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!

Chick Magnet

Since getting back from Canada around a month ago, I've been hard at work to finalize arrangements for adopting a few new chooks for our backyard. I had pretty much finished constructing their coop, but needed a few little extras, like a feeder and waterer, something to put down on floor of their coop, and decided I wanted to fence the whole area in where I wanted them to spend most of their time. That was in hindsight one of the best decisions I could have made, becuase as I have found out, the girls can make a nice tidy backyard look like a bomb had gone off. They particularly seemed to enjoy digging up the earth around my fruit trees and flinging it as far onto our paved walkway as possible. After that little excursion they now spend most of their time in their fenced in enclosure. But they seem to like it in there, I have a little watering hole for them in the hot days they like to wade in, lots of shade and areas to dust bath themselves. They get scraps from leftover fruit and veggies, and even the new crop of silver beet and rainbow chard are producing enough that I can pick off leaves and put in their yard. 

The breed I got are called ISA Browns, and for the life of me I still can't tell them apart. I was originally planning on getting some form of bantam breed as my recycled dog house chicken coop wasn't terribly tall, but the lady who I bought them off highly recommended these over the bantam breed she had, so we decided to go with the taller more productive birds and rejig the coop to accommodate them. That entailed a weekend or so of taking the whole roof off the coop, adding about a foot extra height and reassembling the whole thing. Dave was very helpful with this, especially after I dropped a board on my toe and had to retire early from injury. Then we decided the roosting pole I had in the coop might be a little small for the new larger birds feet, so took that apart and got a thicker wooden round roosting bar and put that up for them. The latest in terms of coop modification has been to change the feeder I use, as at the moment the hanging feeder allows the chickens to throw a lot of their chook pellets out of the feeder and onto the ground, once there they refuse to eat it. After deciding not to spend upwards of $200 on a commercial 'no spill chook feeder' I set about looking for DIY options. I found plans for a cheap (cost me under $10 in materials) plumbing pipe feeder that claims to be spill free as the chooks have to put their head slightly in the pipe to get at the food and therefore can't throw the food around while pecking. I just finished it off today and removed the old feeder, so we'll see what the chooks think of this new improved one around dinner time. If you're keen to try and make one, the link to it can be found here.

In terms of egg  production the girls have been fantastic. We have gotten three eggs a day everyday for around the last two weeks, which has prompted me to try and use them in my cooking as much as possible. Even my egg allergy has started dissipating which is very exciting, and I hope it goes away all together soon with all this egg desensitization going on. Even our lovely neighbour Linda popped over to ask if we had gotten chickens and said she loved hearing them in the morning clucking around. I gave her six eggs to ensure our healthy neighbourly relations remain intact. Here are some pictures so far of the chookins doing their thing. Hope you enjoy!

Full of eggy goodness :)

Chickens pecking at the muddy pond I set up for them to get through the hot weather

Full view of enclosure. Top screening put on after as one of the chooks loves flying over the lower fence

The three triplets

She was ready for her closeup

New DIY chicken feeder installed and ready for chooks!

Eggs I collected earlier today from their nesting boxes