Worm farm and transitions meeting

Worm farm pre-production. Bucket on left has the coconut coir bedding you soak in water

Put together my worm farm the other day, these are a few shots to show how it went together. It was all in all very easy, and only took about half an hour from start to finish, and it's already got it's first batch of veggie scraps from cooking last night to munch on.:)

Coconut bedding once in the farm

Worms in their new home

The worm was ready for his close up.

Worm blanket that goes on top

Finished product!

I went to my first Guildford Town Transitions Kitchen Gardeners Society meeting on Sunday afternoon hosted at Andy & Rebecca's house to help them fill and plant three new raised garden beds. There was a good turnout, of probably around 20 people. We all had a bit of a chat and I got a chance to get acquainted with a few of the members. Because we had so many volunteers the actual hard labour was done in less than an hour I'd say, and then we had an afternoon tea brought by members. I brought a jar of my homemade tomato sauce, freshly brined olives and some extra lemons off our tree. I took home with me some oranges someone else brought to the sharing table. All in all it was a very fun afternoon getting to meet other people with similar goals and interests and look forward to going to my next one!

meet and greet

the boys mucking in

tomato stakes going in with Sophie (hosts two year old daughter) helping

Lots of hard work being done ;)

Last of the seedlings going in

Sophie watering some of her new veggies

Worm farm

Went to Bunnings today and as usual had three things on out list, but ended up with a shipping trolley full to the brim of household items that we apparently needed but didn't know about before we actually got there. I got a worm farm which I had been after for ages but never got round to buying, which I was very pleased with. I got the "Worm Cafe" which has three separate tiers for worms and looked big enough to meet our requirements. I'll set it up tomorrow morning before heading off to my very first Guildford Transitions meeting which I'm looking forward to. We're off to a members house who is starting off her vegetable garden for the spring and we're going over to help her plant it all out. Should be good fun to meet other people around the area with similar outlooks and aspirations. Will be nice to get some advice on plants, soils, etc. as well!
Will update more once I get back. :)

Spring time!

Before: Front of house with giant ferrel bottlebrush shrub.

After: Front of house after bottlebrush has been removed!

Now that spring is here I've been trying to get the outside of the house a bit more presentable and productive all at the same time. Here are a few shots around the place today to show some of the progress so far. I'm hoping to turn most of the front yard into veggies, and already taken out the horrible looking grass plants in the front yard and replaced them with tomatoes (photos below). The new herb garden I made using the strip of dirt between our house and our rear neighbours looks pretty good, and I'm pleased with using wasted space and turning it into something productive. So enjoy the photos and I'll try and post more soon! :)

Tomato bed freshly planted directly in front of front door.

Before: Weedy bit of dirt between our driveway and the neighbours

After: Lovely herb garden full of jalapenos, basil, parsley, dill, oregano and coriander

Runner beans!

Raised garden bed around side of house. Seedlings

 just sprouting

Apple blossom

New House!

So we bought a house, yay! Now comes the fun part where I can start making it fit our needs. My plan is to get as much sustainability on our block as possible, and I've started the process by ripping out some old bushes that were lining our back fence line to make room for some fruit trees I bought at a local nursery. I got a dwarf apricot tree, dwarf fuji apple tree, dwarf sundowner apple tree, and a miniature sweet cherry tree. (I'm very excited about my cherry tree, as it's a new self pollinating variety and apparently much easier to grow than older varieties that were supposedly very hard to grow and fruit.) These get added to my growing collection of fruit plants which now include all the above plus my kaffir lime tree, two blueberry bushes, raspberry and blackberry bushes, cameron apple tree, navel orange tree, miniature lots'o'lemons bush, and already established lemon and olive trees that came with the house.

Back fench after ripping out old bush

L to R - Fig tree, navel orange tree, dwarf apricot tree

Established lemon tree that came with the house

Sally inspecting my handywork

Olive tree

Lemons that are ready for picking!

Ripe olives!

Planted navel orange tree

Lots'o'lemon bush

My helper extraordinaire!

Operation: Seedling Surprise

Tango alpha big dog, the seedlings have been planted.
Yes indeed, it has been a mission, but we have take off of our freshly planted seedlings that will be going into my raised beds once this crop has finished it's cropping. Through the magic of time lapse photography, I am proud to present to you our fall seedling crop...

These are the different seeds I planted. Two varieties of corn, pickling cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes

Action shot! Filling with soil.

Seeds being sown

Fast forward about a week and a half... we have spouting!

Close up shot of how big their getting. I put a match stick up next to one of the cucumber seedlings so you could get an idea of scale.

Canning marathon!

Phew! 7:30 and I'm still boiling up my first batch of home made tomato sauce! Mind you I started about 2:30, so this has taken just a tad bit longer than I first imagined. I forgot that you need to boil down the thin watery tomatoes into a thicker sauce which takes ages. :P But now we are on the homeward stretch and we have 6 x 750ml jars of tomato sauce to show for it.
I still need a few canning supplies: a funnel, jar grabbers and lid grabbers, things that look small and unimportant until you try and do it without them, and then you see just how important they really are. It's not from a lack of looking mind you, two kitchen specialists and a kmart later no luck! Even tried to go online from a well known Aussie canning internet specialist and they were sold out! Gah.
But here is a visual diary of the canning process... let me know what you think!

Home grown tomatoes being chopped prior to boiling

One very full stock pot on the left.

Stirring tomatoes at a nice rolling boil

Chef hard at work

Putting the tomatoes through a food mill to remove skins and seeds

Milled tomatoes starting to slowly thicken

Canned jars of sauce, back in the boiling water bath

Voila! The finished product. We'll update once we've opened one!

Such a thing as too many tomatoes?

So now I have a dilemma. What to do with all these tomatoes? I sadly don't have a pressure canner as yet, or an actually decent kitchen in which to work, otherwise I might just can myself some tomato sauce. So now I have to think of something tomato-ie and nice and summery. Any suggestions?
But here are a few of the onions I planted. Not quite as big as I was expecting, more like a shallot. Ah well, their still cute. :)

Ferrel zucchini, soon to be culled.

My teeny little onions

Broccoli which doesn't seem to flower, we will be patient.