Pumpkin Harvest - Part 1!

I posted about a week ago about the pumpkin vines taking over the front garden. Well, just before the official start of Autumn yesterday, they weather seemed to be getting a bit cooler (turned out that was just to lull us into complacency before the end of season heatwave the last two days!), I started to think of getting the autumn planting into the ground. Of course, that was next to impossible with the pumpkin vine crawling over everything. The ideal is to let your pumpkins stay on the vines until they die off, then harvest. This means the skins get nice and hard, and the pumpkins will keep for longer. However, a few questions lead to the fact that pumpkin vines may not, in fact, die off here in Brisbane, where we get no harsh winter weather or frosts. And certainly mine are showing no signs of slowing down!

So DH put on his gumboots and gloves, and braved the pumpkin vine jungle to see what he could find. All up, 9 mature and ripe pumpkins, and at least another half a dozen that need a few more weeks. Luckily I've found a space around the side of the house for the first autumn planting, so these can have a little longer. I mean, really, can you ever have to many pumpkins?

Feburary - In the Garden

February, like December and January, has mostly just been too hot for gardening! The rain we've had in the last few weeks has meant that it's cooled down enough to get out there a little in the morning and evening, and most of that time has been spent pulling out the weeds that have been growing like, well, weeds. Luckily some of the plants have been growing likewise, without any attention from me. In fact, I'm surprised that we're actually starting to get a decent amount of food out of the block to supplement our diets. The chickens are back to laying 2-3 eggs a day, which is just enough for us for now. Hopefully there will be even more as the weather cools down though. Still, it has meant that we haven't had to buy a single egg since they started laying! That's been five months now!

The front garden has been taken over by volunteer pumpkin vines that I somehow missed pulling out. They sprout themselves from seeds in the compost, and being a small area, I tried to pull them out, but these took hold after it was too hot to do much. They've covered pretty much the entire area, smothering even the watermelons. They haven't been too good since the first half dozen though, either too ripe, not ripe enough or not enough water. We're still getting a few though, and being fresh and organic, I'd still rather eat them than store bought ones. Again, we haven't bought a watermelon since we harvested our first one!

My guess is that there are at least 20 or more JAP (short for Just A Pumpkin) pumpkins, some bigger than my head!

There's even some hanging from the vines that have climbed up the front fence! Looks like we will have heaps of pumpkins this year too. And they are so sweet! We've had two so far, and looking forward to lots more. Apparently JAP pumpkins only keep for 4-5 months, as they have a thinner skin than other varieties, but I'm sure these will be long gone by then! I'm hoping to keep them on the vines until they die off, as apparently they will keep longer this way. The vines are showing no signs of dying off yet though, still producing little pumpkins, so we'll have to see how that goes. It will be time to get the autumn/winter planting in the ground soon!

I cooked up the last of the frozen strawberries from our garden a week or so ago. Made a mere 4 bottles of jam! I also found several bags of cut up mango from a tray I bought last year, and since they still seemed good, I cooked them up for some mango jam/butter. Mmm, delicious! So sweet I can't eat more than a bite, but very very nice.

Hopefully the jam will see us through until the first harvest of rosella's, which shouldn't' be long now. These bushes down the side of the house are doing far better than the scraggly ones I had up the back last year. Should get lots of jam out of them! Best of all, DD will actually eat it (she normally only eats strawberry), because it is pink! You can see our small bamboo plant in this picture too, it's on the left, being smothered by the rosella's! But growing none the less. I wish I could say the same about the potatoes, that were in between these straw bales. I have no idea if it was the weather or what, but they just didn't do well. Still, I did get one meal out of one plot, so hopefully I'll get some more once I get to the rest of them. I have some of our own tiny potatoes that have sprouted now, so they'll be going in the ground (in a different area) soon. Hopefully they'll do better than this lot.

My latest planting of cotton is getting flowers and bolls. It's down the side of the house, just to the left of the bamboo and rosella's. Unfortunately, the neighbour's horses took a liking to some weeds growing there, and lent over the fence and ate them, along with some of the cotton plants! Not sure if I will be able to salvage much or not. The plants up in the garden that I planted last year have cotton bursting out of them, but since it has gotten wet, it's not very usable. (And I can't really get to it because of the weeds, oops.)

My passionfruit vine is finally taking off, and we're getting about half a dozen lovely yellow passionfruit a week. They are so sweet, not sour at all, unlike most of the passionfruit you buy. I was really surprised to find that these were the yellow passionfruit, as I thought the plant taking over the trellis was the purple one. (I planted one of each.) Hoping we get some purple ones eventually too.

Sadly, I was too busy with other things to harvest most of the corn that I went to such an effort to save after a nasty storm, but I left the plants standing, and a couple of days ago picked off all the ears and shucked the seeds off them. There were only about 5, so I was really surprised to get this many seeds! Plenty to plant next year! (And if I have leftovers, I'm sure the chickens would love them!

Hopefully there will be lots more garden posts coming up soon now that the weather is starting to cool. Getting all this produce from very little effort has really made me want to get out into the garden and get it producing again!

I will also have to post pics of my orchard, just as soon as we mow it. It's kind of hard to see the tress for the grass right now. Oops. But hopefully soon we might have a ride-on mower, which will make the job a LOT easier!

Sugar Cane

I've been trying to get hold of some sugar canes for growing for a while, but most of the online places won't ship to Queensland (because of quarantine I would assume, since a lot of sugar cane is grown here), so I haven't had much luck. That's why I was quite excited when I saw some at the markets on Sunday. They had normal canes, I assume for people to try, and some canes with leaves still on them for growing. I bought 4, and at 50c each, I thought they were quite a bargain!

Unfortunately, with the dentist appointment this week, we haven't had a chance to plant it, and it only went into the ground this afternoon. I don't know much about planting it, but the advice from my mum coincided with what I could find online, so I cut it into lengths, and put it in the ground on it's side.

Apparently, the new growth comes from these little buds on the side. Hopefully it will grow, and if not, I only lost $2.

One recommendation though, if you're going to try this, make sure you wear gloves. I didn't initially, and ended up with lots of very fine, very small, very painful hairs stuck into my hand. Ouch.

From the Garden

Tonight's Dinner

Despite the lack of care in the last few months, the garden is still quietly producing away. I ducked out to pick these to add to tonight's dinner. The pumpkin is self sowed up near the fruit trees, the corn has been looking after itself since it was planted (probably not going to get much out of it, but looks like we should get at least a little), and the zucchini plants are taking over the front garden (along with the watermelons and more self-sowed pumpkins).

I'm trying to develop a liking for zucchini, but so far it's not going well. They don't taste exactly bad, but I can't find anything to actually like about them yet, so I'm making do with hiding them under other vegies (mashed potato works well) or in other things, like the delicious pasta sauce below. Because no matter how bland they taste, there is one thing I can say about zucchini's, they sure are easy to grow in large numbers!

This is the pasta sauce I made yesterday completely from our home grown tomatoes. Actually, this is the leftover sauce that I put into the freezer after using the rest of it to cook up enough mince and sauce to do 3 meals, plus leftovers! Tomatoes, like zucchini's, are something we can easily grow plenty of. In fact, I really must go out and pick the next lot to add to the freezer tomorrow morning!

This afternoon I went out and picked a bunch of cow peas. I planted these on the side of the chook run back in the beginning of summer, and have looked at them drying the last few weeks, wondering if they were edible (I bought them mainly for the chooks), and after a bit of research today, it seems like they are. I picked all these in only a few minutes, and there are probably about this many again on the vines.

Shelling them left me with quite a bowl full of dried cow peas (which I'm pretty sure are actually a bean, not a pea!) Not sure exactly what I'll do with them yet, probably add them to a soup, stew or mince dish, but it's kind of cool to have all these when I hadn't really expected it. They are quite prolific (I only planted about 20 or so plants), way more so than other types of beans, and on top of that they are doing a great job shading my chook pen!

New Year, New Enthusiasm.

Regular readers may have noticed that this blog has been rather quiet through November/December. In part, this was due to the fact that these have been very busy months for our family. November was taken up with writing, December with frantic Christmas preparations. On top of that, the weather has been hot, hot and more hot, with lots of rain thrown into the mix. Very little chance for gardening, for even if we braved the heat to plant, what is going to grow in this weather? (Other than the watermelons, which are doing great!)

And now, here we are in 2009, wondering what we are going to do this year. Well, we are hoping for some lifestyle changes, mainly in the form of a new job for DH. Closer to home would be great, but is unlikely due to the lack of jobs in his field nearby. Mainly though, we are hoping for some more regular hours, less stress, and hopefully a bit more flexibility.

DH and I have been talking too, and are looking at ways to further reduce our expenses on the basis that saving $100 is worth more than making an extra $100. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, think on it. For starters, of the $100 extra you make, a large percentage is immediately gone in tax. Not to mention the GST you're not paying simply by not buying something.

With this in mind, it will be back to making, mending and growing this year. I'm itching for the weather to cool down enough to plant something, but think I'll realistically have to wait until mid February at least. In the meantime though, there are some fruit trees that still need to be planted out (from before November!), mowing to do, fruit trees to mulch etc etc, so plenty to keep me busy. On the sewing front, I'm finally getting around to finishing those t-shirts for DD, making more shopping bags (and I've just had the brainwave to recycle my old green bags, which are more than a little the worse for wear, into stiffening in various projects), some swimming togs for DD (from second hand swimming tops), and no doubt many other things. I need to get back into preserving, before all this wonderful summer fruit is done for the year, including cooking up all the tomatoes that are languishing in my freezer (cooked up one lot last night though, and they were delish!). I need to cook more from scratch, and start figuring out how to use all this garden produce. I also have lots and lots of wool that needs to be spun ready for the winter knitting frenzy.

On the financial front, hopefully we'll have more no-spend months, do some budgeting maybe, and hopefully, 2009 will be the year that we pay off the credit card for good. We've paid it off before, but it is only this time, through dint of paying it off bit by bit the slow hard way, that we have actually changed our spending habits enough to know we are not going to run it straight back up again. Then we can work on saving, and beginning paying extra on the home loan. Exciting stuff.

I also need to get working on organising the house, decluttering, making curtains for the windows, rugs for the floors, that sort of thing.

And last, but not least, I have to get a plan in place for DD's first official year of homeschooling. She is due to start prep this year, which is not compulsory in Queensland, so we will be running our own program (at this stage), including lots of getting out and joining groups, excursions, and other fun stuff.

So stay tuned for a hopefully action packed 2009!

Summer Harvest

I must admit, the garden has been sadly neglected in this heat. Luckily we're getting reasonably regular rain, because I haven't even been watering it. Went out this afternoon in the cool of the evening, and picked these. I planted 20 Roma tomato seeds a few months ago, and they have just produced and produced. This was just today's pickings, and because I haven't been out recently, there were just as many rotting on the ground. Guess I won't have to plant seeds again next season! Surprisingly we haven't had much trouble with bugs or anything, perhaps because in my laziness I didn't even stake them, and the plants are just heaps on the ground, with the tomatoes protected under all the leaves? Whatever the reason, I have a freezer full of tomatoes. Think it's about time I had a pasta sauce preserving session.

I didn't pick this watermelon today, but it's sitting there all ripe and ready to pick. Just as soon as I finish the one in the fridge that I picked a few days ago. You can tell when a watermelon is ready to pick because the curl at the point where the stalk joins the vine dies off. From the nine seeds I planted this year, looks like we'll have enough watermelons that we won't need to buy anymore this summer. And they're staggered enough that they won't ripen all at once either, should be just about right. And my goodness, they are DELICIOUS. A store bought watermelon has nothing on one you grow yourself, let me tell you.

Apparently my grandfather, who was a farmer in the Mary Valley when my mum was a girl, said the trick to a good watermelon is lots of water while they're growing, then stop watering in the last week so that the sugar can develop. Which, funnily enough, is exactly what these ones had. We had rain on average 2-3 times a week for the initial growth period, then in the last few weeks, only once a week or so. Couldn't have arranged it better if I'd tried!

So, just to remind myself, next year I again have to plant about 20 Roma tomatoes, and about 9 watermelons!

Watching and Waiting...

Remember the raised garden bed where I planted 9 watermelon seeds? Well, there is no sign of the raised bed itself now, and it's starting to send out feelers into the bed next to it!

There are two big watermelons, about 20+ cm long now, and dozens of smaller ones. They're growing so fast with all this rain we're having (thunderstorms 3 times a week or so I'd say), that they almost seem to double overnight. I'm hoping these big ones will be ready in time for Christmas, but they might not make it.

I think next year though, I'll plant the watermelons up the back, they are really a little too big for the area at the front. We're constantly stepping over watermelon vines. But then again, who cares if it means they get to eat yummy, juicy watermelons?

We do have another problem though. Our Biolytix wastewater treatment system is in the corner, right near these vines, and we had our first service a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately there is storm water getting into the tank, and the solution is to dig it up, and concrete it in. I'm hoping there will be some way for them to get to it that doesn't involve running a large piece of machinery over my watermelons (and the rest of the garden). Either that, or they don't get around to it until after we've eaten them all!

Rasberries

With all the heat and rain, the rasberries have been busy growing. Remember back in September when I planted them and they looked like this? On the right is the rasberries, on the left are the beans I planted. Brown beauty. Not the greatest eating raw bean I don't think, but maybe they'll taste better cooked?

Although most of it is green leaves, there are the occasional immature berry laden branches like these. Don't quote me on it, but I believe rasberries fruit on last year's growth?

And, hidden down the back, some of these.

Not too many, just a taste.

You may have noticed that posts on here have been rather few and far between lately. Truth is, I'm a bit worn out from all the time I spent on the computer writing during November, and now am trying to spend a lot more time off the computer to get that balance back. I resolve to be a better blogger though, and try to update here semi-regularly. I have a lot of photo posts like this of stuff around the garden and house planned for the rest of the month, then hopefully back to a few more detailed posts next year, when things settle down a bit again.

Safe and Dry

As any of you in Brisbane are probably aware, the northern suburbs of were hit with quite a nasty story last night. It was lovely and fine (if hot) all day, then late afternoon the clouds came up. We saw it early, and after checking the radar on the Bureau of Meteorology webpage, knew there was a large storm heading out way. We had time to batten down the hatches, put the chickens away, and make sure anything that might blow away was secured. DH had started clearing one of the gutters (gutter guard is supposed to be going on this week!), when it hit.

I was inside with DD, watching DH still out in the rain, when I saw one of the trees up the back (on the neighbours property) fall, and yelled for him to come in. He couldn't hear me, but thankfully came inside soon after. We retreated to the bedrooms with torches and mobile phones, because we have some large trees on the living areas side of the house that I was a little concerned about. They're large trees, and old and strong, obviously they've stood their for quite a while, but better safe than sorry. We were lucky that no trees came down on our property, only a few small branches, but many roads were blocked and roofs damaged by falling trees elsewhere.

In fact, I'm happy to report, the worse damage here was to my corn plants, which were blown over in the wind. Thankfully none of the stems were damaged, and they weren't even really uprooted, just blown over. We've straightened them, and staked them up with some tomato stakes and baling twine woven through them. Hopefully they weren't damaged too much, and will continue to grow and produce some corn for us! This is the tallest I've ever had corn grow (usually I think it doesn't get fed well enough, corn is a heavy feeder), and it doesn't even have any sign of cobs yet. I tell you, we're eagerly awaiting this corn, and will be quite upset if it's been damaged beyond repair.

Despite the leaking gutters, our tanks are nearly full. The poly tank is totally full, and we've transferred some water to the smaller garden tank, and the stainless steel tank is three quarters full. It's very very nice to know there is plenty of water there to see us through the coming season.

I just can't help myself!

I'm really enjoying sewing lately. I haven't sewn much for years, not since sewing all DD's blankets/quilts/linen/nappies when I was pregnant. I guess there hasn't been much time since then. But now that DD is a little older, projects like this are possible.

I really needed a new bag, and then in my blog surfing, I came across these bags, and loved them. Only, of course, there was no tutorial. So modifying this tutorial heavily, I finally achieved something approaching what I was after. I'm pretty happy with it anyway, and plan to have another go soon. You'll probably recognise the fabric, I made DD a skirt out of it here. Out of the metre I had, I made the skirt and this bag, and there is still plenty left over!

I also made DD a t-shirt using my new binding foot. It arrived several weeks ago, but I suspected it would be tricky, so was waiting for an opportunity where I wouldn't be too stressed out if it didn't work. Luckily, though it took a little figuring out initially, it works really well, and saves heaps of time when making t-shirts. Now to just make another 11 or so for a round dozen! I would post a picture, except a couple of hours after it was made, it ended up with paint on it. My fault, as I suggested she paint, and she was just getting into it, when she wiped her hands on her t-shirt, then looked at me and said, "I'm not wearing my painting apron." Luckily it was pink paint on a pink shirt, so not that noticeable. It's in the laundry soaking, and I'm hoping for a full recovery.

And before I duck off to try to write at least some words for the day (haven't started at all yet), here's today's harvest. The cherry tomatoes are just going crazy up there. I think as many are rotting on the vine as we're harvesting, but that's OK, they'll be next year's bushes. This lot is in the freezer now, ready for next time we made spaghetti sauce. They're great for sauce, as after they've been frozen, the just pop right out of their skins. By the time we're ready to make more pasta sauce, we should have more than enough tomatoes.

The chickens are a little slack on the egg department lately. We're only getting 3-4 eggs a day, but from chatting to other's around, this is pretty normal, as they can be quite affected by the heat. Hopefully we'll have more eggs soon.

Growing Taller

The peas along the front fence are dying off in the heat. I did get a few tastes of peas from them, but not much. I don't usually bother saving seeds from peas, I'd much rather be eating them, but these few got beyond good eating age while I was away visiting my mum, so I left them on until they dried out, and have put them away for next year's crop. I really like the sugarsnap climbing peas, they taste oh so yum, and the vines seem to produce far more prolifically than the bush types.

I've been working steadily on mulching the trees in the orchard. This is the second bale of lucerne that has gone up there, and I will probably need one more to get them all done. Before I mulched each tree, I gave it a drink of diluted juice from my sister's new bokashi bucket. It's been raining here, so DH asked why I was bothering to water them, but I explained that I was fertilising them, and apparently it's best to fertilise after the plants have had a good water, so that they don't overdose on the fertiliser by trying to take up the water. So perfect timing.

I was a little disappointed initially when my fruit trees just didn't seem to be growing. Of course, it was winter, but I guess I still expected something. I was actually feeling pretty downhearted by the time spring hit, but not anymore. They've just taken off. This mulberry tree was tiny when it was planted back in July, and just look at it now! It's taller and skinnier than my black mulberry, which is how I actually remember white mulberry trees being. I just hope I can reach the fruit when it fruits next year!

This apricot was planted not long after the mulberry, and at the time was a bare rooted, bare stemmed branch about up to my waist! I'm thrilled that it's growing so well, although I have heard that it's too cold around here for apricots to set fruit. I'm still hopeful though.

We've spent today clearing up around the garage, taking an entire load of rubbish to the tip. Another one to cross off my 100 things to declutter. Up to 21 now. We also found lots of things we will donate, but since we haven't done that yet, I cant add them to the total!

I'll probably be a bit quiet over the next few days. I'm a day behind on NaNo, and since nighttime is the only time I can write while DH is at work, my evenings will be spent doing that rather than typing blog posts. I'm sure I'll catch up, I've missed days before, but I just need to spend a little more time on it until I do.

Things are Growing

Well, the front garden transformation is moving along slowly. We've gone from this, to the photo above (which I will point out is taken from the other end of the garden), in less than two months. I posted my plan here, in case you want to have a look, although I have made a few modifications, which I shall comment on throughout this post.

Firstly though, here are the tiny corn seedlings I planted a month ago, haven't they grown? I really really need to plant the next lot, don't I? The bush off to the left is a golden nugget pumpkin, can't wait to get some of those coming along. My mum has one that's already fruiting (do vegetables fruit?), and it certainly has an overload of pumpkins, although they're not quite as flavourful as the old Jap's that I usually plant. They are, however, decidedly smaller!

Beside that garden I've prepared two more no dig beds so far. There is room for one more that I still need to build. Basically, for these, I've put down a layer of lucerne mulch (about half a bale), covered it in some freshly cut green grass, covered that in a variety of manures/bought compost (I just can't produce my own fast enough!), then another layer of lucerne (other half of the bale) over the top. I'm giving these a few weeks (or until I get around to planting them) for the initial breakdown to start, then I'll be planting them out, probably with some more corn!

I've also managed to fit in (and find bales for) two raised strawbale beds rather than just one. The second one is filled with everything I could find, from lucerne, manure, compost, grass clippings etc etc. It's full right to the top now, but I expect it will settle quite a bit over the next few weeks. Not sure exactly what I'm going to plant here yet, but I'm sure it will be something good!

The watermelons planted in the first strawbale bed are certainly doing great! They're growing pretty fast, and starting to try to escape from the bed. Looking forward to getting some watermelons from these, yum!

While I'm waiting for the new beds to settle, I've been planting out some seeds into old punnets I had lying around. The ones on the right are rosella's, ready to go into one of the beds along the fence (which all need serious work!), the top middle are cotton plants, for down the side fence, and the one on the left is a pigeon pea. I haven't had much success so far with the pigeon peas, although I have to admit that some of the seeds I was using were older. Will have to give it another go as soon as I get organised, because they will hopefully form the bulk of our hedging at the front and sides. I really should try to get these planted out soon.

The carrot seeds I planted in the planter box next to the raspberries were a dismal failure. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get them to come up, so instead I planted out that whole side with beans. I haven't had much success with beans here, despite them usually being one of the easiest plants to grow. I suspect that the soil is lacking in something, so I'm trying it to see if they do better here, where it is all compost and bought soil. So far they seem to be.

The potatoes in the strawbale potato cages are still growing like wildfire. You can see from the link how much they have grown in just a week! However, I discovered 3 of the dreaded 28 spot ladybeetle, the enemy of all attempted potato growers, and war had to be declared before this crop was curtailed as the last lots were.

Hopefully that should do the trick! Note, nothing new was bought to do this. The netting is from the mosquito nets that hung over our bed in the shed (that we no longer need now that we have screens on the windows), held up with some garden stakes I had lying around from my last lot of tomatoes.

As I write, there is a nice steady drizzle outside. It's been going on all day. Great for the garden, waters far better than I can ever manage with the hose. Hopefully it will soak right into the ground, and get those no dig beds really breaking down. If it lets up for a bit tomorrow, I might go out and poke some seeds in somewhere, best seed sprouting weather around.

For now, though, I still have 500 words to write before I go to bed.

Seed Raiders

DH called out to me today to come and look at these thieves, eating the seeds out of my sunflowers! There were two of them, and they were so beautiful I didn't have the heart to get upset at them. Unfortunately the pictures aren't the greatest, as I didn't have time to get the settings right on my camera, and was taking pics from indoors in DD's room, but aren't they magnificent? I think though, that I might have to cover the sunflowers with something, or we aren't going to get any seeds for ourselves!

And while I'm posting, here are the pictures from yesterday's harvest. Half a bucket of potatoes from the second potato patch (I planted 16), a bowl of cherry tomatoes from the bushes that self seeded and have received absolutely no care up in the old garden, and one almost perfect nectarine.

Decluttering and writing are still happening here, although we also mowed the lawn (all 3/4 of an acre of it, minus house/shed/gardens etc) with DH's dad's help. I have found heaps more things to get rid of, and the car is full right now of the playgym DD outgrew a year ago, the baby swing, and a box of toys. Can't count them though, until they are completely off the property! I'm almost on track for NaNo, just under 400 words to go today to make the quota. So I guess I'd better go get writing!

Potato Cages

I haven't done much of a garden update lately simply because I haven't gotten around to taking any photos. But I have been working to my plan, and things are slowly starting to come together. The potato cages, shown on the left hand side of the house, are in.

I've managed to fit 4 sugar cane bale cages in and the two I originally planted with 9 potatoes each are powering along. I've just covered them with the second lot of mulch, they're growing so quickly. I planted 9 more potatoes in the next cage and will plant the final one in another few weeks time. We're still going on the last of the potatoes harvested from my first patch. Once this lot is gone, there is another patch to harvest. I'm not sure if those will be enough to carry us through to this lot maturing, but we'll have to wait and see.

And not really garden related (though it is a flower!) DD and I made this for her baby cousin, after her fascination with DD's dinosaur.

Rainy Days

It's been raining on and off the last two days, so we've spent a lot of time indoors. DD made this flower out of paddlepop sticks, all her own idea, although I suspect it was sparked by our flower collages a few weeks ago. I'm really impressed at her craft work lately, she's coming up with a lot of ideas on her own, and has the manipulative skills to turn them into actual objects. She also made some letters out of the paddlepop sticks, although she messed them up before I could take a photo.

We were really glad to see this rain, as it's the first we've had since the last lot I wrote about, over a month ago! Very unusual for spring.

I know, I write about the rain quite a lot. But when you're living simply, it really does have a big effect on your life. And not in the annoying 'I'm going to get wet walking from the car to the shops' kind of way either. We rely on the rain to fill our water tanks so that we have fresh water to drink, shower and wash with, and to water the garden. Nothing makes the garden grow so much as a good soaking from the rain. Somehow, it's totally different to being watered with the hose or a watering can.

The rain inspired me to spread the rest of the sugar cane mulch around the front garden. It's well and truly soaked now, as is the ground underneath it, so hopefully even if we have another dry spell, it will stay wet, meaning I will have to water less, and what watering I do do will be more efficient. I hope it hangs around long enough for me to get some more mulching done, although I have so much else to do in the next few days, not sure how that will go.

It also inspired us to jump in and do a job that has been needing to be done for a while, digging a channel down the side of the house to drain some of the water that usually collects there. A good half hour in the rain, and we had improved things substantially. And of course, both DH and I needed a good shower! DD had a ball playing in the rain while we worked though.

While we were out there, DH cleared the gutters again, as they were overflowing yet again, even though it was only a few weeks ago that we cleared them last. We were debating over whether the cost of professional gutter guard was warranted, but after seeing that, it's definitely necessary, so we'll organise that on Monday.

Today I also managed to knock over another few jobs that have been on my mental to-do list, making soap, and making yogurt.

This is my second attempt at making soap using the tutorial on Down to Earth. The first lot was definitely usable, although not exactly pretty. I think my biggest problem was that I was stirring by hand, and after more than 20 minutes, had still barely reached trace. That was solved though by my wonderful sister (who will have some soap delivered to her in a few weeks) giving me her old stainless steel stick blender. One of the seals was gone, making it unsafe for blending food, but still fine for soapmaking. I reached trace so fast I was staring at it thinking it couldn't have happened that quickly, and wondering if I'd done something wrong!

This time I used a slightly different recipe also, listed here, which cut out the rice bran oil, and used copha instead of coconut oil (which is very hard to find). All up, it would have cost about $15. I would expect there are at least 15 bars of soap here (I'll find out tomorrow when it's set enough to cut!), so that's a pretty good price for this quality of soap. It's also totally unscented, with no other additives, very very hard to find in the shops! Now just to wait impatiently for it to cure (up to six weeks, if we can wait that long!), then we get to try it out.

I'll post more about the yogurt experiment tomorrow, it's still... what do you call it when yogurt is making itself? It's not really cooking, is it?

Garden Post!

Finally, as promised, here is a garden update post. After a very slow morning in which we managed to lose a lot of time doing nothing much at all, we got out to try to get things sorted. This was the front garden at about 11am this morning. And tonight, it looks much the same, minus a few sugar cane bales that were moved around the side for potato cages. Most of our work was in the side garden today, but before I get onto that, I'll post a few more pics of what is going on here in the front garden.

Here's some corn coming up in the first no-dig bed in the front garden. Not as good a strike rate as I had hoped for unfortunately. I planted 2 or 3 times this many seeds. Hoping a few more will come up yet, otherwise I'm going to have to replant into the spaces.

These little Johnny Jump Up's provide a nice bit of colour, if you ignore the weeds...

I'm building up quite a collection of potted plants around the planter box. It's easier to keep them all in once space to water them. There is loganberry and a youngberry (I think) in the big pots, my male and female kiwifruit in the red and blue hanging baskets, some red kidney beans in a punnet waiting to be planted out, and some pigeon peas yet to come up in the other punnets.

And finally, this is the raised bed I built. The sides are 10 bales of sugarcane mulch, 3 on each side, and 2 on each end. I then filled it with alternate layers of lucerne, Searles plant food, compost, sugarcane mulch from the chookpen, and manure. It's already started sinking a bit as it all breaks down. Hopefully this will be a really nice place to grow some of those nutrient hungry plants.

So far I've planted some watermelon seeds in it, and they're just starting to pop up.

And along the front fence, the sunflowers are getting ready to flower. They're about as tall as DD now, and I think I'm going to have to stake a couple, (or tie them to the fence), as the wind is pushing them over.

I was planning on writing about the side garden, and posting a few pics of that, but it's late, and I really need to get some sleep. But it does give me something to write about tomorrow!