Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

I know what you mean. i put in nearly 3kg of seed spuds of different varieties for a grand total of 4kg of edible spuds.

It's been a hot dry summer as most know and I have pretty much given up on trying to get produce out of the garden. Other than a heap of basil, some lettuce early on, half a dozen eggplants and about 10% of the tomatos we usually get it has been slim pickings.

The long weekend and some cool weather signaled time to make a start for the year and given it is going to get hot again and we have had a chook being clucky for the last month the chook pen - or lack there of seemed a good place to start. I had all the gear laying around to do it but had been putting of digging the two holes into solid dry clay that were required to make it happen. I was still putting it off this morning but my mate returned my jackhammer so I ran out of excuses.

The old tractor has been shortened and it's enclosed area maintained for roosting and nesting, there will be some changes later in the year to this but for now it is good enough. The ladies are very happy and old clucky even spent the day off the nest today whilst the building was happenening.

The solid walls at the end away from the roost are for my new mulch bays - lets see how longt it takes before they actually get used Anyway the chook pen it done (after all that procrastination it only took 6 hours ), look good and hopefully is fox secure

More, as you can see the garden is pretty dry and non existant.

Nice work Burnsy

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

Burnsy,
I've concluded if we are to have any luck over here in summer we need to have a shade structure over our vegie gardens or its almost a waste of time. If we get some rain this winter, I'm digging holes for a pergola as soon as the ground softens up.
My garden only had 4 pumpkins out of 10 plants, and bugger all tomatoes, too hot for lettuce and cucmbers too. I need shade and automatic watering, hand watering just doesnt work, the damage is done by the time you get home from work.
Oldute.

I agree about the shade and am lucky in that my vege garden is overshadowed by a couple of Marris that allow me to plant sun intollerant plants in shade. It works well as the trees are on the spouth side so over winter the garden gets more sun as the sun sits lower in the northern sky.

I am unsure water wise what the problem has been this year other than it being extremely dry and hot. My garden is watered via my ATU system which generally runs half a dozen times per day but the dirt has been bone dry this year even with this, I think this is due to it not getting properly saturated last year to start with.

I run large gardens at school that get heaps of water and even with this we have been unable to get any zucchinis to mature this season. Both at school and home the fruits have swelled at the base near the stem and then started rotting at the flower back so that the whole fruit has been ruined. I will just put it down to a bad year, I am however building wicking beds before I plant any more out this autum.

As proof of how dry it has been, even the different species of eucalypt trees that have been in full bloom for the last two months have not been producing enough nectar for my bees to make honey stores. I inspected the hives on the weekend and found very little capped honey and this is with my having been feeding them syrup for the past two months.

I think shade is a must too but even with out any this year the moisture retained in my wicking beds allowed me to grow heaps of pumpkins and zucchini, tomatoes were a dissapointment though.

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

Which is why I am going wicking beds now, even my pumpkin fruits died off and cooked in the heat. Not sure why tomatos went so poorly, I really nursed mine but they all just seem to burn (the fruit) or not fruit at all. I ended up picking the ones we got and allowing them to ripen inside rather than on the tree. Perhaps the most disappointing was the two big beautiful brandywine bushes I grew and was really excited about experiencing but they flowered and never produced a fruit despite there being two bee hives within 10 metres of them.

Its hard to work out isnt it? I made 3 x one metre diameter wicking beds and the pumpkins in one of them didnt even flower and always looked ratty. Strawberries did well in the wicking bed but rainbow shard did nothing. Capsicums in the wicking bed burnt in the sun but I was finally able to grow them this year by putting under shademesh and attaching a leaking tap to drippers around the capsicums. Corn was dissapointing, dry. Could have been timing dunno.
Didnt have a problem with zuchinnis - had dozens from 3 plants, too many. I'm hoping shade and automatic watering will fix my problems next season. Might crack it lucky in 10 years.
At least we didnt have many (or any) days in the fourties.

I think the hot is finally behind us, not so much luck with the dry though but I can deal with that. Got into the garden today and put another wicking bed together over the old dirt garden area and dug over my first row of potatos and put them in. The other bed is starting to actually become productive in the cool change the amazingly the basil is still going crazy. The artichokes have also resprouted from where they died off for the third year and my chilli's and bannanas are going great.

Limes and lemons are also going off with fresh lime with water the drink of chaice at the moment. Bees are also really busy however I have been feeding them once a month as it has been so dry the nectar has been pretty much non existant and there is consequently very little capped honey in my hives. I think I will be feeding them right through to spring to try and keep the colony numbers up.

OK, long time no update as I have been busy reproducing and more recently putting in a pool - for swimming in not fishing in

The garden is a little neglected but I will get some photos up in the next week after I spend a day doing a cleanup. Fox took our two chooks last night so now I need towo new chooks and to chookproof the rear side of the yard where they got in. Surprised they took both chooks, not bodies or parts around anywhere just feathers in the neigbours yard. One may have escaped but I am guessing that the poor thing is long gone if it did get away.
Stay posted

Still no pictures .............. soon; but we just went and selected four new chooks, very exciting . One each of a gold lace wyandotte, silver laced wyandotte, light sussex and an australorp, the girls are very excited, now to get on and renovate the coup before Sunday's pickup.

Has anyone any experience with foxlights? The breeder told us she has heard good reports about them.

I have bought chickens from 2 different breeders recently who both had them and said they havent lost a chicken since they brought them. Both had had them for a while by the sounds of it.

Thanks, I will look into them further then. Was one of the breeders Jo in Gooseberry Hill? She has some nice birds.