Birds and onions

I love my chickens and I love the wonderful native birds that we share our patch with, I really do!

Myrtle and Mavis eyeing off the baby spring onions

Except when they eat my oniony things! For instance, on Monday morning I emerged from the house to find this.

All my shallots dug up and flung around their little oniony bed. Hmm, a busy tribe of choughs! Thank goodness they had only just started to put down a few roots and no shoots. And there were other casualties in that bed as well.  The shallots were sharing their bed with some onion seedlings  and a row of snow peas that had started to sprout. Gone, all gone.

The shallots have been put into another bed and the soil has been covered with wire to stop the choughs scratchy feet and flicky beaks. Hopefully!

What are choughs (pronounced - chuffs)? Well they are fabulous black and white birds with lovely curved wings and beaks and quite mad red eyes. They hang out in groups and spend a lot of time turning over leaves and other forest litter and they chat to one another as they do. Trevor's Birding has a nice picture of them hanging out together.  They have the most amazing big mud nests. This website has great pictures of them and their nests.

As for my chooky girls, well they like chives,

garlic chives,

and spring onions.

I am guessing that their eggs are going to have a nice oniony taste? Better not make a cake! And better find a solution to their onion tribe snacking.

What irresistible birdie treats do you have in your patch?

Zucchini Tuesday - Wallaby proof

What do zucchinis, chillies and sunflowers have in common?

They are the only wallaby-proof things in my vegetable patch!  While everything else has either been sampled or mown down completely, Greenskin 2 and the new zucchini babies (which I will thin out to one soon) are untouched, completely untouched.

Perhaps the Wallaby is like many others - zucchini not being their first choice for vegetable? Perhaps when the wallaby has finished everything else left in the garden, it might go for the zucchinis?

This information is probably not very useful to you, I suspect most of my readers are not at risk of browsing swamp wallabies?

You might like to know that garlic chives are a particular favourite of the Swampies, garlic chives and parsley.

I think that the Swampy should read my somewhat triumphal post about 'dressing' rabbits. After having eaten  loads of garlic chives and all my parsley, I think Swampy might be nicely pre-seasoned by now?

Think about it Swampy...think before you munch!

What sits undisturbed in your patch? What despite the heat wave or the flood or the  various pests and diseases  ravaging your patch stands proud, undefeated?

Indestructible - crab apples

Some things are indestructible. The three little crab apples that are on the Western side of the house - the hottest spot -  are coping with the extremely hot weather brilliantly.

We have had weather over 30c each day starting Boxing Day. In fact most of those days have been over 35c and the last few over 40c albeit just. The forecast is for this heat to continue  for the forecast period with tomorrow tipped to be the hottest and most dangerous fire-wise in my neck of the woods anyway and most things are struggling with the heat.

Except the crabs, they look very comfortable. Their fruit is staying on,

and only a tiny number of their leaves on the most exposed side of the trees are showing distress.

They have a large number of friends too.  Masses of lady beetles are cruising the leaves, no doubt eating something but I cant see what. Aphids I guess? Whatever it is they are doing a marvellous job cause I can't see the pest!

 All these spots are lady beetles!

I have my garlic chives in pots tucked into the mulch underneath the trees. They benefit from the shade the trees provide and I have heard that garlic chives and apples are good companions -  the garlic chives protecting the apples from something.

 What are they supposed to protect for? Is this your experience? And does it work when one of the companions is in pots?

Stay cool and fire-proof and may your apples prosper.

Potting up, moving out

My patch is pretty empty now. I have harvested the last of my savoy cabbages and beetroot and now the only things left in the patch are some herbs (mint, Vietnamese mint, thyme, chives, parsley), some flowers (poppies, lupins, the end of the violas and pansies) and some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's crop. I hope that the new residents will like what is left and feel excited about planting up their favourite things into the patch.

Everything that I would have in the ground at this time of the year has been raised in pots ready for the move.

I have these vegetables ready for the move:

• eggplants
• tomatoes 
• chillies 
• fennel
• spring onions
• zucchini

and these herbs:

• parsley - Italian and curled
• mint - Vietnamese and just mint
• basil
• sage
• dill
• thyme
• chives
• garlic chives
• marjoram / oregano - I never know which -  do you?
• rosemary
• lavender
• bay
• yarrow

and then there is some fruit:

•  Collette the finger lime (this is probably overly optimistic as I am not sure how she will handle the frosts!)
• the blueberries

I have cut some right back -  the chives and bay have received a big haircut today. Others have been staked, well watered and mulched over some time so they might be more tolerant of the drive. I hope that it will be a mild day the day we move.

I am hoping that they all survive and that the vegetables will settle into a new, no-dig  raised bed  which will be hastily constructed soon after arrival. The herbs I am likely to keep in pots for a while. And then there will be other things to get started  as soon as I get organised at the new place - beans, corn, pumpkin, rock melon, cucumber ...

I will be leaving behind my special, special espaliered lime trees and my fabulous lemon tree. These citrus plants have given such pleasure.

This final picture is of my last harvest - 3 savoy cabbages and some baby beetroot.

Bye my Sydney garden - friend and comforter.

Spring is in the air

Solstice is passed, spring is in the air and the sap is rising in all gardeners in the southern hemisphere. The last few days in Sydney have been clear blue skied and 20 degrees Celsius. Just perfect weather!

The fact that  Suburban Tomato is raising her tomato seed raising has got me moving.  If Liz can start raising seeds in Melbourne now, then heck, I should have started weeks ago in Sydney! So today I started raising the following.

Tomatoes

• brown berry -  a brownish cherry tomato
• broad ripple yellow currant -  you get the idea
• sugar lump -  a bright red squat-shaped cherry
• zebra mix -  a mix of black, green and red zebra striped tomatoes - medium sized

We have BIG fruit fly problems in Sydney and so the smaller varieties are essential.

Other things

• Padron chillies
• Garlic chives
• Beetroot - Dark Red
• Fennel - Florence

The beetroot and fennel have gone directly into the soil. Is it too early for them?

All these new seeds were added to some seeds  I had started raising a while ago.

• Red bok choy ( which is looking very cute in its pale blue punnet)
• Spring onions
• Heirloom lettuce mix (Australian Yellowleaf, Rouge d'hiver, Flame, Goldrush, Forellenschuss -  I think that's a lovely freckly one)

My seed raising goes on on top of my black flat topped compost bin.  It  generates bottom heat and has been a great place to raise seeds.

And there are plenty more seeds in the seed box just waiting to go into the ground. I can almost hear them telling me, 'plant me, plant me!'

Do you have a little box like this where you keep your seeds and other paraphernalia? Paddle pop sticks to label the seeds ('paddle pop sticks' - that's probably Australian... you know what I mean...), screw top watering thingies, labels from plants?

I love my seed box. It's an old shoe box decorated with cut-outs of seed packets and seed catalogues.

How do you keep your seeds?