Gardening behind the wire

THERE'S a great article in the latest Gardening Australia magazine about a prison gardens.

Written by senior researcher Millie Ross, it makes you realise how lucky we are to have our own gardens.

 

Now the rain has (temporarily stopped) I'm hoping the sunshine will give the spring veggies a bit of a boost.

 

As Peter Cundall so ably wrote in the Weekly Times today, so many plants require a certain amount of sunshine to reach their optimum growth.  

Chook house blues

KEEPING your chooks dry when it buckets down can be a challenge.

It's days like today when the heavens open, that I am glad I went for a hutch on stilts.

There's a good article on the Organic Gardener magazine website on this important chook architecture topic.

Cluckingham Palace sits about 35cm above the ground,

allowing for circulaiton when it's hot, somewhere shady to relax in summer and for

water to drain past inth the yard behind when it pours. 

 

It may be great weather for sucks, but hens hate having wet feet even more than we do.

 

By raising the hutch off the ground you'll avoid lots of problems. Just make sure it is rodent and fox proof.

 

 

 

 

 



Dancing in the rain

IT'S raining and the hens are doing the chook victory dance.

Dashing about under the raindrops, wings spread out and acting like chorus girls in a Busby Berkley musical, in unison they are chasing crickets and other unwary insects as the rain washes away all the grime off the trees and vegetables.

Hilda, the leader of the pack also makes a dive for any compost bin where the lid has been blown off in last night's robust winds.

Hilda checking for worms and crickets...

After a couple of hot and dusty days, seeing the feather posse trundle about with their delightful gait, is a as much a tonic as the rain.

Hearing more water pour don the roof and into the tank makes me feel like a squirrel storing nuts for winter. It's very satisfying to think off all that life-replenishing element ready to come out and revive the garden when the next inevitable dry spell hits.

There's a stormy weather warning for today so I'll need to ensure the broad beans along the back fence are securely tied up and the chooks are behind the wire so they don't get blown away - this has happened before and it resulted in one very exultant and optimistic hen and a worried owner who had to climb few fences to retrieve her.

But for now the rain is light, the garden is green and my chooks are dancing.

Sunday morning I awoke to a glorious sound - rain teaming down on the old corrugated iron roof.

If there's a better noise - other than listening to Leonard Cohen's Darkness, Edwards Sharpe and Magnetic Zeros Home or an empty 5ft wave sweeping through Wategos as you paddle out, I've yet to hear it.

However, the girls are not happy.

Image found via google

Breaking into a running start as i open their hutch door that would impress Pharlap, they scurry about eating their breakfast of pancakes (I regularly have friends over for a Sunday brekkie so the gals get the leftovers) and pellets during a break in the rain, they then duck under the hen house when it pelts down.

The sight of their cross little faces never fails to amuse.

However, as soon as the sun comes out, they dash about gobbling down unwary worms and insects.

And as it's Sunday, at 1pm they will be listening to their favourite radio show, Dirty Deeds.

Rain, glorious rain!

Waking up to pelting rain on the roof it’s very tempting to just roll over and return to the land of dreams. But persevere, because rainy days in the garden are a bonus.

Sure, the chooks resemble sodden, feathered rats and water trickles down your neck or gumboots at least provocation, but it’s a good time to snare snails, check which areas of the garden are not getting watered due to overhanging branches or undulations in the soil and combat those that flood.

Last year when it seemed to bucket down for days on end, I noticed that due to a slope I had not really paid attention to before, the excess water was collecting in the lower right hand back corner of my garden. This is where the chooks are penned and they were not impressed. Fortunately, their coop sits on stumps around 30 cm high, so the girls didn’t need gumboots, but it was a call to action.

On the advice of a plumber mate I dug a one meter square pit into the compacted clay soil (it took simply ages and all I can say is that it was good for upper body-buildng) and filled it will scorier – now the water drains into the roots of the darn leviathan Cyprus pine next door which I swear has grown twice my height since. On the plus side, the path I also put in which leads down to the pit and is covered in crushed cement pebbles, remains drained and dry despite the worst flooding. I did put down sand first but this just swam away somewhere during the next shower.

Putting in the new path and pit by cluckingham palace to keep the girls dry.

Keep your thumbs green when it pours:

* Don your raincoat and go looking for snails. Collect them in a bucket and feed them to your chooks- they love ‘em!

* Sharpen and oil tools. Yes, your metal spade, rake, trimmers, secateurs and trowel all need some TLC about now.

* Pull on some rubber gloves and clean out your gutters and drains and add the wonderful, rich leaf mulch to your compost.

* Check your worm farm and compost bins are not waterlogged.

* Tidy the garden shed – or in my case, I have no excuse for not clearing out all the gardening junk hiding under the deck. Wear gloves, it's spider time.

* Do an inventory on what you need to get from spring – bulbs, seeds, new tools?

* Every now and again look up at those big black clouds and appreciate what falling out of them. Remember the drought?

Gardening in gumboots

The heavy rains my surfcoast garden has enjoyed over the last couple of weeks has been wonderful for deep soaking the soil, filling the 9000 Lt water tank and flushing out the gutters, but bring on the sun! I’m more than ready now to ditch the gumboots and raincoat needed while weeding and harvesting for a week or two of warming, steady sunshine and toes on the grass. The chooks too are tired of mud rather than the dirt baths they prefer. On the positive side, everything has shot up like a triffid. Those yummy broadbean plants are now taller than I am (OK not difficult) as is the celery which is being used as living stake for the snowpeas. The sugarsnap peas and climbing beans are also towering. The other bugbear is the wind which has blown down loads of passionfruit vines, beans, celeery and climbing roses. But it's summer in a couple days so fingers crossed balmy weather is on the way...