I decided to pull up the garlic before we went away. I was reading the NZ Gardener which had an article saying that it was rec ommended to pull them up when they still had 6 green leaves on them. The reason behind this was that they arent going to get much bigger than they are at this stage and if it rains, they can reabsorb moisture and not store so well. A couple of days later it did rain quite heavily so I rest easy with my decision. We got some really good sized heads that are pretty much the size in the supermarket as well as medium sized ones.There were afew small heads from the later plantings I tried to get away with, these we are eating now, nice and mellow and still make nice garlic butter. The field peas got shelled out. We found they seemed to hold their shape and size better if they were left in their pods to dry- not so wrinkly and alot fatter. They dont look appetizing so we'll use them for seed for a green manure crop. The lupins took alittle longer to dry out but have for the most part been sheeled out too. I found that they split and threw their seed around if left too long in their pods. So, we've got their roots left in the ground, top parts and pod shells(?) for the compost and seed for the next green manure. I think we'll sow some on the roadside garden specifically for seed next time and dig the veg garden ones in like we were supposed to. Got a good haul. The second compost bin has been filled up and has its cover of old carpet(I know but its there and its old) as well as the brush wood cover to keep everything from drying out. The third bin looks quite full with stems and stalks of things that have seeded and been pulled to dry like silverbeet, perpetual spinach and beetroot. This is still quite loose and I supposed I should step on it tio squash it but I figure that will come when the next load of grass clippings goes on. After a slow start the garden is looking much better. Tomatoes are tomatoing, zuchinni's are producing the most loveliest fruit. This Italian type definitely has a nicer flavour and texture and to top it off the flower is still in a decent condition by the time its ready for plucking. We had the zuchinni and its flowers in a Ratatouli type dish the other day and I'm going to dig out that recipe I've got for zuchinni flower soup now that we've got some good sized ones to use for this. The flowers are the size of pumpkin flowers. One of our hens was not looking to well yesterday with her comb quite dark, she wouldnt eat or drink so I took her out and put her by herself in amongst the sweetcorn where it was alittle cooler, gave her abit of rescue remedy but this morning she had died. The others look all right, we couldnt see anything wrong with her apart from the fact that she was dead so she has been buried somewhere out of the way where she wont be disturbed. All the Runner Lima beas have reached thetop of the trellis and are starting to sprout little flowerbuds. I love Lima beans and was told our season is too cold for them but these ones are supposed to be good here if they get in earlier enough, so far they are doing better than the Purple King which are lagging behind. Finally got a sowing of Cannellini beans up and flowering. We cut out one of the branches of the Nectarine tree that was blocking the path so we had to duck to get past it. This still has two large branches to keep going with and will still give the Avocadoes frost protection. I got in and started clearing along the back fenceline. All the Bears Breeches got stood down and the wandering jew weed and convovulos got pulled off the fence- the convovulos got hung up in the tree to dry out so it cant resprout. This will be an on going saga for quite awhile but I was assured by a friend who has got rid of all of theirs that it can be done, so we'll just keep at it. It looks like the neighbour on this side has started at another point on the fenceline doing the same thing so things are looking up. The only other thing we've been doing is tidying up along the side of the house which was looking rather ratty,havent really finalized any decisions as to what to put in along here yet so its been let go. The Evening primrose has almost finished flowering and I want to make sure of my facts before I start harvesting the seeds. We got a camara and have taken picts of the 'floor plan' and the garden. I am not very good at putting them on the computer or posting them, but hubby has got them onto the computer for me. I'll set up a photoblog where Sunburn has hers and start posting them there.
Dad has come to stay for the last week of his holidays and I'm not sure if he was puzzled, bemused or what by the garden. I did warn him that I didnt think it was looking as great as it did this time last year and that was mainly cos I botched the seedsowing and being away too often. When dad comes to visit, he likes to be kept busy. He thought I might want a hand with the house but I told him that I needed a break from it and am enjoying not smelling paint, concrete dust and gib dust; so it is the yard that is getting worked on. We weeded the courtyard yesterday. This area is about 4x 6m between the house and the garden(up stairs to the garden). One of my sons and his friend helped me dig it out by hand soon after we moved in. Originally there were 5 steps leading straight out from the porch up to the lawn and when it rained, the rain just washed straight into the porch. I felt oppressed by this bank when we sat in the porch so space was definitely needed. All the top soil went to the then veg garden. We knew where that was because the soil level was 3 inches lower than the surrounding lawn. The sub soil went around the section filling in hollow bits. At first we tried the non flowering chamomile lawn but weeding this was a nightmare as too was the thyme carpet. It now has what is supposed to be pea gravel over weed mat, but its really just plain ol' river shingle-pea gravel is a much smaller grade of pebble than this. It had quite alot of little/low grass growing in here and I had put this off cos it just looked like such a big job. Surprisingly it didnt take the two of us that long to clear it up. I found the best tool for this job was a bent piece of wire I found in amongst the pebbles, looks like a cut off bit off a clothes hanger-the wire sort. Dad used a three prong garden cultivator which did well at this job too. With these we scratched the pebbles and the roots loosened up making it easier to tug out the grass. The areas where the pebbles had packed down were thicker and tougher roots. I have made a new years resolution to never let it get this way again and will be making sure from now on that I scratch over the courtyard every now and then to keep the pebbles loose. He wasnt too sure about the idea of things growing on the paths so a quick hoe and the weeds were gone- wasnt that much actually but what little there was was rather noticeble. So now the path is back to pristine bare earth now that the tree mulch has broken down. I dont think he knew quite what to make of our experiment with the moon bed. He started to pull the weeds out from the sweetcorn, I had to explain what we were doing and why so now he has only weeded a smaller flower bed at the side of the house. As my copy of "The one straw revolution' arrived and I had started reading this, this was used to help explain what we were all about. He seemed to be under the impression that my partner had 'done' something to me as I was doing things that didnt seem normal( like thats something new!). I needed to get him to see that it wasnt hubby's fault and that when I had moved down here I already had these ideas, so I told him how mum had broadsided me on the meat rabbit breeding scheme by telling me in front of the kids that she wasnt going to eat rabbit cos it looked like a skinned cat. I showed him where I thought the composting toilet should go and the ideas I had to make one from recycled things rather than buying a commercially made unit. He still doesnt see the point when you can just flush it away and remembers with distaste the night soil/longdrop days. I think he was impressed with the new/old coal range we bought and was quite enthusiastic about it going in the kitchen which it should do. Its a 70's model apparently and unlike the first one we bought which had badly deteriorated insides, this one isnt far off mint. It came with a stainless steel flue too and we will probably rob the other one of its upper wire rack. Just a slight difference of opinion as to where in the house it should go. Today I snuck off and mowed a couple of lawns putting most of the clippings in the compost but some over the next bed and gave that abit of a water. Later in the afternoon we moved the dome onto this spot. He was suitably impressed with how easy we managed to take down the sail,take out the nestbox, moved the dome, put the sail back up and put in the water bowl again. I have left the nestbox out so the last hen gets the idea that she should roost with the others. (which she has done) Someone had told me where there was an old sawdust dump that was fine for the garden so we took all the old chaff bags I had in the shed and a couple of spades to dig this out and bring back. On the bed that the chooks have just vacated, I wanted to see how a last sowing of 'swift' potates would go so those got put in and most of the sawdust put on so they can be mounded up. Last night we had an unusual meal. Finally there were alot of male flowers on the Zucchinnis so I picked these and got on line to find recipes. The ones we chose were zuchinni flower soup with rice and fried zuchinni flowers. As the soup took longer to cook we started that one first and made the fried flowers while we waited for it. The soup was lovely but the fried flowers was definietly a bigger hit and we had them again tonight. I find myself eyeing up the pumpkin flowers, now but decided the gherkin and melon flowers look too small to bother with.
Oh yeah !!!!!!! Fried zucchini flower with gorgonzola cheese and salted cod!!!!! To this day is one of the finest meals I have ever eaten.rabbits do look like skinned cats but the rib bones are different one has square one has round;>)Taste is not so similar though.
Oh Fernando! Our fried flowers were the simple version all by themselves. Not sure if we can get salted cod here but the with cheese sounds good. I finally managed to get a couple of pics on my photoblog. We're on dial up so I'm finding it alittle slow going, at least I think thats why its alittle slow. Not sure how to do the link thing tho but here goes, its at www.photoblog.com/mischief
Nice work mischief. I had imagined your place to be much bigger. You sure are squeezing a lot in to your block!
Good to see you up on pblog. Images to do take quite a while to upload but its faster if you reduce the size of the images. I think 800pixels on the long side is about the minimum you should choose if you do have the choice. I do mine on photoshop but other image manipulation programs have this option too usually. When I reduce one side, the other side reduces automatically to the right size. I hope this helps a bit. oops i forgot to befriend you. It makes it easier to keep track of peoples updates although it doesn't matter here on this forum so much because we are linked here..... later. I was unable to befriend you. My befriend function doesn't work. You can befriend me if you like. You choose the options button near the avatar image to do it.
Hi Eco, Um it is bigger, the veg garden is the major part of the back yard but there is still 8m wide alongside it where the garage/workshop is supposed to go with parking in front of that. The courtyard is 6m wide between the house and the veg garden. Then theres the driveway along the side of the house that me and dad were eyeballing yesterday.Thats 6m wide although the house side garden has shrunk to only 600mm wide I think we could still put some trellises up for grapes. The house has 3m studs so the walls outside are quite tall-lotsa room. I want dessert grapes green/red and black. Then theres the front of the house that Is a dogs breakfast at the moment.It was mums flower garden but when she moved out a couple of years ago I never really took to it.It has flowers and I did weed out under the apple tree. Then there is the old narrow single car garage with,the Avocadoes growing along the boundary in front of that. Then there the part that actually belongs to TransitNZ which is about 4-5m deep =the roadside garden now growing afew sunflowers and lots of daisies and Things. Oh and behind the garage is a 4x6m gap that was supposed to get a water tank put in it but that hasnt happened yet. It did have an old cactus tree that Had to come out cos it was so old and big and dangerous when heavy winds blew whole trunks 600mm thick just dropped. I had to start somewhere and the veg garden is the starting point. The courtyard just needs its out door cooking facilities but that can wait. Oh talking about cooking facilities, we have had a 'thermette' for ages and I decided to try it out to see just how much firewood we would need to scrouge up to boil up a pot for tea/coffee. 1 sheet of newspaper and a handful of twigs later I had 2 cups of coffee and a mug of milo and the water was still hot from the embers still burning inside it. Really cool. I was home alone and sat on the warm pebbles in the courtyard and had a little campfire thing going. Just got to remember that you cant let them run out of water or you wind up splitting the soldered seams. I have got some more photos to put in. I stood up on the wooden wall above the steps to the garden so they will give a higher perspective and you'llget to see my nice neat clean, weedfree courtyard. Gone are not just the weeds but the timber from all those building jobs- too good to throw away and they did come in handy for home jobs too, now they have been moved away from my eyesight and I wont have to see the remenants til its time to put in the water tank.Space!!!Outside the back door again how wonderful!!!! Not wanting to climb the tree for the overall view just yet.
You can be my friend Sunburn. It takes me awhile to work out how to do things. How long was it that you said we should use photoblog.com for our photos beofe I finally got to it? I'm not sure if we have a photoshop, I dont think we do at least niot since our computer got wiped out, its still pretty basic. I've been waiting for my computer genius son to come visit and work some magic on it.
Today I decided to clear out the area behind the Mandarin tree in the courtyard to see if the compost toilet could fit there. I think it could and so decided that if we/I was going to go ahead with this(wont Kimbo be pleased hes got another convert) then I need to clear the path and steps so its easier to get to it. So now it doesnt look so much like a secret path more like a workmanship like track. Im doing the Fukuoka thing with the prunings and strewed them around the new pop corn to break down as they will, rather than putting them on the compost heap. I mentioned compost toilets and the fact that some people dont use TP to hubby afew weeks ago so he got on line and found an article written by someone in I think the Phillipines who went into graffic detail as to how the toilets in their country work and what exactly you are supposed to do. Should have written it down cos it was interesting. Still sounds gross to wash your arse with your hand and I'm just not going there. I was talking to our neighbour over the rear side fence and remembered that he had a plant that had really soft leaves on it that grew all year round. When I asked if he stil had these -they grow prolifically and spread- his first reaction was yeah do you want some then took off and brought back two. This was in the middle of the day and it was stinking hot so I was not expecting them to take. I planted them in different parts of the garden, one in full sun and one in morning shade and promptly forgot about them til this morning when I realised that they would need to be watered again being so newly planted. As expected they were all droopy and sad looking so I took my scissors to them and cut off every single leaf, mulching the plant with these and gave them both a really good soaking. This afternoon the tops have perked up and I swear they have grown small new leaves since this morning. I rub some of the leaves on the inside of my arm to see if I got a negative reaction to them and again this afternoon but so far its looking good. I may have found a substitute to TP! Outdoor kitchen ideas. I needed to find a way where I could convince hubby that the good wood stove should go in the kitchen instead of where he wants to put it- there is already a built in fire box in that room as well as a proper chimney which houses the flue to the firebox. In front of that is a raised concrete hearth that it will sit on quite nicely being just alittle under the height of a standard stove. In order to do that,I needed to come up with a good idea as to where a good spot would be for the not so good stove to go as a summer kitchen stove and I think I have come up with an ingenious plan that would work. In front of our woodshed!!! Up the path to the garden and behind that wooden fence you see in the pics ( in www.photoblog.com/mischief) is a concrete slab where the old water tank for the laundry (I think) used to go. I filled the missing quarter in with a timber deck awhile ago. So far there is a small water tank on the far side of this area and I would like to put three more up there. I think it has to be done this way instead of a large tank because there isnt alot of height from the gutter to the tank on this side of the house. Because this area is raised by about 4 feet or so it means there is not alot of height to work with ....but. Smaller tanks could be used and hooked up together and as they are above the courtyard this means that if we put the wood stove infront of the wood shed,(with adequate protection of course and a small roof over it) then we can have gravity fed water to this new out door kitchen. The wood is right behind the wall and the courtyard is a great place to have a meal in summer. ( And if we do the compost toilet thing right then that shouldnt smell at all) We visited a new friend of his over the Xmas break, while they were talking boring stuff she rolled her eyes and said we should leave them to it so I asked her to show me her garden. She is from Samoa and also has a courtyard type back yard which was full of luscious looking vines. Unfortuantely these apparently only flower for a couple of weeks then its all just green. Behind this was an area under some trees which was a really nice respite from the sun. We were there for ages chattering away before I actually looked at what was around me. We were seated a a table set into the ground on twin bench seats also set into the ground- one on each side of her square table. I really liked this set up cos the table was far enough away not to Be in the way and the seats were just the right height so I told her that I was going to pinch her idea. Unfortuantely I didnt have my tape measure with me or I would have measured and drawn the whole thing right then and there. We kept talking, then I looked up and realised that the umbrella stand was not an umbrella stand at all but her clothes line sneakily disguised as an umbrella. So I am going to pinch all her ideas for our courtyard and next time we head that way I am begging to be able to measure it all up so ours can be exactly the same. Its unusual to find something that is absolutely perfect and this will work an absolute treat. The shopping list now has 1x large old fashion type clothes line on it.
Happy Birthday Mischef I just noticed the announcement on the front page. It is so great to have you young people here with us.
um, I am not sure what you mean really so i can't answer. Don't worry about the friending but when you do get it sussed, then can you befriend me. I am shangrila. I used photoblog before I had photoshop. I have a mac so i had iphoto. I don't think i reduced the size of the pictures using it though because they were smaller then already. I am not sure how to change the size of the images if you use other software. You can ask for help with that on the photoblog forum. The moderators are pretty good over there. But you might find the answers by browsing through earlier questions. Its bound to have been asked before. WARNING. The following paragraph is graphic! Perhaps you should go on a long holiday to India or somewhere similar to get over that feeling. I remember when i felt the same way as you and wrote as much on a public forum too. It was only at the beginning of my second trip to India that i had a sudden change of heart. What made it easy to make the transition was that in india they have a squirty attached in the toilet bowl. You turn on the tap and get a squirt right in the general area. What i noticed was, that by the time my hand got to my arse, it already felt pretty clean. And what i noticed after that, at times when i didn't have the luxury of the squrity thing was that my arse nearly always feels pretty clean after a poo (i sincerely apologise for this detail but it came as a revelation to me.) What i mean is my hand rarely gets shitty. But once you get over that, you find that you prefer to feel cleaner as you do when you wash your bum instead of wiping it with loo paper. Its much like using dental floss. Once you've noticed how much cleaner it all feels, you won't want to go back to making do with only a toothbrush or in this case, loo paper. The only downside is that i want to be dried off afterwards and that's where you need to find an approach that works for you. I use a towel. Don't forget to take your camera and get a snap of the table and chair arrangement for your photoblog. Its sounds intriguing but i don't really understand what's going on.
Hi PP, Thanks, I'm a whole year younger than I thought I was. I only recently discovered this amazing mistake at my brothers Birthday BBQ, when a friend said that bro must be.... cos he was .... and I piped up saying no thats not right cos I'm.... anyway, I get to do this year all over again so I'm feeling very lucky. I'm hoping that this new plant I've scored from my neighbours will be a TP substitiute for the "wee House". I'm seriously thinking of incorporating a small bucket and dipper for the business end of things with the obligatory wee rag. Its also going to have to have a hand washing gizmo as well. Still in the thinking stage for right now but this will definitely fit behind the mandarin tree. On the clothes line, think old rotary clothes line, the family size(large), now think, it doesnt actually go round and round any more but is stationary with a square table sitting under it,with the post going thru the middle of it. So it would still be able to be used as a clothes line, in summer it could be used as an umbrella when a cover gets put over the top. I might even be able to dry my herbie things under it out of direct sunlight too. In winter I still might be able to get some smaller clothes dried if the cover is left on. Multi functional. Now we just have to find That right clothes line and That right table.
I found a good table to day for a good price. I didn't buy it though as I don't really need it. It was hexagonal though not square. $30 bucks and had the hole for an umbrella in the middle. Very nice wood. A bit weathered. Keep looking.
We had to take the door to the wood stove down to the welding specialist here in town today to see if it was possible to get the crack in it fixed, so far thats looking good. He has chooks roaming around his yard- black ones which I think are Austrolorp(sp?). I asked him out of idle curiousity if he had any roosters that he didnt want to keep and wound up going back tonight to collect a new addition to the dome. Now I'm feeling alittle nervous, we've been down to his workshop quite afew times and never heard this rooster so I dont know how often he actually crows. I'm hoping that I can keep him long enough to get fertile eggs from the girls so I can replace them. To be honest they are probably the worst hens I've ever had, in that they hardly lay at all now. In the past they have gone into moult and stopped laying while they refeather and then gone on some of them I had for 4 or more years and produced really well. These ones still havent gone into moult and only lay a couple every day. Not sure if having a rooster is going to increase that or not or how long I will have to wait to get a good clutch. I have read up on candling eggs but need to get the gear together and have a practise run on the eggs we have at the moment so I can see what unfertile eggs look like. I think I might be able to talk the neighbour into taking on the rooster if my other neighbours get upset. They have 1 1/2 acres and the previous owner or tenant had a rooster which nobody complained about. So all going well we maybe having little chickies running around the place soon. Our welder friend also said that he's sure a couple of his hens have gone bush and he's expecting them to come home soon with wee ones in tow soon. So maybe I might just be able to get some of those. When I collected the rooster I took some of our Oriental Cucmbers down hoping he likes cucumber, which he does. He was suitably impressed with the size of these woppers I think I had better get up really early tommorrow to see just how much of a racket the new addition does make.
We've just excecuted our poor astrolorp rooster. It is sooo much nicer and quieter without him around. So i suggest that you should anticipate getting your babies and then finding a new home for him asap. My bed was about, say, 50m perhaps from the chook house. I found it quite disturbing. His first crow was just before 4am but i guess it depends on other factors when they will crow. As i think it was grasshopper said, they also crow during their day to keep their women close if they stray. But if you've got htem all in a tractor he might not be so noisy. I think grasshopper also he noticed it crowed if it was bored. Whatever reason they crow for, it sure is loud and although it was awful to kill him, i am glad he is gone. They are magnificent looking creatures though i must say.
Well, I got up really early on Saturday to see how noisy our wee man is and he didnt really start to crow until about 6am. Our closest neigbhour was obviously up and outside then cos I heard the gentleman say 'What Was That?'. I thought that was abit funny,I did giggle hoping he didnt hear me. Doesnt everyone know what a rooster sounds like? Anyway we havent had any complaints but then again he isnt that loud. I stood in the woodshed with the door open to see if I could hear him from there and I could but not very well. We cant hear him from our room, cos we are downhill from them and behind shrubbery and in the middle of the house. The neighbours to the left dont have the same buffers and their room is right on the corner closest to us, so we'll just have to see how it goes. He seems to have settled in quite nicely and is no long looking for That gap. When I googled Light Sussex's they are apparently a reasonably docile breed. I hope so or my mother will not look after them for me when we have to go out of town. I have discovered that if you throw in cat biscuits they completely ignore you in their rush to get every last one for themselves. I will have to tell her about that, so if she does get nervous then she can do that, nip in and get the eggs and nip out again. We have put a rabbit cage in the laundry just in case we will need to bring him inside after they roost and then take him out again at a more civilized time. Its been raining solidly and has been quite dark here so I think it would be a good idea to get up really early again tomorrow to see if he crows earlier now that he's feeling more at home and its lighter with less cloud cover. On Sunday in the rain I planted 2 Olive trees to replace the ones that did not survive being transplanted. The El Greco and Koroneiki type.They are both supposed to only grow 3x4m's so they have gone down in the roadside garden with the baby manzanilla. I dont know if it was a dumb thing to do but I bought the plants that had fruit on them. I figured this time I knew that they were fruiting and should do so again next year too. I specifically waited for Sunday cos per my book it is supposed to be the right time to plant root crops and perennials. I took a two dozen cuttings of the Winter Savory and Stevia plants for the same reason. The Avocado tree has lost some more of its fruit but the ones still on the tree are looking bigger and longer. I think I needed to water them alittle more than I did and hopefully this rain will have made a difference. The first of the root crops for winter(?) have gone in. I'm doing them in rows so I know where the hell they are.The back part of the garden is still alittle on the wild side so it will help to know where to keep an eye out for them and now that I know what all the new shoots of these plants look like I wont be accidentally pulling them out and feeding them to the chooks. I got a real buzz the other day when I inspected the slower growing 'gherkin' and found that it had finally flowered And fruited and was in fact a long lost Rock melon so now we have tiny little fluffy balls to watch.They are such hardcase looking things when they're little, I wonder where the fluff goes when they grow up. The Luffas we finally got to grow are also starting to flower.I was so jealous of Eco last year when I saw how exuberant her's were and am hoping to get a similar crop myself. I dont think it will be quite as much being in a cooler climate but I'm happy that we got them to grow. i have been feeding everything either comfrey or seaweed tea on the days my diary tells me too. I think I might have had the last lot alittle strong-that was a seaweed tea, we're out of comfrey now and are waiting for the next lot to brew.
So far this week we have cleared out behind the garage so we can see why the garage still leaks and found that when they built the garage, instead of taking the back wall right along to the end they butted it up to the lower side wall then put a stud and put the wall on. It seems to have had a piece of coro steel leaning up against it at some stage which has rotted away. Not sure if I've already mentioned this or not, but anyway the soil that has built up against the garage has been cleared so we know have enough head room to put in some rainbarrels along the back wall. There isnt enough high to put in a proper water tank to catch the rain off the garage roof and the most we can do is fit 2 rows of 5-6 200 litre barrels along there. Doesnt seem like alot realy but it will probably go to watering the Avocado trees in the height of summer. The idea is to have them all joined together at the bottom but with cut off vavles at each, so that when they are filling up they all fill up at the same time and then if we want to save some we just turn the valve off to that/those barrels. Up til now the rain has just run down the down pipe and straight onto the ground. The gutter was really old and rusted too so thats been taken off and we need to get the replacement to put back on. Now we know what the problem is with the leaking, this can now be address and once thats done we can start using the garage again with out having to worry about things going mouldy or rusting. The chimney to the wood stove is being put on as I speak, I'm supposed to be helping but this is the first time I have been able to get anywhere near the computer for ages sso I'm having my turn now and besides I'm still hot and tired from mowing lawns this morning. Spoke too soon, have to go help, back again later.
Congrats on the loofah. I vowed not to do it again this year, but one lonely plant self seeded from some compost that must have had a stray seed in it, and it looked so small and harmless.... So I left it to takes it's chances. Well, one tendril has headed off about 8 m to the south over a garden bed. Another north and up a tree. The other went east and up and over the top of my guava tree, the kangaroo paw beside it, past the pond and is currently headed for the Great Fence of Nambour! It would be about 10 m long so far. By breakfast tomorrow it'll be 11. There are starting to be flowers - they are pretty! and I can see one tiny loofah fruit so far. I might try eating more of them this year - I don't mind the taste but it is fairly strong and I can't hide it from the kids! Let me know how yours goes in the colder climate.
So far they are growing and thats about all that can be said for them. I have little female flowers all over the vine and male flowers clustering around and about but so far none have opened and multiplied. Its January already and we are running out of time! 2 more months to go and it will start getting cooler again. Then again it could be a long summer with La Nina,I hope so. Still, if yours have just started fruiting then mine shouldnt be too far behind. * * * * I was telling a boss about the Rooster and how we were trying to get fertilzed eggs from the girls to on breed some more hens. Also mentioned that I wasnt very happy with the hens from the battery egg farm this year. He said they had problems with their hens from the same farm too and were looking for better hens and a Rooster, actually thats when I told we had a rooster and ..... He coverted it right out of the dome! We did a deal. I am not supposed to have a rooster cos I technically live in town, he lives in the country so he can have as many roosters as he wants. He got the rooster- man was he excited,I thought he was going to start hopping. I told him the little I had managed to find out about the Light Sussex breed. This Rooster is supposed to be a pure bred but I think he might have something else in the gene pool cos he has black feathers where he ought not. The daughter of the friend we got him off breeds this type but at $40 per bird..... Anyway,I get fertilized eggs or I can buy point of lays at a good price. (I'll probably be able to get ducks from him too but I'll need to check what sort he has and if they will be any good at our place). For some reason he wants white hens, must ask him why that is as the only white ones I know of are leghorns which I found flighty and easily upset, they dont look very tasty either. I want him to get fat Buff Orphingtons or some other 'heirloom' type dual purpose hen. I'll have to sic hubby on to trademe to see what he can find for us, he's an absolute genius at finding exactly what we want or need and usually at a really good price too. In fact he got so good at it I have hidden the wish list. I on the other hand have been coverting our neighbour Pecan nuts. Initially I was miffed that the neighbour we share fenceline with talked them into cutting out one of the two Pecans they had growing along their back fence. They cut out the one further away from us which means we get the shade from this remaining tree in early spring and in autumn. I wanted them to cut out the tree closest to us but now have decided that its all to the best. This tree has taken off for some reason and has grown out over the fenceline which means we will be getting pecan nuts when they ripen(so long as the wind doesnt blow the wrong way when they are ready to fall). We have found two seedlings growing in the garden that we dont know what to do with. One is growing about a metre off the fence which means it way to close to the fence and will have to be moved and the other is growing right slap dab in the middle of one of the beds which means it too will have to be moved. Only problem is...where to?
