Garden and Growing | picklebums.com

March 11, 2010 | Filed in: Garden and Growing

We have some new residents at the Pickle Farm.

Two weekends back I took a deep breath and did a brave thing. I bought four young hens from the farmers market.

It might not sound like a very brave thing but since we’ve been loosing chooks to the dreaded chicken plague (aka mereks disease), slowly, one after the other, over the past eighteen months, to begin replacing them is a little scary. We were down to just four laying hens, and between the old age and the broodiness we’ve had long long patches with no eggs at all. So it was time.

We decided on four 10 week old hens from the lovely young girls with their organic chook business, figuring that since their blood line has not been vaccinated for Mereks that they hopefully have some genetic resistance. Being young they didn’t cost us much either, so if they do succumb, while it will be frustrating, we won’t be throwing away piles of money.

Naming rights were shared around… one for Zoe, one for Izzy, one for Muski and one for me. Which seemed fair until the girl’s began to slowly but surely work at influencing all of us to name them what they wanted. They went with Midnight (the black one) and Star (the white one) and then lobbied for two more names that worked with their current night sky theme…. Sparkles and Moon. Not so horrific after all.. though Muski is still calls his ‘Rose Dinosaur’ when the big girls are not around.

So far they are settling in well, at the bottom of the back yard pecking order. They are yet to be introduced to Hamlet the rooster and the two old layers. I think they might need a bit more size on them before running with the big girls. Fingers crossed they grow up to be good strong layers and we can begin to replenish our stock from their fertile eggs.

Plague be gone!

Autumn in the Garden.

March 9, 2010 | Filed in: Garden and Growing

I am a fair weather gardener. I don’t like the cold, and I certainly don’t like to be outside in the garden when it’s cold or wet. But spurred on by reading Animal Vegetable Miracle (finally) and by a little something Jackie French said in her Backyard Sustainability book, for the first time ever, I am looking at seed catalogues and planning an Autumn planting.

I’m only half way through reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, but I am already struck by how short their growing season is. I have always whined about how difficult our climate can be here with crazy late frosts then scorching summers, but that is nothing to the months of snow and frozen earth that this family is coping with. The shear volume of food they seem to be able to grow in such a short period made me feel kind of guilty, and quite a bit inspired.

Our winters are cold, but not so cold that we can’t grow things.

Then there is Jackie French’s idea that just made so much darn sense to me- “When you harvest something, plant something else in it’s place.” Not only does that take care of dealing with weeds that grow on any patch of bare dirt around here, but it also means there will always be something growing and something to eat, hopefully.

So here I am, going through the seeds we already have, and those we have saved, to see what I can plant now. Trying to remember where I put the left over seed raising mix and trying to clear a space on the window sill to start a few seeds.

It seems kind of crazy since at the moment we are finally seeing some abundance from our spring/summer crops. We have tomatoes (no matter how early put them in they never fruit till March!?!?) and zucchinis a plenty, plus spring onions, radishes, potatoes and maybe even our first popping corn!

At the same time I am planting silver beet, spinach, broccoli, peas, carrots, parsnips and some other bits and pieces. It’s not a lot and who knows if they will grow, since I’ve never attempted this in autumn before, but hopefully we’ll get something back for our efforts!

Is anyone else planting an Autumn garden? What are you putting in?
And for those of you on the other side of the world, what are you planning for spring??

Garden review – Summer Harvest.

February 18, 2010 | Filed in: Garden and Growing

At this time of year we should be reaping the benefits of our veggie garden. We should be watching things ripen and eating from our garden every day. This year though, things are a little blah on the garden front.

We’ve had set back after annoying little set back with the garden this season. Nothing major but enough to notice a definite lack of produce and to encourage a bit of a rethink on the way we do things.

The problem?

A combination of a few things. Crows digging out all our early seedlings, my bad back and then weeks spent dying of early pregnancy have all contributed. Then with all the rain among the warm days a strange prolific weed took over when I wasn’t looking and the late tiny seedlings have struggled to compete.

It’s not all bad.

As usual the zucchinis are not letting us down, with more big green monsters than we know what to do with! The rhubarb, as always, is going strong and we’ve got radishes and some herbs and lots of green tomatoes, and some fabulous bee attracting flowers.

On the downside we have two measly pumpkins, and only one or two cucumbers that may or may not ripen before the frosts come. We might get some corn if the weather is good to us, but our sunflower crop is just dismal and so are the beans.

It’s kind of depressing, but I’ve been working on ‘making the best of things’ and taking this as a sign that we need to change our ways.

I really think we’ve bitten off more than we can chew in the size of our veggie garden (it is rather huge) and how we plant it. The Baldy Boy doesn’t have the time to put into the up keep and every year I think that next year I’ll be able to spend more time out there keeping things under control, but every year something pops up that makes things difficult. We need to downsize and look at how we plant and use the space to minimise weed issues and optimise plant growth.

I got Jackie French’s book ‘Backyard Self Sufficiency’ for Christmas and it was the perfect gift, with the perfect message at the perfect time. We don’t need a HUGE veggie garden to grow all the food we want to grow. We could fit so much more into a smaller space and have it work so much better for us. Just because we have the space doesn’t mean we have to spread everything out and use it!

So we are downsizing the veggie garden, packing loads more into less space and hopefully it will be easier for me to maintain. We’ll still use the big space we have for growing things. We are looking at some chook food plants that we can sow in a large area and mostly leave to themselves, a few cover crops/green mulch like clover, oats and peas, and maybe down the track a BIG planting of sunflowers for oil, or another ‘big area’ crop. But the high maintenance veggies will go into a smaller section and I’m feeling much more positive about that!

So here’s to a new outlook, new motivation and lots of good home grown stuff!

How about you? How is your garden growing?

One Chick Wonder.

January 19, 2010 | Filed in: Garden and Growing

chick_dot

That cute little bundle of fluff is ‘Dot’, so named by the girls to match up with his/her older sister, Dash. She hatched about a week ago and is being clucked over by her doting surrogate mother, Jasmine, our little Wyandotte Bantam.

This is the second hatchling for Jasmine (Dash was her first). Neither of her hatchlings are actually her chicks. They are fathered by our big, black, gentle, rooster, Hamlet and their mothers are one of the old Isa Brown refugees we inherited a long time ago – we have no idea which ones. Sadly for Jasmine none of her eggs ever seem to be fertile, I think she is just too small for such a handsome but huge rooster.

Jasmine is a fabulous mother, except for one thing, she only ever hatches one chick. This time around we had two eggs that were definitely fertile, last time there were three, but as soon as one egg hatches Jasmine gets up and leaves the others to the cold. I’m sure it’s not her fault. I think her timing is confused because they are not her eggs. We popped them under her a few days after she’d laid her clutch, when we first noticed she’d gone clucky and I think that throws her off.

Still one chick is better than none since the refugee girls are old and have stopped laying again. Marshmellow (our white silky bantam fluff ball) is also sitting on eggs (also not hers), though I am not certain either of them are fertile.

So perhaps we’ll be building up our laying flock one chick at a time… provided they don’t turn out top be boys!

It’s a Duck Problem

January 14, 2010 | Filed in: Garden and Growing

We have a duck problem, or should that be a problem duck.

madduck

Bubble (the brown one) was always the most affectionate of the pair. Even as a little fluff ball he was the one that would snuggle up to you, and when he grew up and moved outside he’d still come over to say hello and have a pat and a chat. Squeak (the white one) is tame but more timid.

So all was good in the land of the pickle-ducks until a few weeks ago when Bubble’s gentle, friendly, hello, nibbles became hard, ouchy, hello, bites! These days no one can go into the veggie garden without him waddling madly towards them to try and nibble at their clothes, feet, legs… and don’t even try to bend down to pull out a weed or you’ll be sorry. He’s biting so hard he’s leaving massive bruises and occasionally drawing blood – which is a mean feat for a rounded ducky beak!

So now we are wondering what to do about Bubble the Mad Duck.

There have been some suggestions that we should take him along to the local Chinese restaurant and offer him up with a ‘please cook this’. They do a mean crispy fried spicy duck that we all love! But I don’t think any of us are ready for anything quite that drastic…yet.

As it turned out, we are almost 100% sure both ducks are boys. The books said two boys together would be ok as long as there were no girl ducks, but I don’t think it’s working out for Bubble and Squeak. I think Bubble’s over enthusiasm is just a longing for love, and it seems that Squeak just doesn’t quack that way.

I think Bubble needs a girlfriend.

So that leaves us wondering a) would anyone like to swap a boy duck for a girl duck and b) Do we keep bubble and hope he settles down when he finds true love or trade him in for a girlfriend for the more quiet squeak?

Any duck experts out there want to offer some suggestions?… or recipes?

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