After harvesting all our potatoes and onions and pulling out all the plants that had gone to seed I am really only left with my pumpkin, beans and corn growing, the tomato patch and a few spinach and chard. Most other things either got too neglected and disappeared or I just didn't get any seedlings going.
I did notice today though that my courgette plant is *finally* growing a few fruit. Weird really, coz last year my courgettes were a boomer and produced really well. I am putting it down to the fact that last year's plant was on a vege bed that had been fertilized by the chickens (it's quite noticeable around the garden really - it's happened with the corn - one patch was chicken poo free and much shorter and the other two had the chooks on them and gone wild).
Over the past week though I've been planning on where I'll get the winter garden going (over winter only one side of the garden gets all day sun and fortunately it's also the side that doesn't flood). So the chickens have been on one patch so far, and tomorrow we'll move them off the second patch. I loaded up the first patch with my own compost today and will dig and load up the other tomorrow (just gotta keep the chickens off them since they strew it all around again lol). I plan on sowing the seeds with the kids next weekend which according to my OrganicNZ magazine, that next Sunday is the best day for sowing seeds. I do plan on trying to garden with the moon this year.
When digging out the compost I found these two avocado plants growing inside (oops, mustn't have been a very hot compost me thinks). Anyway, I've potted them up and will see if I can get them to grow in my backyard. Not too sure what my area's like for them, but won't know until I try.
7 comments:
Nikki,
I'm amazed at all you are growing. Where are you? Our garden is asleep for the winter and under 2 inches of snow, but we still have the occasional fresh parsnip and sunchoke.
BTW, we pulled some sprouted avocade plants out of our compost this past summer as well. They are potted and waiting out the winter inside.
It is totally amazing how strong chicken feet are!. We have very rocky soil so I remove the rocks on a regular basis and use them to line the garden paths and walkway to the house. When the chickies get at them they can scratch loose rocks the size of two fists with ease and throw them quite a distance.
That is very cool that you have two avocado plants courtesy of your compost!
So far our compost has just given us three butternut pumpkin plants.
Hi Nettlejuice, I'm in NZ, so mid-summer here! Cool that you grew avocado plants too lol.
Nancy, yeah, it's amazing how much they can move with those little feet! Sure wouldn't want to be on the other side of a fiesty rooster I don't reckon.
Sofiasmama, yeah any freebie plants from the compost is pretty cool eh? I gave away a couple of dozen on freecycle in spring that sprouted and pulled about the same again for beign surplus (I think my compost wasn't the flashest though to grow that many lol).
My compost is busy trying to grow potatoes, and lots of pumpkin plants. I keep trying to make it hotter in there so that it's really composting but it just keeps on being a seed raising bin instead!
Avocado plants would be cool. And extra cool that you got two - they're a plant that needs a buddy to grow properly aren't they?
I've been planting out avocado seeds in small pots with my daughters. We have about 10 or so avocado plants now!
I'm not sure what to do with them. I've read that seed-grown avocados take 10-15 years to fruit! Not sure I can wait that long :-).
We do have a (bought) grafted avocado tree in the front yard, which I'm hoping will fruit within a year or two. Perhaps we'll plant one or two of the seedlings just as an experiment. If nothing else, they might serve as a cross-pollinator.
I was thinking of maybe planting the other avocado seedlings in one of the local parks. Shh, don't tell the council! I'd love to see something useful growing, instead of the bland old street trees they use!
Free, well that's good to know about needing two plants!
Darren, 10-15yrs?! Oh well, no time like the present eh LOL! We don't plan on going anywhere, so gotta start somewhere hehe. Yeah, go the guerilla gardening, I always fancy sneaking a few plants in places too.
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