Skip to main content

Garden Share - December 2014

November was long and hot, with strong winds and very little rain.  Some areas around us had a decent storm, with 50-100 mm, but we missed out, so had to keep the garden going with grey water and a little tank water.  The extra shade cloth has made a huge difference, as has my sunken herb garden.  I also downsized early and only water the two middle garden beds, everything else is struggling, but its better to keep two good beds than four average ones.  For a few plants around the outside I used upturned beer bottles filled with water every few days.  Its not classy, but it keeps the soil moist.


For that reason, the harvest has not changed much.  Mostly kale, silver beet and herbs.  I finally picked the three lemons on my potted lemon tree and they were delicious.  We had a few beans and cherry tomatoes, but not much yet.  I can see the first button squash forming and a promising watermelon, so we just have to keep up the water and we might have more to harvest next month.

I'm not planting anything else until it rains, so this month its just about watering, keeping up mulch, and using worm wee tee to boost the veges.


Watermelon is promising (also note beer bottle watering system)

those giant chilli bushes have regrown!

beans and silver beet, with tomatoes in the back

sunken herb garden is doing well

first squash forming

comfrey flowers (its in a pot in a dish of water,
the stuff in the garden has not resprouted yet)

strawberries producing the occasional sweet treat

pickling cucumber looking good for more pickles this year

tape for watering from our tanks

yarrow flowers

new herb - gotu kola
How's your garden growing?  Are you dealing with heat and no rain too?  What are your plans for December?

Join in the Garden Share Collective, link up here and link back to Lizzie at Strayed from the Table.





Comments

  1. I was so sorry to read you did not receive any rain from the recent storms. My garden is going ok, but would pick up and thrive with some regular rain. You have got a lot of plants on the go there in your garden. I hope you get some rain soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope you get some rain this month. Your garden areas are looking great despite the lack of rain. What do you do with gotu kola? What sort of food do you use it with? Have a great month in the garden

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your garden is looking fabulous. Love the yarrow, something which I haven't grown before. The beer bottle watering system sounds great .. Love all your mulch too, one of my favourite things to add to the garden. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Really you didn't get any of that rain. Bummer. We were lucky to get a bit of rain so I am happy however it didn't penetrate the earth very well. Too sudden. Liz I am impressed by your garden and what you are still growing with the minimal water you do have. Last year I relied on rain alone for our garden, this year I am still using our new tank water sparingly on the veggies. Fingers crossed for you to get some real rain soon. Maybe three or four days of the good stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  5. We did get a few little sprinkles, I am sure yours is on its way. Interesting that you have gotu kola, we have a very similar weed called pennywort, well that is what everyone says. Maybe in your herb series you can tell me the difference. I always thought I did have gotu kola and it looks exactly the same as yours....

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry about the lack of rain, we've had a terrible drought here in California as well.

    How do you use gotu kola? I have not heard of that herb.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may  have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive!  Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap.  And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps.  I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation  and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment.  One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap.   As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances).   When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather.  I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap.  It also contributes a tan or brown colour to