Or I could do you one of these...

We only feed them when Grandmother is coming over. She rather likes them.

Put in some mixed lettuce seedlings and silverbeet today. The birds ripped the net-bags from the berries along the fence and scoffed the lot, little beasts - so I'll put up some of the netting sheets to confound them. The magpies and the neighbour-children are working their way through the strawberries out in the front. The last of the caulis and broccoli will come out tomorrow -  not sure what to put in. I have no seedlings ready. Bad management!

Paul's little mate

Isn't he sweet?

Picking raspberries, fingerling beans, strawberries, broccolini, broccoli, spinach, beetroot, potatoes, kale, cauliflower, and the first of the yellow pear tomatoes.

Cauliflowers

shouldn't be planted straight after or in the same little bed as peas. I just discovered. Because brassicas don't benefit from too much nitrogen - they go silly and have lots of leaves. So - lesson learned.

Also - those early tomatoes were way too early and are all spindly and pathetic. Were all spindly and pathetic. I bit the bullet (I'm getting tough like that) and pulled them up, added some wood ash from the fire to the soil, fed it with comfrey tea and we'll try again soon. The later, post-Melbourne-Cup ones are coming along nicely. I left them alone.

We're all out of peas for the moment (some novellas are hopefully coming up soon) the broad beans are ready to pick, the kale is glorious, as are the strawberries. Also, the chooks got out the other day and unearthed some lovely potatoes. Oh, they did have fun!

Sown 12 tomatoes: four each of Hungarian Heart, Purple Russian, Big Rainbow and ??. I also took some cuttings of the Green Zebra and planted those direct.

Netted some of the thorn berries, since it appears those rotten little mynahs are getting into them. We're awash with raspberries - picking them every morning.

Food

We're currently (really - right now as I speak)  eating Jonathon's kipfler potatoes, my massey peas cooked in butter and Jonathon's green garlic with a little of the McKeith rosemary and salt that we bought in the Carmargue. A side of kale salad and radishes. Not too bad.

The pea thing is huge at the moment - I have the ones we're harvesting and two more plantings to follow. I probably planted too much chard, just enough spinach and there can always be more radishes.

The cauliflowers are just forming heads, also the broccoli. I transplanted the brandy wine and jaune flamee which are looking very healthy.  The weather is totally stupid. 37 degrees one day, 18 the next. There's no need to factor it into the planning - just plant everything all the time would be my advice.

Fires and hedging

As it turns out, the hedging should probably have been done in early October.

It's all fires and helicopters right now. And tradesmen, of course (how we do love our tradesmen!)  The potatoes I planted in grow-bags are flowering now, and I have baby tomatoes on the yellow pear and cherry  tomato plants. We're harvesting peas (novella) and kale and spinach, and the fennel looks great. It's all coming up. The olives are blossoming, plus the apples; the chickens are laying (3 out of four) and

Dave put the new bridge in today and all the sleepers.

Bless you, Dave.  :)

Competitive chickening

One of the Rockets has been laying for a week. Another one started today.

That's all I'm saying....

Got my quirky little hearth tiled

It looks lovely  :)

See how the pattern isn't straight?  In my adorable part of this totally adorable house, nothing is quite straight. Everything's quirky.

I love it so much.

Brian-next-door

tells me that this is the week to put my potatoes in. But he cautions against doing it today because "the moon isn't right". I have a lot to learn, don't I?

I did sow some tomatoes though - amish paste, black krim, purple russian, giant rainbow and hungarian heart.

I smell rain in the air. Which will disappoint Paul who has just re-done the re-seeding.

First bread!

Paul  has been making bread for the last couple of weeks and I'm making my first loaf today. Also doing the second batch of marmalade from this recipe. The first one was wonderful!

Rocket laid again. She's very delicate about it  :) Eggs are impeccably clean. What a chicken!

We're back -

We had to go away for a few days while the floors were sanded.

The weather this week has been most odd. Very cold, and three days of rain, then very high winds and rather hot (25+ degrees). The garden seems to cope better than I do. One of the Rockets has started to lay  :)

The apple trees are flowering, the plum is beginning to plum and the michaelis hedge is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. I adore this place!

Today I put in another row of spinach, two rows of fennel, a row of carrots and radish (we're eating those other radishes now) and a few more beans. But I was watering most of the day because oh! those winds!

My regime at the moment in the vegie garden is weed one and feed two beds each day. Full watering happens every second day for ten minutes.

In seed news, the brandywine and jaune flamme tomatoes are up, but still a long way from transplant sized. The yellow and red grapes are flowering.

So - 14th - 17th

was cold with buckets of rain. Then gorgeous weather, warming, but very high winds. And today it's raining again.

We may have lost all the lawn seeds in the deluge - we'll wait and see.

During the gorgeous patch, I stuck in a couple of oxheart tomato seedlings from the local centre along wiht the eggplants and some zucchini seeds

Bowral Weather

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:10.1°C	Humidity: 59%	Pressure:1007.8hPa
Feels like: 7.5°C	Wind Speed: 20kp/h (Gusts: 28kp/h)
Dew Point: 2.5°C	Wind Direction: N/A

Current Observations @ 20/09/2013 8:00:00 AM

FORECASTS
Friday, September 20	6°C - 15°C		Possible shower
Saturday, September 21	5°C - 18°C		Mostly sunny
Sunday, September 22	4°C - 16°C		Possible shower
Monday, September 23	7°C - 20°C		Sunny

Ah - this is the cold snap they said would be coming...

Cooler, again...

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:8.4°C	Humidity: 80%	Pressure: 1015.2hPa
Feels like: 6.2°C	Wind Speed: 13kp/h (Gusts: 18kp/h)
Dew Point: 5.2°C	Wind Direction: N/A

and the house and garden are simply awash with tradies. We do love our tradies  :)

We topsoiled the lawns today, which took 8 tons all up) and then seeded. Now we just have to keep the water up to it.

It should be a couple of years before we need to repeat this. (We cored at the same time we did the grub treatment) 

Cooler night, cooler morning

It was a much cooler night last night, and a cooler morning.

I'm going to cheat today, and buy some flowers as seedlings from the local place. I want to get the area around the vegies looking as pretty as Mark's place. I already have (thank you Jonathon) daffodils, jonquils, white violets and blue forget-me-nots. And bluebells (thank you, David Prior) . I put in some white cosmos, and the hollyhocks, and I want some nemesia and linaria.

I want it to look quite wild and beautiful and vaguely Italian. 

Glorious morning!

Warm and lovely, but quite windy.

Joss's hollyhocks are going in today (not a great germination rate yet - these came up very early.) They're going under the olive trees to start with,, and when I know what colour they are (in a year or two) the others might go in by the front door  :)

Today is Tuesday, which is Water The Raspberries day. The little sweetpeas I put in as Jonathon suggested by Paul's office are on their way up (I'll water them, too) but there is still no sign of the beans. At least - there is - they're just lying there, being beans. Those climing tomatoes, on the other hand are sprouting up among the stones. I'm going to rescue a coupls just in case the others drown under the lucerne mulching we did.

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:22.5°C	Humidity: 26%	Pressure:1004.5hPa
Feels like: 22.5°C	Wind Speed: 39kp/h (Gusts: 72kp/h)
Dew Point: 2.1°C	Wind Direction: N/A

Two pea pods (both on the massey peas).

Also
Paul handspread 100 k of gypsum on the lawns (400sqm) - and watered it in.

We hear there are nasty fires in Sydney, and temps of 30+. Here it's windy and warm, but pleasant. Our yellow Builder told us not to light any fires, though. I think he suspects that we're stupid city people. He's probably right.

Good morning!

Monday is (amongst other things) Water The Roses and Strawberries Day. As the summer comes on, I'll do that in the mornings, but while the tradies are working out there, leave it till after they've gone.

This is what the working part of the garden looks like right now. We have spinach, chard, kale, lettuce, beetroot, peas, early climbing beans, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes (Jonathons - self-sown: I know it's too early!!! ) broccoli, broccolini, radishes, chillis, sweet chillis, garlic, (Jonathon put it in for us during the settlement phase and it's just about ready for harvest) carrots, pak choy, and the fruit trees - three apples, a prolific orange, a lemon that Jonathon's mother-in-law brought in Forbes. Oh, and the strawberries. And four kinds of thornless berries along the fence and two olive trees. And a nectarine.

And the chickens of course.

Except for Jonathon's work (the layout, the fruit and berries, the garlic, the soil, the compost - god, but we're lucky!) all this is in the very early stages - at the moment we're taking in oranges and leafy greens and that's all. (And the herbs from the herb pots - photos of herbs later.)

Bowral Weather

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:13.6°C	Humidity: 84%	Pressure:1021.8hPa
Feels like: 12°C	Wind Speed: 18kp/h (Gusts: 30kp/h)
Dew Point: 10.9°C	Wind Direction: N/A

Current Observations @ 9/09/2013 8:00:00 AM

FORECASTS
Monday, September 09	10°C - 22°C		Fog then sunny
Tuesday, September 10	14°C - 21°C		Windy
Wednesday, September 11	7°C - 15°C		Mostly sunny
Thursday, September 12	5°C - 14°C		Mostly sunny

Coolish morning today -

and cloudy.

The plum tree has lost its blossom and gone into beautiful pink leaves. Got to identify the white tree - it's so beautiful and full of wrens.

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp: 11.1°C	Humidity: 92%	Pressure: 1026.8hPa
Feels like: 10.4°C	Wind Speed: 7kp/h (Gusts: 9kp/h)
Dew Point: 9.9°C	Wind Direction: N/A

The job today for Paul is to spray (Acelepryn) for grubs, using 90ml for the entire property. Usually this would be done mid-Sept, but we have a lot to get through. . This is the latest in his maintenance jobs - last week he sprayed (Confidor)  for scale on the Viburnum ( broadleafed hedge) at the front and sides.

In June, he and David Prior dead-headed all the front garden plants that required it,. David pruned the roses in late August. 


We drove out to the abandoned saleyards Paul had  found up on the road to the Wombeyan Caves today, and collected the promised fence posts for the new walk into the chamomile lawn. And I got a few for the vegie garden as well.  They are so very pretty  :)  

Fen (AW) mentioned today that blossoms on determinate plant (esp chillies, eggplant, bush tomatoes) should be plucked until the bush has reached 1/2 its adult size.

Imma start a garden journal and keep it here

View to the front garden today. Beautiful, yes?



It's very warm here today.

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:23.7°C	Humidity: 25%	Pressure:1021.8hPa
Feels like: 23.7°C	Wind Speed: 30kp/h (Gusts: 48kp/h)
Dew Point: 2.5°C	Wind Direction: N/A

Despite the advice of the Old Locals, I put some tomatoes in yesterday (not till Labour day! No tomatoes in before Labour day!) and I'm sure they'll be proved right, but honestly how patient am I expected to be? I put in four Black Russian, two Yellow Pear and a Red Grape - all heritage. The Yellow Pears I put into containers (thank you, The Helpful Gardener blog) - and the red grape as well, just to be sure.

I also sowed six Jaune Flamme and six Brandywine.

Tomorrow I'll take a shot of the vegie patch, and note how everything else is going. Also, tomorrow - Jocelyne's hollyhocks go in :)