Happenings...

I've finally planted a pineapple. It's meant to be simple and yet I've never tried it until now. They say you simply chop the top of your pineapple, leave it for a day or so to dry and then plant it - will keep you all updated on it's welfare as time goes by!

I also planted some Photinia cuttings at the end of last May. For those who don't know, this is a large and quite common hedging plant. It flushed with new and bright red growth making for a stunning display. I got my cuttings from Gloria Jeans near work and had dipped them in honey and baby formula before putting into pots covered with some 2 litre bottles to keep them toasty and warm and without too much water loss. A month on and they seem to be all growing well with some even developing side shoots! Will need to get some more cuttings on my next visit for coffee.

Farmer Brown has a cold. It couldn't be a co-incidence that Lemon trees bear fruit in the cold and flu season. More of that scrummy Lemonade coming up!

Questions? - Ask Farmer Brown

This post will be used to answer your questions - so please ask your questions as comments and feel free to comment on other people's questions and asnwers too!

FB

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Long Awaited Updates!

OK OK... so I've been slack - after all, it is winter though.





The vegie garden under the roses is growing well - well at least the half that has not been attacked by a pair of apparent vegetarian dogs!

Of the first lot of seed planted, the lettuce is nearly ready to start picking but the broccolli probably needs another few weeks yet. Only 1 silverbeet has taken. The peas that were grwoing have been eaten

Of the second lot of seeds, nothing took - trampling and digging by dogs appears to have taken it's toll!

So last weekend, another round of seed planting has taken place. Some iceberg lettuce across the front left, some butter beans on the left back and some more silverbeet across the center.

Worth noting also that the zygocactus is in full bloom but most other plants are starting to slow down due to winter - even the lawn is ony needing a light trim every few weeks

Vegie Garden Growing

The vegie garden is growing well under the roses as shown on the picture taken last weekend. Across the front is the lettuce which is now nearly double this size and across the back is the broccoli. These will need thinning as their meant to be about 50 to 60cm apart!
The roses are benefitting from this too ,probably becasue they get watered and fed more often now. The bed on the left hand side where the peas are is starting to repel water. Not sure why and will need to do some investigation. It's almost as if the top is covered with oil!
Any ideas, pelase let me know!

Lemon Tree and Lemonade!

The Lemon Tree is in full fruit. I harvested about a quarter of the fruit a few weeks back which filled a 10 litre bucket. So what do you do with this many lemons?
Well half of these have gone to people at work - the other half have made a delicious Lemonade Drink - well actually about 5 big lemonade drinks!

Interested in making fresh lemonade? here's the recipe i use which is a refreshing and tasty treat - best of all, serve it hot or cold!

You need about a cup of lemon juice - this is about 4 to 5 largish lemons.
A cup of sugar (yes i know it's alot but use less is you add honey)
Some honey if desired
about 2 litres of water

Squish out the lemon juice - easiest way is to put them all in the microwave for about a minute, chop them in half and squish and squeeze with your hands and fingers - you get twice as much juice this way then using one of those useless hand orange juicers! Don't worry about the pulp or seeds - trust me here!
After you've squished about a cup (a tad more is better than a tad less) run it through a colander. Some light bits of pulp getting through won't kill you, but not too much - set this juice aside

To a pot, add about a cup of water and a cup of sugar. Some added honey is really topping on the ice cream, but my wife didn't like it, so don't be afraid to try half and half. If adding honey, reduce the sugar by probably about equal amounts and don't add the honey until last. I personally wouldn't put more than 2 or 3 tablespoons of honey though
So... heat the water and sugar mix while stirring (the sugar will stick pretty bad to the pot otherwise). keep stirring until the sugar dissolves. The water will suddenly turn from cloudy to clear when this happens. nows the time to add the honey, stir a bit more and you're done

Finally pour the strained juice, sugar water into a jug and bring upto 2 litres with plain old water

Serve at any temperature, hot, icy cold or anywhere in between.

The Anniversary Orange Tree

My loving wife has bought me a Washington Orange Tree for the garden as a present for our first anniversary. Now some may say there's some symbolism involved in planting a tree, especially one that is a 1 year old fruit tree that's given to mark the first anniversary of a happy, happy marriage that has already bared 1 happy, happy baby. Some may question whether there's hidden meanings in such a token gift, especially given the tree does already have one single fruit already on it!

Well... not me! Can't see ANY symbolism here.... not a single reference to little family......

The tag says these trees can grow to 8 to 10 meters. Now that's a preeeety big big tree! Guess there'll be a fair few oranges produced....
- but that's only AFTER getting it in the ground!


So... on a small block, where do you put a tree of this splendour? Note the daisy bush shown below in the back left corner - won't be too hard to move the daisy bush, dig a hole and shove the tree there... right? - Note the little orange tree sitting expectantly at the front right of the daisy bush below - look close enough and you'll see the little orange. Putting this little, growing tree here means it's close enough to the mature lemon tree to the right, but has enough room to grow and become it's own tree
















Yup! just dig a hole and take out that old daisy bush - roots and all....

















Now, if you've ever dug a hole and hit a rock, you'll empathise with me here. Buried under the daisy shrub is not just a rock or two but a whole rock garden! and not just rocks, bricks, rusty tin, broken roof tile and fibro remains. The picture below was taken after about an hour of rock harvesting. After 4 hours or so, the pile had tripled in size but the hole for the tree would possibly bury my feet and not much more - expect that this will take a few more weekends yet - and so..... the Mighty Washington Orange Tree remains in its pot at this time

Change is on the horizon

Preparing to add a new post and found a strong urge to provide better visibility of WHEN things are happening in my patch of dirt - I've got pictures and things, but the overall WHAT'S and WHEN'S is sometimes a bit hard to piece together! -
So I've added a Garden Calendar at the bottom of this page - its a work in progress, but the aim is to be able to click back and see what has happened and when - this way, I can quickly find out how old my plants are and what I've done when - this should help with the learning process!

anyway... enough about this sort of stuff - better get an update done before it gets too late!