomato's I'm wondering if its ever going to be warm enough for them to turn red?
We seem to be spending more days like this....

Although the rain is nice we need some warm weather to move things along and ripen up those tomato's.

So who knows the difference between "boys" and "girls" ? Silly question really, well not really alot of people don't know their veggie flowers come in boy and girl varieties! So I thought I'd show you with these photos I took in the garden, as Mason who is 5 says "you can tell the girl one shes the one with the Baby and the boys do nothing" I had no choice but to agree hehe

Cucumber girl flower

Cucumber boy flower

Zucchini boy flower

 

Zucchini girl flower

Pumpkin girl flower

Pumpkin boy flower

  Once its pointed out its very obvious which are boys and girls. If they boys don't pollinate the girls with the bees help (or some human help) then the girl flowers just drop off without growing. The bees here seem to be doing a great job if the amount of  zucchini's are anything to go by!

aus.keeys

From the begining - Vegetable Garden Setup

I've wanted a vegetable garden for the past few years, the problem was we LOVE our hens having free run of the yard and vegetables and chickens don't mix as you can imagine! This spring I decided it was time to find a solution, so after hours at looking at other peoples websites and blogs to see what they had come up with I decided on just sectioning off some of the yard. We had some timber laying around so bought the chicken wire and started on our way. Work started mid October.

The posts going in

Wire up and door on.

The bales are to use as mulch, for the animals and the compost bins, we got a good discount buying in bulk, just $3 a bale. This our first garden bed. It was made months go using wood from old pallets, we filled it with everything from the chickens last time we did a BIG clean up of their pen. It had been sitting about 6mths just waiting for the big day. So the day finally came and we planted 3 tomato plants, 8 capsicum and 6 lettuce. We were so excited!! 

Hayden grew some pumpkin plants from the seeds he'd kept back a few months earlier and proudly planted them in the corner of the yard.

This was the next project, to turn this old pallet into a vegetable garden.

We also put in some strawberries.












Over the next few weeks we saw some AMAZING changes in the garden and were able to start being rewarded for our efforts. We have had a few handfuls of beans, lots of lettuce and bok choi and a couple of strawberries. This is in just 8 weeks!!

The pumpkins went from this too...

this in just a few weeks!! The pumpkin is starting to flower although no sign of fruit as yet.

 We filled it and prepared it for zucchini and cucumbers we had grown from seed we bought off ebay. In just 5 weeks it went from the first picture to the second picture.

We now have a few zucchini's growing and in the next week or 2 we should be enjoying a steady supply. The cucumber is just starting to flower.

The original garden which I now know I over planted took off!! Look at those tomato plants!! The lettuce was so nice we had 8 weeks from them before I pulled them out to give everything else in the garden more room.  We have our first fruit just starting on the tomato plants and the capsicum is just starting to flower.

 We dug up some more ground and put in 8 cherry tomato plants. The soil must be ok because within just 3 weeks we went from this too .....

This!! It was like they grew overnight. They are now covered in flowers and it won't be long before we are enjoying them.

The strawberries are growing really well and from what I've read we won't get much in the way of fruit off them this year as they are busy growing but next season all the waiting should pay off....I hope!

The beans are growing well as is the bok choi and we've already enjoyed some of the rewards from both of these crops. We have just put in more beans as some of the first seeds didn't grow so filled in the gaps with new plants and they are growing nicely.

Its corn grown from seed we bought off ebay. There is sweet corn, pop corn and baby corn, I was so excited when it grew and can't wait to watch this grow. I plan on planting more beans in this bed and using the corn as trellis for it to climb up. I can't believe I'm excited over corn...I don't even eat the stuff hehe!

Last but not least - these are the two latest garden beds. I've only started these in the past week. We had to buy this soil after running out, $100 for the trailer load. It will be interesting to see how the plants go in it.

I've panted capsicum and egg plant as seedlings and lettuce, shallots, silver beet, beetroot and baby spinach seeds. In a few weeks we will hopefully see a totally different garden.


We have some new pallets in so over the next few weeks we should get some more new garden beds up and running. I've planted a heap of seeds that just arrived from ebay into our mini green house seed raisers so as soon as the new beds are ready I'll have seedlings to pop straight in.

We have got alot done in just 8 short weeks, it seems the garden is changing every day. Its raining again this after noon and the plants are loving it, it seems they almost double in size after the rain.

aus.keeys