Day 299

Finally we can enjoy some broad beans and the girls loved picking them.  They are very slow growing but so worth the wait.  

Matilda snagged herself a big basketful of silver beet, purple peas, broad beans and herbs. 

It makes us very proud when we see the girls enjoying the backyard and all its yummy treasures.  

Day 289

Argh... the winter crop is slow and boring.  I came so close to pulling out a couple of the grow beds today but stopped myself.  Our seeds are growing and are just about ready to be put in the AP system and I have no room because I have so many winter veggies in there.  It's a great situation to be in, but bring on the yummy summer veggies.

We did get an awesome rainbow over the patch today though.  Something nice out of all the rain we've been having and the tank is now over half full.  

Day 286

One of the best parts of having you own veggie patch is being able to pick only want you will eat at that time.  Why buy a whole head of broccoli, huge bunches of spring onions, celery etc that you wont use.  

Tonight I went in search of some broad beans but unfortunately they are still stretching out and growing but I did find some beautiful purple snow peas and about a small head of broccoli.  Adding some spinach that is growing like a forest and we had the perfect sized veggie portions for our night meal and the rest is still in the patch growing not sitting in the fridge dying.  FRESH IS BEST!

Day 282

I spent this morning in the backyard with the girls cleaning the chook pen, chasing the chooks, feeding the trout, looking for broad beans, purple beans and Grace found a "broccoli" which was actually a cauliflower.  Such an amazing way to spend the morning with the girls.  Some of the seeds we planted a few weeks back are ready to be transplanted to the AP.

We needed to clear and area so pulled out these leeks and planted about a dozen pumpkin seeds.  Tonight we'll enjoy these leeks.  Just need to decide what we'll cook.

Day 280

It's time to admit that with broad beans I have no idea.  Zilch, nada, nil.  Tonight we were transferring all the trout from the smallest tank into the large one in preparation for getting some Silver perch or similar for the summer months when we decided to take a look at the broad beans to see if there was anything growing.  I noticed something weird and went to look and realised it was a small bean.

Thats when it twigged.  The beans start growing down low.  We found numerous beans and so we picked a few to try.  The small tiny ones when double podded and eaten raw were buttery and sweet.  Oh it's going to be great times ahead.  I just hope I can resist and let them grow out. 

Day 279

Today is an exciting day.  We finally had our Solar Panel System installed.  It is a 2.88kW system comprising 35 panels.  

This will more than offset any power our aquaponics system uses and hopefully close to all the electricity we use.  

Just another part of us doing our bit to become as sustainable as possible.  

Day 278

And another slight adjournment.

I thought I'd show you what's on the other side of the post and rail fence that separates the AP system from the rest of the backyard.

It's our other passion in the garden and another part of our sustainable back yard.  The Australian bush is a great place to take time out in.  What we have done here is start to recreate a part of that.  An area we can come into at the end of the day and wind down.  The nearby AP system with the sound of water makes it feel as if we have a small river running by as well.

This whole garden is just now gone two years old.  If you want to see a video of the day we planted the garden you can see it here.  You'll see just how much its grown from day one.

Here it is 2 years ago.

And the same perspective today.

A couple of pics I played with in photoshop.

Day 277

Today I want to tell you all about Dirtgirl World.  I know there are many people who read this blog from all over the world who have kids or grandkids.  Dirtgirl is a great Australian character who is aimed at young kids.  The blurb about this show I have added below but if you can get your hands on this our find it on TV some where make sure you watch it.  It's is so good for kids to learn about their gardens.  They will be busting to get out in the garden.


Oh and her website is here. Dirtgirl World.

dirtgirl is a gumboot-wearing girl who grows awesome tomatoes, knows cloud names and drives a big orange tractor.

dirtgirl's backyard is full of friends. There's scrapboy, her best friend, who's a whiz with junk,grubby with her grub’s eye view, ken the weevil, a super stunt star with a healthy fear of heights,roger the rooster and the chicks, hayman, the monosyllabic scarecrow and thegreenthumbs...real kids in real gardens having unreal fun.

dirtgirlworld is a celebration of life outside.

It's a place of bizarre insects, underground tunnels, vaudevillian trained chickens and performing stunt bugs.

Funky pop songs, guitars with attitude, beats, grooves and loops all blended with a tractor, make up the infectiously cool music in dirtgirlworld.

This musicentric series explores the natural world and invites the audience to 'go get grubby' in the big world outside.

dirtgirlworld is a place where we find out that we protect what we love.

As dirtgirl says...'it's all about balance'.

Made for 4 - 7 year olds, dirtgirlworld takes this audience to a world where real and unreal hang out together.

Day 276

Its been a fair bit of time since I've posted and the only reason is that it's been a busy couple of weeks.  Spring has sprung though and the patch is getting very full.  We are still waiting for those broad beans to appear though.

We are in full swing planting seeds in soil ready to plant seedlings in the next few weeks.   

We have planted so many different varieties of seeds that we should have a massive abundance of produce this coming season.

Grace helping me choose the seeds.

Matilda (the Destructor) "helping" me empty the pots.

Ready for a top layer and some water.