Verge Orchard

With our limited space constraints (our block is around 427 square meters) came certain drawbacks in terms of self sustainability. One is the lack of space available for planting fruit trees as they tend to grow large and take up a decent amount of space. I have jam packed our backyard with different varieties of dwarf, semi dwarf, and columnar fruit species, but some women buy shoes, I buy fruit trees. So eventually I ran out of space entirely in our backyard, but still had a beautiful weeping mulberry tree needing a home, and a fig and orange tree needing relocating as I accidentally planted them in possibly the shadiest spots in our back yard and they were less than impressed with my efforts.
So last weekend we were lucky enough to get the Transition Town Guildford Verge Gardening Group together round at ours to help us plant the trees onto our rather large verge that currently just grows useless weeds in winter and is a dry scorched wasteland in summer. Over the course of two hours we managed to dig all three holes, amend the soil and plant all three trees.
Since then they have gotten plenty of rain, and are all looking very happy with their new homes. In future I plan on extending out and adding some more veggie garden space around the fruit trees and mulching the rest of the verge to eliminate the need of mowing and to also increase the space available for us to continue producing out own fruit and veggies. Enjoy of the photos of the process and the lovely end result, prettiest verge on the street now.

Weeping mulberry tree before transplant

Mulberry tree located on the verge

Everyone hard at work planting the trees

Transition Town Guildford Verge Gardening Group very proud of their handy work

Curing your own olives

I love the fall. Signs of the cooler weather to come abound with the leaves changing colour, the winter vegetable seedlings starting to sprout and the last of the summer crops are eaten.

One of our autumn crops we started processing was the first of our olive harvest. One of the branches from our tree was hanging low over our neighbours driveway, so we pruned this off and harvested the olives. The recipe I use to cure my olives you can find here. I have found it produces excellent results, and is simple to use. We use a 30 litre barrel used in home brew to soak our olives in, and I leave my olives in the salt brine for around six months, changing the brine roughly monthly. I then soak them in fresh water for a week to remove excess salt, and bottle with herbs and spices along with a the new brine solution of salt and vinegar in sterilized jars. The spices I have used in the past include: whole peppercorns, whole garlic cloves (peeled), bay leaves, dried oregano, thyme, chilli flakes, and rosemary. I found this combination of herbs produces a lovely aromatic olive great for all different sorts of cooking or just eaten raw as a starter. I've also played around with adding different flavours to the olives, such as tequilla and lime zest, and an extra hot and spicy jar requested by a friend by adding a few extra tablespoons of dried chilli flakes. (He said they were good and hot!) The point is, use what herbs you like, and feel free to experiment with different flavours. Maybe try an asian inspired brine, using garlic, ginger, chilli, and maybe some karrif lime. The possibilities are endless! I first add the spices to the hot sterilised jars, then pack the jars tightly with the olives, ladle over the new salt and vinegar brine, and cover with olive oil. There should be enough oil on top to completely cover all the olives and keep them from oxidizing. Then I keep them in a cool dark cupboard or the fridge.
Hopefully you'll get inspired and maybe even plant an olive tree in your own back yard and will get to experience the joy of home grown, cured and delicious olives.

Olives curing in barrel

The rest of the olive tree that remains to be picked

Olives turning from green to black

30L barrel full of olives and brining

Recycled Raised Garden Bed

Sadly one of our raised garden beds out the front got eaten by ants so needed to be replaced, so Dave and I decided it was time to build ourselves a replacement bed, one that would last a bit longer than the one on the out! I should mention that the beds that got eaten weren't the ones we built when my folks came down in 2012, but one I bought online that claimed to be 'long lasting and pest resistant'. Yeah right. I have learned my lesson and from now will be making all my raised beds myself! (All the beds that were made by us are looking just fine by the way).
All the materials used for the making of the new bed were either scavenged from under our house from previous owners, and the colourbond steel gotten from a company that sell off cuts or slightly damaged pieces that might otherwise be destined for landfill.
First we had to cut all the scavenged timber down to the lengths we were needing, and then screwed all the pieces into a frame that would become the bottom of the bed.

 

We used jarrah decking boards from our endless lumbar yard under the house to become the corner bits, which hide the raw edges of the colourbond and also gives the frame extra stability. Dave hard at work staining the jarrah to make them extra pretty and long wearing.

Top and bottom of frame assembled ready for painting and cutting of the colourbond sheeting.

 

Difference before and after oiling the jarrah decking boards that we used for the top capping.

 Securing the colourbond sheets to the wooden frame.

 Closeup of the jarrah corner pieces that hide the colourbond edges.

 Angle grinding the bit of colourbond that stuck up a little too high over the frame on top.

 Almost finished!

 Where the old garden bed was located, after the old bed was ripped out. Looked a bit grave-like I thought.

 Bed placed and leveled, which took way longer than either of us expected, but being the perfectionists we are, got it pretty good in the end.

 Top jarrah capping finished, and bed completed!

Family selfie. :)

An Unexpected Harvest

With spring well underway, I thought I should get back in the garden and get things ready for my summer crops. To start with I had to weed out one of the beds left empty over winter after adding some compost to improve the soil and be ready for summer plantings. Apparently the compost must have had some of my potatoes that went a bit squishy in the cupboard and chucked in composter, as when I started weeding, up pulled a big handful of potatoes! In the end we got a whole basket full of new potatoes, ranging in size from the palm of my hand down to little tiny round ones (which taste the best anyway) and ended up having them and a bunch of snow peas from the garden with dinner. Best weeding I've ever done!

 We also have quite an abundance of eggs at the moment, so on the dinner menu for tonight is a homemade gluten free quiche with garden vegetables. I'll post some pictures of how it turns out tonight. Anyone have any suggestions as to what they do with an abundant supply of eggs? We're running out of ideas!

 This is the plan for our gardens this summer, now I just need to make it a reality!Just got home from picking up some organic heirloom tomato seedlings, and a bunch of different heirloom seeds to plant out this summer.

 

Well that's about it for now, just a quick post this time round. :)

Spring has sprung

With the days getting longer and the air getting warmer, the whole garden seems to be growing faster everyday.
I've managed to squeeze in a few more fruit trees around the back of the house over the winter, with two types of pear, (Nashi and Bartlett), and a dwarf apricot for Dave. These are now starting to bloom with the anticipation of our first years production of home grown peaches, nectarines and pears, not to mention apples, cherries (hopefully!), lemons, and olives.
With this in mind I thought I would share some photos from around the gardens on how the winter veggies are faring and how the fruit trees are starting to come into flower.

Enjoy! :)

Front Veggie Beds:

Peas then (mid July)

Peas now (early September)

Cabbage then

Cabbage now

Garlic, onions and leek then

Garlic, onions and leek now

Fruit trees:

Columnar peach tree in flower. This type of peach tree is great for us as it naturally grows skinny and straight up, which means I can fit more around it.

Dwarf peach tree given to us as an engagement present :) Still grows full sized peaches believe it or not!

Apricot tree planted this winter for Dave. Just started to flower which is exciting as I managed to kill his last apricot somehow.

Nashi pear I planted recently just for me! Dave hates them but I think he's crazy, they are so delicious!

Barlett pear tree, no flowers yet but I did just plant it about two weeks ago, so we shall see!


I'm a notoriously horrible flower gardener, I seem to kill anything not is not a vegetable or a fruit, but I thought I should try and attract some bees and other beneficial insects into the garden so should get my act together and replant the front flower patch which had died off over winter. Not quite finished but looking much better I think. :)

Wood fired pizza oven

So over the last few months Dave and I have been slowly working towards our goal of getting our own wood fired pizza oven built in our back yard. Well we've finally finished and have now been enjoying some delicious home baked wood fired pizzas, and thought I would share some of the pictures from along the way.

The base at the very beginning! The hard work all before us.

Bottom refractory bricks placed, ready for the dome to be put on.

We got the help of a few of our mates, as each piece of the dome was around 100kgs each. I directed and generally made sure all fingers were still attached at the end of the process.

The joins between the pieces filled, ready for insulation and rendering.

Insulating the dome was a real pain, as multiple layers including the fluffy insulation, tin foil, and chicken wire all had to all sit on top of each other and lay flat to the dome before we could start to render. It was a slow process that took longer than either of us had anticipated. But we persevered and got there in the end.

Dave starting to mix up the cement render as the final stage of oven building. This was tricky as neither of us had ever worked with render and had no idea what we were doing, and the realisation that if we mucked it up badly that it would stick out like a sore thumb and be very hard to fix down the track.

In hindsight we started rendering a little late, and ended up finishing the render in the dark. Living room lamps and camping lantern came in very handy!

Getting close to the end, some fully rendered, and front face spray painted with a high heat enamel paint.

We decided to do a mosaic tile around the base of the oven, and had a custom slab of marri made for the front assembly area.

Our friend Mark enjoying his first homemade pizza from our oven! 

 

 

In the end we've had heaps of friends over for pizza parties on more than one occasion and everyone has commented on just how amazing the pizzas taste coming out of the wood fired oven. By far they're the best homemade pizzas I've ever made, and would highly recommend one if you don't mind a little hard work and sweat equity!