Cool Season Gardening

We live in South East Queensland so are in the sub tropical zone of the country, but we are also about 100km inland from the coast so during to cooler months we have more of a temperate climate but with warm daytime temperatures. This means we get 2 distinct season's, a winter with mild days and cold nights with frosts from June - August, and hot wet summers where we can grow things like bananas, paw paws and mangos.

Summer for us is actually a challenging time to grow veggies as there are usually endless fungal problems and the good chance of plants drowning.  For this reason I plan to fail between mid December and March and if I do get crops they are a bonus.  I also use this time to clean out garden beds and plant green manure crops to be dug in at the end of February.
From April till September we get our version of Winter.  I say from April because that is when you can feel that a change is afoot and the night temperatures start to drop.
For me March marks the start of my growing season and because our winter only has a couple months with really cold night temperatures you have to be organised.
So in late February I get my seeds sorted and planted out in seed raising mix.  I know that I am gong to prick out the seedlings as soon as they pop up so the other thing I have to do is wash out all my pots with soapy water and leave them to dry.

 Once they are potted on they spend some time in the shade house getting established so that they get a head start and during this time I also prep the garden beds.

There are some things however that did not go as planned.
My Bok Choy for example.  I planted it directly into the soil and it all sprouted beautifully.  Oh the stir frys that we were going to have.
Not!
Some nasty little critter decided to dine on all my little seedlings leaving me a few stalks.  Most of these seedlings will not recover as they had no leaves left. some not even stalks.  Bloody critters!

There have been a few bonuses though.  Some of my beans that started to rot on the vine self seeded and now we are having a late run on beans.

Next week i hope to get some of the first seedling in the garden, although i might have to do some critter proofing first.

What's growing at your place?

Bargains

Our local green grocer often has mixed boxes of over ripe and slightly damaged fruit and veg out the front and going cheap.  When ever I see these boxes I snap them up as even if you cannot use everything in the box (and some goes to the chickens) you still come out ahead.  

Yesterday for $3 I got:

1 Overripe pineapple, 2 over ripe mango's, 2 apples with marked skin, 800 gm of button squash, 3 small zucchinis, 7 carrots with their tips snapped off, 2 kg of onions that had lost all their papery skins, 2 kg of stone fruit that had small soft spots in places, 2 capsicums with soft spots and 11 Lebanese cucumbers.

I also got a second $3 box of apples, at a guess about 7kg in total. Most are starting to go a bit soft but they will all stew up nicely.

The one thing you have to do is be prepared to sort it all out asap.

So first thing was to juice the the pineapple served chilled over ice this made for a refreshing drink as I dealt with the rest.



Stone fruit shortcake



Stewed Apple

Most of the veggies went into tomato based pasta sauce for dinner and the cucumbers were made into bread and butter pickles.

I tend to shop on the same day each week so the green grocer knows that I will pretty much always take one of their bargain boxes.  Because of this if they have fruit and veggies that are just a little bit past it they will box them up for me and put them aside till I come in.  Last week I was also lucky enough for them to put aside 2 trays of very ripe mango's for me priced at $3 a tray.  Now I have containers of mango flesh in the freezer just waiting for smoothies, cakes or cheesecakes.

It just goes to show that it really does pay to get to know your local shop keepers and support the small independent retailers.    I would be very surprised if you would ever get this service from one of the big supermarkets.

I Grew a New Species of Plant

Seems we are growing some new exotic plants around here.....
Cute ones too.

New Life on the Farm

This week we had 2 little bundles of fluff join us here at the farm. 

Sadly one of them did not make it : (
These little guys however were not destined to be pets, they are destined for the freezer.  And yes that sounds very harsh when they are such cute little fluff balls.
Originally "Bubble " was sitting on 6 eggs but one got broken and 3 were not fertile.  So now we will have to wait for our other bantam to go clucky again because we really want about 10 chickens for the freezer.

We have been discussing the idea of raising meat chickens decided  for a while now and have decided that now is the time to give it a go.  We both like to eat meat and we believe that learning to raise and butcher our own chickens in an ethical way is a skill we should learn.

I grew up on a hobby farm and we used to butcher our own chickens and turkeys so I am not completely unfamiliar with the process but I am not sure that using an axe to remove heads is the method I want to use.  I suspect it would not be the safest method and am concerned about it not being a clean kill so to speak.

I have been looking at different methods of butchering chickens and there seems to be a lot of information on the Internet but I would really love some thoughts from those of you who have undertaken this process before.
What method did you use?
Do you have any tips?

And We Have A Winner

Over the weekend using the extremely sophisticated method of "names on folded paper in a hat" a winner was decided to my handmade card give away.

And the winner is...

 AA commented "If I won I would order a card for my daughter who loves pink, and cats, and lives on the other side of the world..... Her birthday is the beginning of April so this would be very timely"

Congratulations African Aussie!

Please email me with your details so I can send you your cards.  Email is feebegood@hotmail.com