Getting a harvest

We've had a really good start with the garden this year, a great crop of garlic was harvested just before Christmas and we have a pile of onions we harvested at New Years.

freshly harvested garlic 

enough onions to make anybody cry

  We've still heaps in the garden, beans, beets,  cabbage, corn and a mix of various tomatoes, chillies, capsicum, kale, squash, pumpkins, eggplants and okra.  Probably other stuff but I've forgotten what else is there.  I'm putting in greens and lettuces this weekend in the vacant beds.

  The only failure in the veg department has been my potatoes, they've ended up with some fungal disease (blight) that has destroyed the whole crop.    

  I planted a few trees in late winter early spring as well.  So far I've been really happy with my Cider Apple trees, but the Chestnuts have been a disaster.  I've now lost half of the trees I planted and I'm not really sure why yet.  I know a couple got knocked by the hot winds, but some just didn't go form the outset.  I've also planted a hazel nut hedge which thankfully is going well so far having only lost one bush.

It looks messy but the weeds and clover help keep the soil moist and confuses pests

We've had a few snake drama's this summer.  Although we have a few of those sonic snake repellers we have had a huge brown snake causing problems around the place.  Flicka our white labrador was killed the other day and Little Pig as bitten and died just after Christmas.  I've since been chasing the snake from hiding spot to hiding spot - his days are numbered.

we have a new batch of Plymouth Rock Pullets growing up in the yard and soon they'll have a nicely renovated chicken coup to live in.  Our Guinea Fowl are somewhere sitting on eggs, this should be interesting, they're a bit loud at 5am in the morning - I cant imagine what the noise will be like with a dozen or more of them.

Like Queensland we are starting to get a little dry,  the river is getting low and there is not much chance of rain in the near future.  If you haven't seen it yet BOM have a new heat wave warning map - we are forecast for our first next week.