No Dig Vegie Patch

We've finally done it! The no dig garden in my imagination for so long has finally become an actual thing in real life! Like most things, I learned a lot by researching on the internet and in books, but I topped off that learning by actually DOING it. I've now realised a few things I'd do differently next time, but like they say - live n learn!

Our good friends Ruth & Maddie putting Melissa's (horse's!) poo on top of the wet newspaper.
We made the edging for the no dig garden out of corrugated iron & hardwood from a local reclaimed building supply centre.
The only new thing is the screws to hold it altogether!

Let the planting begin!
We had bought some bales of hay and straw for Geoff's 40th earlier in the year, and they've been slowly rotting in the backyard ever since, waiting for us to clear the weeds and get our no dig garden ready. They're now nicely gross, ready to decompose further and provide beautiful nutrients for our plants to hopefully thrive in!



The chooks went a wee bit crazy with excitement at the opportunity to consume vast quantities of bugs from under where the bales of hay had been sitting for some months. Woo hoo! Bugs into eggs - can't complain about that!



Let there be a worm farm - in the middle of the garden!
Thanks Toni for paying for a permaculture design course so I could scab some good ideas off you! :)
The idea is that you cover the PVC pipe with a tile so it's nice and dark inside, you place food scraps in the pipe from time to time, and the little wormies crawl through the holes that are under soil level, get the food, and go back into the soil to do their "business", adding the fertiliser right where it's needed, without any need for me - a la worm-a-phobe - to have to actually touch or look at them! :)

Lookin good

Geoff, D & M built a trellis out of bamboo from our friend's backyard, for our sugar snap peas to climb up. 

A work of art :)

Baby sugar snap pea plant, ready to climb up up and away!

Success! (With the addition of some finer plastic trellis attached to the bamboo.)
Lesson learned: it would have been better to put the trellis on the north-facing side of the garden, rather than the east-facing.
Notice how the peas on the northern (right hand) side of the trellis are growing more quickly cuz they get more sunlight?
Live n Learn - it's all good :)
As Albert Einstein said: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried..."

I thought this was our first red strawberry, but was informed that there HAVE been others.
At least they've been enjoyed! :)

We have..... FIGS!

To our delight, we have discovered that the the little green figs on our figtree have become large-ish, more colourful, soft, ripe fruit! Yum...... :)

Out of the whole family, Miss M likes the figs the best.....

Of course, the trick was getting to them before the birds. Mind you, I'm figuring that the ones the birds get to first are at least going to a worthy cause! However, in an effort to try to keep at least SOME figs for ourselves (I know - how incredibly selfish of us!), my good friend Melissa came to the rescue again, this time with some bird netting. Unfortunately, there isn't quite enough of it, so the birds still get under it and eat all the blessed fruit they like! At least they manage to get back out again, rather than getting stuck. Me thinks the bird netting might as well come down, and next time we'll get a larger piece!

P.S. Thanks to the neighbour's visiting tradies for the loan of the ute. They were paid with free figs, of course!

 

Whoops...............

Some new additions to the fam... :)

So.... today was the day we bit the bullet, went for a beautiful country drive, and bought ourselves 6 little day-old chicks! SUCH an exciting moment. We're really nowhere near ready for them, but my friend Melissa was going out to this great breeder to buy some ducklings and suggested I come with her and get started on our chicken adventure! Nothing like a bit of pressure to get those weeds & asbestos removed, and a chook house built! At least for now they can live in our laundry at night and in a spare rabbit hutch during the warm summer days! They're SOOOOOO cute. We got one for each membe of the fam, although at this stage T & B are insisting they're not at all interested. But I'm sure the girls will win them over with their charms.

And I have to say it's also a little bit exciting to have the power balance change in the female direction, in this formerly-testosterone-fuelled household! Molly's been wishing for a sister for a long time, so now she gets SIX!! That makes 8 girls in the family now, in a funny kind of way. Actually, 12 if you count the mice. But then I suppose we'd have to count the male rabbit & dog, but I still think the girls win. Hang on while I add it up...... YES! Girls:12  Boys: 6  :)

No, it's not dead; it's asleep!! I walked in to the laundry and Miss M was singing the "Hush, Little Baby" lullaby to her chicken. Looks like it worked!

Night night
Sleep tight
Don't let the bed bugs bite

Mission-Weed-Destroy!

When we moved into our rental property, there was a big section up the back of the yard that was full of knee-high weeds. It didn't look pretty. But it looked better then than it does now! Before we knew it, the weeds had just about taken over the back section of the yard and grown to be taller than me!!! (And I'm not short LOL). Mate, it was a jungle out there! And VERY overwhelming.

One day my good friend Melissa came and we got started on mission-weed-destroy! We removed the weeds from along the garage wall, and to our dismay discovered that underneath them were massive root systems - basically, they were tree trunks sawn off just above ground level! It seemed our problem was even bigger than we'd at first thought! I have to admit I felt pretty disheartened. And more so when all the weeds grew back again! (I won't forget how sore my arms were after the day of hacking into the weeds, and it was pretty annoying that it was all for nothing!)

My mission then became about finding out what the weeds actually were and how to get rid of them. I really didn't want to have to use poison, especially because we plan to grow food on this land, and also just because I like to do things a la naturally, as much as possible.

After much internet research I discovered that the weeds are a category 3 noxious weed called Green Cestrum which grows as high as 3 foot. It spreads most rapidly during spring (when we moved in) and also spreads more if the trunk is chopped down but not fully removed or poisoned. The previous owners had obviously chopped down quite a few of these bushes/trees, which has actually made the problem worse. Bummer!

Anyway, our lovely landlord, James, ended up offering to join us in a working bee, so yesterday was the day we donned out workboots and got stuck into it (AGAIN!). This time we managed to remove 3 entire root systems as well as a whole bunch of the spreading weeds. We've really only just begun, but at least we know how to tackle it now!

Here's a small section of the yard, showing some of the weed spread and a small section that's been cleared:

And here's one of the weed clusters, showing the exposed root system.

GOING........

GOING.......

GONE!! Woo Hoo!!!!

Look at the nasty buggers we pulled out. Bigger than your average bindii, hey!

But..... as is often the case, we discovered a beautiful silver lining. Look at the gorgeous little gem we found hidden amongst the weeds, just ready for us to train up the garage wall! A pretty little wisteria vine seedling (of course, this photo shows it still surrounded by weeds, but it is now free!) Yay! :)

Garden Surprises!

Our little passionfruit plant looked a bit sad for a while there, but seems to be doing ok now, in spite of a lack of attention! Meanwhile, I thought I'd tell you that a little while ago we found what appears to be figs growing on what appears to be a fig tree! They look and smell like figs; let's hope when they're ripe that they taste like figs too! I think a fig feast will be in order, and we might need some friends to help us eat them, cuz there are SO many!

Today I also found another surprise treasure growing in a pot of lovely compost given to us by our good friends, Tim & Ruth Schloss. As you can see, the tomato plant we'd planted in the compost is dead (whoops) but look what IS growing!

If you can identify it, let me know! To me, the most novice of all gardeners, it looks perhaps like some kind of climbing bean or pea? It definitely has tendrils, and a cute little yellow flower that I hope will grow into something edible!

Backyard Wasteland to Edible Food Garden

We recently had to move house (3rd time in 2 and a half years) because (again) our landlord sold our house. This time we're in a long-term rental with a wonderful landlord who wants us to use the yard for chooks, vegies etc. Yes, that's right: he WANTS us to! This is a dream come true for us, because we've wanted to do something like this for SO long, but it's usually difficult when renting.

The challenge is that the backyard currently has a massively overgrown weed problem, coupled with plain grass on top of hard dirt! The weed problem has been overwhelming & getting us down a bit, and as we've started to get rid of them we've discovered an even bigger problem: huge root systems (as in, TRUNKS!) that we're going to need to get rid of too!

Whilst feeling overwhelmed and disheartened about that, we figured it might help if we actually PLANTED something! So today we did it. Weplanted a passionfruit vine!! We chose the one part of the yard where there actually ISN'T weeds, which made it heaps easier.

It took us so long to work out the best way of doing that (and in the end we've pretty much just bunged it in), that I'm a bit worried how long it's going to take us to do the rest LOL! I tend to read LOTS and plan LOTS and do LITTLE. My ideas and planning can paralyze me. I tend to spend so much time planning and learning, that I hold back from actually "doing".

So yeah, it's going to be a huge learning curve for all of us. But fun along the journey too, I hope. And in the end?  Well, you never know, we just might end up with some food to eat! :)