The urbanpermie is back!

I've been out of action for a while for a very good reason - I was having such bad all day sickness! I'm now into the 17th week of the pregnancy and my energy is finally returning. Also I can now sit infront of the computer for a longer period without feeling so sick.

Naturally as a result of the past few months of inaction, my garden is also in a state of neglect. For a the first time in many months, my husband and I spent some good hours trying to catch up with lost time. We were pretty amazed that within a few hours, the garden was looking quite acceptable again. We're convinced that Permaculture principles works!!

All through winter, the chookies in the chook tractor were working around the vegetable beds, so I have well mulched, fertilized vege beds ready for planting. What I need now are seedlings for planting.

All the fruit trees are doing really well this year. I think it's because the Tree lucerns are doing their job in providing wind shelter. The pear tree is looking exceptionally well - it could be the comfrey plant planted at the base of the pear tree. I'll now work towards planting comfrey at the base of all the fruit trees. Having said that, the mandarine tree was loaded with fruits late winter has suddenly taken a turn for the worst and died. Not sure why.

As for the chook family, one chook died in winter. It was the weakest link and it just wasn't strong enough to withstand the constant wet and extreme cold we had this year. Sadly another chook was eating it's own eggs and were extremely noise, so it went too. That's a blog entry in itself. We are left with 3 chookies at the moment.

I guess that's me for the moment...

The lemon tree DIE!

The ex-lemon tree is now a standing pumpkin tree!! Matt in his great enthusiasm applied two handfuls of Epsom salt (when it should be 2 teaspoons dissolved in a bucket of water) on the base of the lemon tree. Within a week it withered and died.

Lesson learnt: Enthusiasm can be deadly in the garden!!

The helpers in the garden

The Spring plantings have all finished and I'm doing the second round of planting for the summer season. And the chookies are such good workers that I really can't imagine gardening without them.

The chookies clear, prepare, fertilize and mulch the veg beds so well and quick that within 3 days the veg beds are ready for planting. To achieve that, all I need to do is to move the chook tractor to the target veg bed, and give them the barley straws on the 2nd day and to think up plants to plant at the end of the three day. How difficult is that?

They were under my Royal gala apple trees for 2 weeks, and so far the apples on the tree are looking excellent without any work from me. Maybe they had taken care of the cothling moths.

My only concern: soon I'll be running out for places for the chookies to scratch...
Possible solution: maybe I can load them out to gardeners who want to clear their slug and snail populations!!