Growing Food and Animal Husbandry, Including Pics!

[Nuytsia]

Oh no!
You poor thing!
How could they forget??? Geeeeeees, poor lil chickies.

Hey guess what we almost had a chicken disaster of our own.
We put them down with our fruit trees (inside the 'possum proof' (hahah) fence) for the day.... it's not far from our house and you can see them from the window ..... but we had the curtain closed on one of the windows that you can see half of the enclosure from (as it was SO COLD and we had the heater on) .... anyhoo I glanced out the window with curtains open and saw they weren't in that half of the enclosure and so i said hmm wonder what the chooks are doing, so i got up and ambled over to the other window, opened the curtain and THERE's the WEDGETAIL EAGLE sitting on our driveway eyeballing the chooks through the fence about 3 metres away!! I think I screamed and I banged on the window and the eagle flew off straight away. SOOOO CLOSE! Of course we went down and brought them out of that area straight away!!! (their normal pen isn't that much closer to the house but it has tree cover overhead and they can hide in their coop or nesting area)

I must have some special sixth sense ..... "I sense a chicken in danger somewhere!!"

[Nuytsia]

Wow Spring is close..... our quince tree has leaves and one of the pear trees has green buds!
In the vegie patch my garlics are having a growth spurt, maybe due to a lot of rain or maybe the lengthening days?

['thul]

summer is at an end here... days are getting wetter and colder...

[Nuytsia]

It feels like Spring here, but I wouldn't discount the possibility of more winter to come seeing as we had snow at the end of September last year!
We had early snow this year, in July!

[Farseer]

Off for a jaunt to the east coast again at the end of the week so will pick up some replacement chickens on the way, but point-of-lay pullets this time. The jackeroo who killed the last lot has recently flown the coop so it's now safe to buy some more!

My most recently grown tomato bushes are already producing so it will be a very productive spring and summer for those. I have been neglecting my old patch so it's time to get stuck into some major planting...!

It's also time to finally get the orchard put in after having to put it off umpteen times after the new house was built here. I'm looking forward to seeing some mango, orange, mandarine (the spelling choice for many Australians as most tend to say "man - dah - reen", not "man - dah - rin"!), lemon, lime, grapefruit and mulberry trees out the back. I haven't had my hands stained purple from mulberries since I was about five years old.

Oh, and I have some passionfruit seeds to plant too. Hopefully these will not only provide some fruit but also a nice screen (eventually!) between our homestead and the men's quarters.

[Nuytsia]

What type of chooks did you get this time?
Hope they're going well!
Yum, tomatoes! Can you grow those all year round? I have some plants I kept inside over winter and they stopped fruiting ages ago, but recently they have had stacks of flowers (but too cold to set fruit). Today I found one has a fruit on it! heheh Yay! (NB it's way too early to plant out new plants outside here!)

Yum what a selection of fruit you will have!!!!
I didn't plant ANY new fruit trees this winter..... I got too disheartened at doing all the work of digging and preparing holes and planting them and having them savaged by rabbits/wallabies/possums/unknown marauders. So this year I'm trying to consolidate what we do have. We've extended the fence up to 1800mm high and we THINK we've shored up the bottom of it too. Also most trees have individual 900mm wire around them, and those that don't have small trunk guards against rabbit attack. Phew!

I'm going to plant peas very soon.

['thul]

These beings were planning to plant a bamboo plant this summer, unfortunately it died before its roots could work themselves into the soil... They'll have to buy a new one to try again...

A private li'l bamboo forest would've been nice...

[fool-ish]

I've managed to grow some chillies! I'm not green fingered at all but these have come on a treat...quite impressed

[Nuytsia]

Farseer do you not breed your own chickens? Or are you just after some new blood?

Also, I don't think I could grow any of the fruit trees you are growing! I guess mulberries I could, and I would like to try those.
Possibly some types of mandarin and lemon, but I would probably have to put them in pots so I could put them under shelter during winter frosts?
One thing I find annoying is that I read things written overseas about cold tolerant varieties of certain plants like that, but they don't seem readily available here. Most of the garden centres must get their stock form large companies that mostly stock other warmer parts of Australia.

Thul I would like to grow bamboo! For some reason it seems to be really expensive here.

Fool-ish that sounds good! I actually grew some capsicums (bell peppers) indoors here. They grew quite well, which surprised me.
I did try to grow some outside but I didn't get them started early enough so by the time they were flowering the weather was already too cold!

['thul]

These beings got hold of the bamboo sprig at that int'l store called IKEA.
They intend to get a new one later to try again.