Backfired!

The kids are cooking for the rest of the week after daring to suggest the other night that they'd rather have two-minute noodles than my home-made chicken soup.
I'm not stepping foot in the kitchen this week as a result.

Oh it's not that they can't cook, they're regular little chefs but tonight it took 3 hours and everyone got half serves 'cause the cat stole a whole chicken breast while people were stuffarsing around. 

It's almost 10pm & no one is showered or ready for bed. 

It's going to be a long, lean week...at least I have the soup.

Bigger IS Better

Just a few days before leaving on holidays my heritage 'Traveller' tomatoes started ripening. The travellers or Riesentraube were named as such because they could be torn apart in pieces and eaten a bit at a time for travellers.
My biggest so far is this .350kg!

Glassy Goods

Mason Jar Salads - my new obsession, although I'm still trying to buy some of the damn bottles so it's an academic obsession at the moment.
I love using glass rather than plastic to keep my food so this idea appeals to me. I also believe that making good food look great encourages healthy eating.
So after a frenetic fb discussion and posts flying back and forth (when I should have been cooking other peoples' food) one of my workmates actually showed up at my place of work with her own (mayonnaise) jar of salad.
Very impressive! Now the ideas are flying around inside my head as I wonder through the garden looking at my green snow peas, purple lettuce, yellow cherry tomatoes and red spring onions.
If only I had the jars! I can see a trip to the closest cheap shop is on the cards.

Toilet Humour

Is it wrong to be utterly impressed by a flushing toilet? To feel completely satisfied by the 'shushing' whirlpool behind you as you bounce a door that never quite shuts behind you.
After months of touting buckets of shower water back and forth from the 'not-quite-outhouse' (a toilet squeezed into a cramped tin-walled alleyway that separates house from shed) I'm inordinately pleased about being about being able to leave behind my business to go get on with business?

Now the shower water runs straight onto the almond, mulberry and fig trees and we've seen new fruit as a result of this new liquid bounty.

Sometimes I fear I really do aim too low.

I should put this all in context: Over the years I've become the queen of 'making do' - not quite enough money to keep up the maintenance work, not enough know-how to do it myself, not enough confidence to give it a try and too much pride to ask someone else to help.

This was all exacerbated in my first marriage where HusbandNumber1 was confident he could 'knock it together' himself. Now, to be fair, his intentions were good and today, with the help of YouTube and smart phones, I'm sure he's a whiz in the world of unblocking cracked clay pipes. But, let's just say that that marriage was a bit of a testing ground for both of us and occasionaly we bombed.

I know this because when MyMan talked about pulling up floors at the Shouse I could see my father's face start to twitch. He remembers the last time he was called in to rescue a damsel in distress whose husband had left her, mid-renovations, with a mortgage she couldn't afford and floors and walls she could see through.

As a result, I think MyMan is haunted by an imaginary deadline any time he begins work at the Shouse. When we discovered the leak in our bedroom ceiling was actually some previous tenant's bucket finally overflowing inside the roof, he was up on the lichen-licked tiles before the rain had cleared with a tarp and weighting tires - which turned into shiny new capping one weekend and a paycheque later.

Upon receiving the good news that his 12-year-old daughter was coming to live with us, it took just a weekend and two late nights to re-stump and replace the floors of what has been 'the kids' room' for more than 40 years and at least three families. One ex-tenant - who has children of his own today - tells us that he and his sister would often joke that with both their beds against walls and the floor peaking up between them, they never had to worry about falling out of bed in the night.

But all these little, well let's call them idiosynchracies, just make me love the Shouse more. I feel like an almost-20-year-old again starting out into the world on my adventures.

At the same time, my almost-40-year-old self is reassured by looking over at the clear stretch of land in front of us, with its sea views and connected utilities, knowing that when the adventure wears thin we've got a plan.

I love a plan. I can keep climbing over most hurdles if I have the horizon in sight. Now, if I can just keep up with MyMan and his deadlines we'll all get there pretty damn soon.

First Failure

My corn is an utter failure. Poo!

About a dozen stalks stand proudly over the rest of my garden, silk tufts flickering like flags in the breeze against the horizon. But it's a fraudulent scene because, beneath the layers of green, instead of juicy golden kernels I have anaemic white cobs with pale, pimply surfaces.

I knew this could happen when only a few stalks shot up and then I threw in a few more. There were too few in flower at the same time, too far apart, together with the vicious East Winds this place is named for...well that was just too much for pollination to overcome.

So, corn is my big challenge for next year.

I resolve to plant lots of it, plant it in its own bed (with beans though, of course, and maybe spinach between the stalks - just on principal) and grow it in blocks (not a wavering, broken row like I have this year).

I planted two varieties this (last) year. I'll do the same again next season, but in separate beds.

In the meantime, I'll keep watching the growing cobs in the hopes that SOME pollinated properly. Optimism, after all, appears to be the Shouse watchword.

Where are the Italians when you need them?

I have four of these little trays on the go at the moment, with a ripening banana sitting on top of each one. And I have just two or three cherry tomatoes ripening up, a roma here and there, an oxheart or two.
The big ribbed giants and the beefsteaks are only just starting to colour up here and there and suddenly I'm starting to panic about the volume of tomatoes going to have in our garden.
I may have to invite my sister-in-law's Nonna over for a month ;)
Other than that, kids, get ready for bruschetta, pizza & tomato salads - there's going to be a lot of them.

Garden Royalty

So my summer harvest has begun in all earnest and I'm starting to panic about the volume of food. My latest success is the purple beans. These are Violet Queens & Purple Kings (bush & climbing).
Sadly, they turn green when cooked - I'm trying to find the fine line between cooked & warm that my children will still eat. The ToddlerTerror isn't as keen on these raw as he is the 'matoes' & 'sorberries'

Here's someone else fascinated by purple vegies and an idea to keep their colour which I'll have to try out - preserving the purple in vegies. I wonder if lemon juice would tenderise them, without cooking out the purple?
A perfect suggestion for my early glut came from My Carolina Kitchen, looking forward to trying this for NYE visitors.
And some great bean recipes.

Back Where I Belong

It's a sunny Saturday & I've spent the morning planting my bean seedlings against a woven bamboo wind break. The plan is that the fast growing beans will provide a windbreak for the tomatoes which are taking a beating...
We will see.

Burgeoning Potential

I've been sidetracked from my garden by inconveniences such as the Black Plague, teen meltdowns and toddler surgery. So, I took a long-cut home past the Shouse the other day to check on my tomatoes. As a result I've been buying tomato cages & pouring on the old Charlie Carp to give my sudden green crop of tomatoes the added boost they need. I laugh at myself, overplanting out of pessimism and now it seems I'm going to need a really great relish recipe because I counted around 60 tomatoes on the first four plants and there's still several dozen to grow (let's call it succession planning, not panic, & pretend I meant it). The peas are done - they were measly but fun anyway, next year I'll plant quadruple the amount much earlier. The sweet potatoes are creeping across the warm ground, just in time for my local Mitre10 and the Yates Garden Guide to all decide to stock information and seedlings. (Bastards, where were they three months ago when I put in my own slips?) The herbs and chard are monstrous but I haven't hacked them back as I keep telling myself I'll get more worms. The sunflowers are up, the corn silks are peeking out, the bean seedlings are rampant and the strawberries still don't get a chance to turn more than pink before they're eaten by my boys. It amazes me that the hot weather has done more for my veg than all my coddling...that and getting mains water & a sprinkler. ...ok, now I need to find that relish recipe.

The Update

So, we've been without internet for a while...but that just meant more time for the Shouse & garden. In addition to the Big Bed, we have more tomatoes in those 'holes' left my my nemesis the earwigs (& milipedes, apparently). I'm going to have to pull out my old ammunition - the beer traps! Sadly, (but not really) MyMan doesn't drink so I may have to hit MyDad's fridge for a soldier to fall on that grenade. I think the native pine is poisoning or overshadowing one of my beds so I may have to rethink what goes in there...I might risk some of the random zucs, cucs and melons I've got left over. The beans have fallen victim to the creepy crawlies so I might be trying them again, perhaps I'll even just throw a few in the failed seedling pots I still have left and pray. But the corn is looking good, about 15cm high some of it. I can tell the difference now between sunflowers and beans now they're past their first few leaves and I've got a few of both surviving. The chickenwire 'trellis' is up for the random peas. One of the herb gardens is infinitely more successful than the other so we know where to plant the tomatoes in the future as my 'spares' are going wild in the Eastern bed tucked between catmint and coriander. Tomatoes in the big pots with basil are booming. Aloe Vera has had too much water, Cardamon has had too much or too little heat, but they're hanging on. MyMan has been busily painting walls and hanging up artwork as directed by me, as well as hauling in those items of furniture from my place that pass both of our approvals for the long-term cohabitation of the Shouse (be buggered if I'm hauling anything in and out of utes that I'm not going to want for the next few years). As a result he's hit himself in the hand with a sledgehammer, slammed his elbow in cramped quarters and nearly put a screw threw his hand trying to drill screws into stone without pilotholes when TheToddlerTerror ran cackling from the room and tossed his $100 drillbit into the washing pile. After folding every piece of washing, moving couches, checking in DVD players (just in case) MyMan waited till payday to replace it (and buy a spare as well) TTT was plucking at the fuzzy blanket I keep over the ugly green couch in MyMan's bedroom and smugly returned to us the bit. MyMan now has THREE expensive drillbits...as well as a drilled hand. TTT has his own playroom, the teens have their own TV & DVD and the place is starting to look like a real home (not a pretty home, but a loved one). We have a PingPong table now and some space to put it now TheOwner has moved his caravan (still waiting on mains water & the removal of 24 bales of mouldy wool though). But moving the van allowed for MyMan to arrange his fishing gear and tools in OCD-approved straight lines on the shed walls. We also have a contract, a deposit and we're waiting on bank approval. Fingers crossed...

Hands-on Honey

*sigh* It is becoming very clear, very quickly, that MyMan's patience for being the brawn to my brains is limited. I can't fault him for his enthusiasm for 'my' garden. He mows, digs, hauls and waters endlessly...but it turns out that creating a chicken wire trellis for the peas doesn't come under his jurisdiction. So at midnight I found myself still clumsily rolling out chicken wire off the reel to staple it to hardened (really hardened) pine poles around already established tomatoes and peas in the flickering light of the security spotties. How exciting to see my 'random peas' turning into plump greenfeast and stunning purple podded dutch. I thought the seedlings were my favourite part of the gardening process...but now it's this part...and the next part.

The Mushroom Monologues

I'm loving my mushrooms. I spent 2 days soaking the logs and worrying that my garden shed (MyMan put his foot down and refused to let me use the bathroom for my fungi project) and now just three days after I first saw the lumps and bumps and tentacles of fungi erupting from the wood, I have a dinner plateful of Asian and European mushrooms. The swiss and white button boxes are filled with tiny little helmet pin-points poking through the compost too, so I'm looking forward to that first flush (although they may be coming home with my to sit under my leaky bathroom sink this week).

The First Rewards

Last night was the first night I felt like I was starting to see the rewards of my garden. I pulled up spring onions and chopped fresh basil into my cheese-covered croissant 'bruscetta' mix. After just three days since sprouting I have a plate full of Asian and European mushrooms - the boxed ones are only just poking their little helmets through the compost but the logs are prickling all over which is very exciting. I'm fascinated by the purple podded dutch peas and the greenfeasts are just swelling on the vines. My 'big bed' has survived the hot winds so I better think quickly what I'm going to do to raise those plants vertically. ...so much to do, so much excitement!

No dig garden? *pshaw*

I hate to be a cliched female driver but I am.
After 11 loads of dirt I've discovered I'm an ambidextrous shoveller...but I still can't reverse a damn trailer.

With that in mind, can I just say that when you next list off the great inventors of our time - Da Vinci, Franklin, Bell and Edison - don't hesitate to include those marvellous men at John Deere who came up with the idea of a trailer for our ride-on mower.
Those guys saved my back (forgetting the shovelling), they saved my partner (surely I would have palmed the job off to him) and my temper.
Again I say...11 LOADS OF DIRT!
'No dig' garden my arse.

That's Love

Over the past week I have set MyMan to digging, building, sawing, relocating, hauling, repairing, watering and pruning.
He's had a list of jobs including hanging pictures, picking up furniture, cleaning out sheds, setting up table tennis tables and burning off rubbish.

After a week of teenless togetherness I thought he'd be happy to watch his Deadliest Catch from bed and eat meat pies for breakfast and be thankful I'd gone home for school days.
But, instead, he was up at dawn today (while I was still tucked up in my own bed one postcode over) dragging a hose up and down the yard from coriander to peas to spuds and then eggplants in order to ensure my little green babies would all survive the hot day.

Now that's love...

The Big Bed

This weekend was a good example of a little success going to my head...
After obsessively counting the tiny spearheads of corn poking up through the mulch (13) and calculating how many potential cobs that adds up to (39) and meticulously measuring every miniscule increase in the size of my earliest garden additions - herbs, lettuce, peas & tomatoes.
After stalking the spuds' progress and frantically photographing every new development - a single purple peapod, a handful of the first flowers on the tomatoes, a single burgeoning phallic mushroom on the logs.
After all those small successes I decided that I - proven gardener that I am - was ready for 'the big bed'.
It had to be big, Big, BIG because of the growing collection of squash and cucs in my seedling collection that needed rehousing.

Turns out MyMan wasn't thinking as big as me and wasn't too impressed to spend the last weekend of the holidays (and the first half of Bathurst trials) banging together reclaimed paling in 50 degree fly-ridden heat for my garden edging. All of which resulted in both a sledgehammer to the webbing between his thumb and fingers and a bruised elbow from trying to saw next to the owner's caravan up against the workbench.

The tension escalated when he realised I wouldn't want the four 1m x 1m beds he'd envisioned, but instead I was gunning for a 3m x 9m bed that stretched the width of our 'lawn'.
To punish me for my grandiose schemes he left me to fill the beds myself - 11 trailer loads of dirt, 5 sacks of poo and half a tank of water later, me and my wobbly arms were ready to put the babies to bed.
...and that's when the 90km per hour easterly winds blew up.

With a full agenda of cleaning, washing, and three hour roundtrip roadtrip to pick up children from their Dad on my schedule, I wasn't able to postpone the bedding and my poor babies now really understand the meaning of 'hardening off'. What ever survives this week out there is going to be the very definition of 'concrete'.

To recap, I had got up at 6am in 90km per hour winds and piercing (strangley unseasonal) sleet so I'd have the three hours I needed to plant, plan and mulch.
I've overplanted...but then I'm expecting a high casualty rate.
The tap was running constantly so that my peastraw was soggy enough to stay still and it'll be weeks before I find out whether I protected the seedlings or smothered them. The juries out at this stage.

And it'll be another 24 hours before I can head back to the block and survey my work in daylight.
About then I can assess any obvious disasters and, hopefully, gloat over all that delicious green potential nestled down amongst the pea straw in thein big, Big, BIG bed.

Vertical Gardening

Now that the 'big bed' is finally complete and, in true obsessive style, I've overplanted it with tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicum all in the same bed - which, some would suggest, is not ideal - I'm really having to look at vertical gardening.

This 'issue' was highlighted when MrOCD nearly had a conniption about me turning his four 1mx1m bed plan into a giant 3m x 9m bed.
I could see him experiencing actual physical pain as he surveyed my kinked rows and unlabeled cucs & zuchs tucked in between my tomatoes & eggplants.

With the new bed, quality soil, nutrients and plenty of water I'm not too worried about the plants robbing each other of nutrients yet - but I am worried about them strangling each other.
I'm not prepared to deal with mildew or blossomrot. I'm concentrating too hard right now just getting plants to grow past seedling stage.

When I started loading the plants in, I had this wonderful idea that cucumber etc would act as 'living mulch' for my tomatoes, but now I'm concerned about the need for ventilation and access...all the things I wouldn't have had to worry about if I had just adhered to the 'plant 50cm apart' instructions.
(To be fair, they are 50-70cm apart from each other .... but not from the squash and zuchs interspersed between them.)

So I've checked out a few clips for vertical gardening including some of these ones:
Tomato Clips & Cucumber Frames
Cucumbers on Trellis & Cages
15 Ways to Grow Tomatoes Up

I know at Diggers I've seen woven grids of bamboo to support vertical cucumbers etc, something similar to what they're showing at The Gardeners Supply Co.

I'm going to put my faith in Go, Grow Organic's companion planting list that suggests that, as long as you have enough nutrients and water, cucumbers and tomatoes will be fine together.
Fingers crossed!

But because next year, they tell me, is going to be dry THEN I'll be more OCD, I promise.
And if it all goes south, well that's why we're calling this year a trial year...that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Another Job For Delegation

I've just realised what a great time this is to start a rain diary at the property.
MyMan was most upset on the weekend to find that both his rain guages had different results and even made a phone call to neighbours to check which one was most likely correct.
So, I think I will purchase him a little diary and he can start keeping our garden weather record.
Yup - definitely a job for the man of the Shouse.

Something to Think About...

Looking at the vast array of seeds in my collection, and thinking back over the many times I've handed them out to friends, schools, kindy...well, it made me think when I came across an entry in Nadja's Blog about onselling seed for both herself and Greenpatch.

My garden's seeds are viable (as proven in my window boxes) and there's always a small demand isn't there?
Maybe nothing huge but that's the joy of living in a country community where once or twice every month you can flick open a card table at a fete or market or church sale.

Is this an option for me?
Could I be a seed saver in the future?

And how about that article I read about growing and selling herbs - which, hey, I could do?

I mean, let's face it, I don't have ANYTHING to show for it yet, but I just bought myself a 'vermihut' online and 3000 red, blue and tiger worms so I could even sell worms for people's gardens and fishing...hypothetically.

I could be a garden entrepeneur!
I could sell herbs and limes to my local pubs, lemons to the local fish & chip shop, I could set up a herb stall at the local church stalls and package up my little seeds (let's face it, I'm more likely to let things go to seed than get there in time to sell the actual produce).

But what about all that waffling around with camel-hair brushes and gauze boxes and paper bags rubber-banded over the heads of onion flowers? Am I up to that when I haven't even got my random peas in the soil yet?

Oh, the big dreams.
But, it's something to think about eh?

Ultimate Mushroom Lovers Inc.

It's been a week!
From online order to PayPal to fungi.net.au and their faraway realworld site (which I imagine is dark and moist and mysterious) to Australia Post and back to me...OK, a week's not a long time, all things considered, but I hate waiting! *insert child-in-the-back-seat-on-the-way-to-a-birthday-party moan here*

I'm waiting for my ultimate mushroom lovers combo kit.
Am I an ultimate mushroom lover? Maybe not.
Am I fascinated with how they grow and over the moon that I can now try growing the hardwood parasitic versions as well as my standard buttons-in-a-box babies? Why yes I am!

According to the fun guys at fungi.net.au *tee hee*:
The Ultimate Mushroom Lovers combo will set you apart as a serious mushroom grower.
Enjoy an extended period of growth from your pack and grow year round.
White Button and Swiss brown kits will store well at room temperature and Shiitake and Oyster bags will store fresh in the fridge until ready to use.
You'll be the envy of your friends with your abundance of fresh produce.

Did you read that, all my friends? Be prepared to be envious...in another three to 12 days, assuming prompt postage.