November Gardening + babies!

I didn’t expect to have to cover my frost tender plants in early November, but it seems the seasons conspired against me and the first week of November saw me in the garden with sheets and towels, covering the plants that would have died if frozen.

A week later, I’m hopeful that the frosts have gone for the year entirely, but I’m not holding my breath. In a small fist shake to the weather gods though, I have planted out some of my frost tender plants from their seedling boxes and crossed my fingers that the chooks don’t find their way into the new! shiny! big! garden.

I’ve had a lot of things planted, including things that you don’t normally find available in seeds in Tassie, I’m experimenting with honeydew melon, rockmelon and water melon, as well as luffa and some giant pumpkins – amongst other things.

After buying a load of seeds from here [side note, much recommended, shipping is fast and the seeds are amazing], I decided that my ‘small’ garden wasn’t big enough – at least, it wasn’t big enough after I planted the entire middle section with climbing beans, peas, kohl rabi and potatoes – we moved all the tyres from the tyre arena and created a garden, about 10m square (30ft thereabouts).

One problem? The grass and soil in that area of the paddock is horribly compacted, from years of previous owners driving cars on it. So turning it over isn’t an option, not unless someone in Tassie has a machine to do it for me, for free? No.

So, I got experimenting. I laid some cardboard to kill off the grass a bit and then covered it with horse manure, sheep manure and potting mix. It was a little bit messy and I wasn’t sure it was going to work – but I planted my corn in there anyway.

Over the weekend though, I had an even better idea and just filled some boxes from the fruit and veg market with sheep manure and potting mix – without flattening the boxes first. This way the sides keep the soil in for the beginning, the bottom rots out slowly letting the roots through and the grass hopefully doesn’t get too strong a hold in amongst my vegies.

Of course, I’m still waiting to see if this is going to work how I hope, so cross fingers for me, yes?

My tomatoes and other seedlings aren’t large enough to plant out yet, so the ‘big’ garden only has basil, rockmelon and corn in it at the moment.

And babies!

I mentioned on twitter that I had a chook broody and I thought all her eggs were rotten. No, she proved me wrong when a fortnight ago she appeared with 4 chicks. These were my first babies out of my own eggs (from the rooster who attacked Amy and made delicious dinner) and I found it really interesting to see what colours they are.

My rooster by the way was a Rhode Island Red X and the hens who laid the eggs were Australorp X’s and a Rhode Island Red X hen, so having 3 red/browny babies wasn’t a surprise. No, the surprise came with a black and white baby. I have no idea how a black/red hen and a red rooster produced black and white baby, but hey, it happened and I’ll be interested to see if it stays black and white.

Plus, the ducklings I have left. The mother is marked for ‘no more babies, ever’ because she’s such a terrible mother. From 16 eggs we got 12 ducklings and 2 weeks later I have 5 left. Sigh.

But they’re cute!

And my ‘older’ ducklings are just getting their feathers, so they’re firmly in the middle of an ugly stage. However, they’re growing fast enough that if we’re really lucky, we might get a roast duck for Christmas.