Winter vegetable garden

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The garden is coming along well. I spent some time out there yesterday planting, picking, sitting, thinking, talking to the chooks and planning. I still haven't finished my herbs but it all waits for its own time. Not much is hurried here. If it isn't done today, it might be done tomorrow, or the next day.

(Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.)

We have been eating the cucumbers when they're small and sweet and so far we haven't had a glut of them. If we do, I'll be making bread and butter cucumbers. The little yellow cucumber flowers keep blooming and every day there are more cucumbers to be picked.

There have been quite a few caterpillars and grasshoppers this year. The weather is mild and they've not been killed off or driven off by the cold weather yet. pfffffffft. We have some organic spray here to be made up today, so hopefully, the bugs will be gone next week. We will still eat these sugarloaf cabbages. Organic food rarely looks perfect and after a good wash, this produce will be good to go.

There are some lovely looking baby cauliflowers almost ready for picking. They will probably be picked for the table late next week.

Here are some snow peas and frilly lettuce. I think this is Darwin lettuce.

And among the growing plants, the buzzing bees and the clucking chickens, there is always work to be done. Here is a new bed of Chinese cabbage (bok choi) and silverbeet.

We grow a lot of green leaves because we eat them, I freeze them for later and the chooks get their fair share every day.

The lemons are juicy and fabulous this year because of all the rain we had a couple of months ago. Many of these will be juiced and stored in the freezer for summer cordials.

The newer chooks have settled into their new home well, are growing fast and preparing for egg laying. One of the Australorpes - Kylie, started laying early last week. Here are two barred Plymouth Rocks, a Faverolles, and the egg laying black Kylie having their afternoon siesta.

We always grow pigeon peas which are a well know permaculture plant. They're drought resistant, good for mulch and produce a fine pea that the chooks love when they're green like they are now. Sometimes we let them dry on the tree and pick them as dried peas. They store well in the cupboard and make a fine pea soup.

But while they're still plentiful and as green as a leprechaun's hat, we feed them to the chickens. The girls are also being fed warm porridge during the cold months, lots of green leaves and always have grain mixed with pellets in their feed hopper.

And last, but by no means least, on your touraround my winter garden is Hanno's latest recycled creation. He was concerned that rain was messing up the inside of the chicken coop, so we decided to harvest that water and in doing that solve the problem. He attached some old guttering to the front of the coop and has a down pipe running into a bucket. This will probably be upgraded to a 200 litre tub as soon as we move it over there.

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