Tristrin's Backyard

Tristrin · **Posted:** Thu Feb 04, 2010 4:06 pm

A brief description of our garden

Firstly I'd like to point out that it is a bit wild.....and that's the way i like it! I'm not into plants being trimmed and in neat rows, or manicured lawns, or rows of roses. I prefer native plants, grasses and love trees. Hubby likes ferns, palms and tropical plants; so we each have our areas that we are in charge of! Luckily we have 5 acres, so plenty of room for both of us to be happy. The main conflict we have is that i like trees with multi-trunks or twisted branches and he likes them to be trimmed up with just the one clean trunk.

Our climate is hot and dry in Summer, frosts are common in winter and our soil is alkaline and very heavy clay. Before we could get much to grow we had to do a heap of mulching, mainly using newspaper and woodchips, straw or coarse sawdust to cover the paper. Our land is also prone to flooding on the rare occasions that we get about 5 inches of rain in a few hours.

I should point out that our piece of land was considered un-suitable for planting and was not included when land here was divided into blocks for growing grapes & citrus.

Have some photos to post, but it will have to wait a while....work to do 1st.

Tristrin · **Posted:** Thu Feb 04, 2010 6:01 pm

photo's from May 2009

Attachment:

's May 2009 003 (Small).jpg [ 107.57 KiB | Viewed 16434 times ]

Attachment:

's May 2009 004 (Small).jpg [ 95.17 KiB | Viewed 16434 times ]

Attachment:

's May 2009 015 (Small).jpg [ 100.75 KiB | Viewed 16434 times ]

Tristrin · **Posted:** Thu Feb 04, 2010 6:14 pm

Attachment:

's May 2009 021 (Small).jpg [ 77.08 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

Attachment:

Front Garden May 2009 004 (Small).jpg [ 93.55 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

Our chook house 'palace'
The chook house has a 'poo slide'. The area under the perches is covered with mesh and the chook droppings falls through this and onto a metal slide. So it is actually falling outside the chook house. Very easy to remove the manure and use whenever needed, and inside the house the ground stays much cleaner.

Attachment:

Assorted photos 2010 011 (Small).jpg [ 82.79 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

Tristrin · **Posted:** Thu Feb 04, 2010 6:20 pm

The old IXL stove is used to boil water to pluck chooks (young roosters)

Attachment:

Assorted photos 2010 015 (Small).jpg [ 93.38 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

looking towards veggi garden & orchard

Attachment:

Assorted photos 2010 016 (Small).jpg [ 78.86 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

Hubby's mini 'rain forest'

Attachment:

Assorted photos 2010 022 (Small).jpg [ 104.76 KiB | Viewed 16433 times ]

dufflight · **Posted:** Thu Feb 04, 2010 10:00 pm

WOW

Is there room for me to build a small cabin or weekender. :god:

chillidude · **Posted:** Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:40 am

Certainly appears to be Duff - nice block Tristrin, thanks for the piccies, great block !

pistolknight · **Posted:** Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:51 am

A fair bit of space tristrin, and I think your chooks are a tad spoiled, nice job

Tristrin · **Posted:** Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:31 pm

Have often thought about building a small cabin, or maybe an elaborate cubby house and just holidaying in the backyard!
Our kids are past the age for wanting a cubby house and they never really asked for one.....think they had enough to explore.

Tristrin · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 5:09 pm

These pictures show the value of planting deciduous trees on the north side of a house. In summer our deck & outdoor entertainment area is completely shaded; we get beautiful foliage colours in autumn and in winter the sun comes in through the large windows, helping to warm our house.

Attachment:

Autumn 2009.jpg [ 164.85 KiB | Viewed 16362 times ]

Attachment:

February 2010.jpg [ 152.28 KiB | Viewed 16362 times ]

ali_celt · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 5:58 pm

I spy a RAL home??? OOOH I so want one of those - one day, perhaps
What a lovely yard!

Tristrin · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 6:32 pm

Actually it's not a RAL home but looks similar. We built ours before they were commercially making theirs. We did it the hard way! :learn:

I would highly recommend RAL homes if you want to live in something that's not a 'box'.

Food&Fish · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 6:58 pm

Very nice nw victoria is a big place what town are you close to

Tristrin · **Posted:** Sun Feb 28, 2010 10:23 pm

Near Mildura

Food&Fish · **Posted:** Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:10 am

Yep nice spot

Tristrin · **Posted:** Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:27 pm

Some before and after photos showing the mess contractors made when installing new pipework for a neighbour. Unfortunately we have an easement along the front of our place so we can't complain about the pipe going there, but they are supposed to make some effort to restore the area to what it was like. :anger:

Attachment:

's May 2009 021 (Small).jpg [ 77.08 KiB | Viewed 16227 times ]

Attachment:

Was a lawn 001 (Small).jpg [ 78.66 KiB | Viewed 16227 times ]

Attachment:

Was a lawn 002 (Small).jpg [ 75.6 KiB | Viewed 16227 times ]

The photos don't actually show just how uneven it has been left. We had the area sloped to catch run-off from neighbouring properties and it will require quite a bit of work to restore back to what it was! :bat:

Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home