Serenity update

I've been worrying that my garden is under performing, and wondering whether it's just the fact that I'm still trying to build soil.....but after putting a bit more effort into watering, things are looking up. I think that it's just been so dry that I haven't watered enough. We haven't had much rain over the last couple of months - just little showers that really don't impact enough. Tis is a problem especially when I don't have a lot of soil as the gravelly clay just dries out. 

Even though some plants don't look too good, I'm still picking lots of food. In fact we've hardly bought a vegetable for months, except for the odd things from the markets. 

My goal for this year is to really focus more on NOT buying fresh food that has had to travel a long way to get to me. I tend to buy organic fruits and vegetables from the shop, but most of these come from distant places - still Australia, but not Queensland. Our local F&V store, does stock local produce and sometimes this is labelled "spray free". I do buy these, but when you buy local and you have a fairly good garden, you are only really able to buy the same things that you grow. One of the challenges to buying local only is not only the lack of choice, but fruit is a problem. It's sometimes really hard to buy local organic/sprayfree fruit. For this reason Kim is reluctant to support me in a "local only shop" as he likes to eat a lot more fruit than I do.

I am in control of the kitchen and the purchasing though so this is what I'll do:

• grow as much as we can here
• buy local spray free or even conventional fruit if we have to
• preserve what I can - especially fruit that I can get locally so that we can eat frozen, dried or water bathed fruit. But sadly, there is no mangoes locally this year.....
• buy conventional fruit for Kim when there's nothing else
• change the way I cook to use home grown ingredients instead of bought. Eg spring onions instead of brown onions, sweet potato instead of white potatoes. Although I will try and grow more spuds this year. They'll grow anytime, so if I have to buy some that have started sprouting to plant, I will.

Anyway, to finish of this post, I'll say it in pictures.......what may garden is doing today.......

I planted out very healthy zucchini and corn seedlings, but these have not grown very well. I have gotten a few zucs, but only when I fertilise them myself. This is something we've had to do with all the squash this year.

This is where the pigs and then the potatoes were. It's growing alot of tomatoes and I've got a few random things like pumpkin, beetroot and lagos spinach in this area.

Trying to grow as many green onions as possible. These are walking onions that I planted last February and I've already taken off little sprouts and transplanted them. 

The turmeric was dug up, but you wouldn't think so by the amount of growth I now have.

I'm doing my best to get sweet potatoes growing throughout the food forrest.

Scarlet runner beans - they have a beautiful flower, but I'm still waiting to see some beans develop! I don't think it's cold enough here - maybe I need to wait until next winter.

Rhubarb - we've eaten quite a bit of this. Maybe this will satisfy Kim's desire for fruit???

This part of the food forest was bare when we came just over a year ago. There's now turmeric, lychee, pidgeon pea, pumpkin, tomatoes, pineapples and a few other random things.....

Kale is still growing well, but I do need to check the back of the leaves for grubs and eggs.

Manure tea to try and build soil fertility. This is fresh and dried cow manure, comfrey, failed BD cowpat pit and failed BD500, seaweed, weeds, biochar and water. It stinks!

Miracle fruit - one of the trees we've bought to add to the food forest.

New Guinea Bean - This is flowering heaps, but not setting fruit and I'm not sure how these get fertilised.

Perenial Spinach going well. Some of my other patches are not as good as this one.

Paw paw tree - this is male tree (or is it a bisexual?). Last year the fruit we got to eat was lovely, but then it got an awful fungus so we need to look after it better this year.

This pumpkin vine is on it's second year - maybe it's third as it was here when we came.

Just a random shot of my garden.

And another random shot, with some cavolo nero in the foreground and a parsley gone to seed beside it.

Random garden shot again.

Eggplant - some are wonderful and some are not so good, and today I notice one plant seems to be dying off!!!

Celery - some has gone to seed and some hasn't. We've been using this for months! Curly parsley gone to seed beside it.

Perenial Capsicum - some are good and some have grubs! I've got about 5 plants so hopefully we'll get some to eat. I'd love to be able to preserve some though so may have to wait until the weather cools and the grubs go away.

Feels like we've been waiting for this banana bunch forever!

I recently planted a heap of seeds straight in to the garden rather than doing seedling pots. These are some Ethiopian Cabbage seedlings (thanks Ruth!)

Tatsoy or bokchoy (not sure which yet) that I left

 to reseed.

This is Mick and Sophies garden. They are staying with us for a while and decided to plant their own garden. They chose next to the yards where the pigs have been, but it's also lovely fertile creek flats. Their soil is metres deep, instead of mine that is only centimetres. Their plants are growing really well and are mostly responsible for the cucumber glut we have and hopefully the coming zucchini glut! They better plant tomatoes next!

I'm looking forward to eating local and growing more of our own food this year. I'm a little slack with the blog, but if you follow me on instagram, I'll post more often there. No facebook any more. 

To finish off, I'd like to wish you all the very best for 2023 and hope that in some way what I share here and on insta is an encouragement to you to consider where your food comes from and that what you eat, does have an impact on your health and well being.......now off to put my calves in so that I can milk my cows in the morning.....