Permaculture Update

My Dad delivered me some jerusalem artichokes Friday a week ago. We grew them in the chook pens as kids and Mum would often boil a pot full to have with dinner. We loved them. In the ensuing years, Mate had often looked for them in the supermarket - he'd make a beeline for what he thought was a robust looking artichoke but was, on closer inspection (with his glasses on), nobs of ginger. I finally tracked some down for him a few years ago and had them sent over from Western Australia and he's become the artichoke king. He and Andrew and I had a little competition to see who could grow the best ones - and he won by a country mile. He has a thumb that is decidely greener than mine - in fact, his artichoke plants grew to be taller than him and Peter and they're 6ft 3 and 6ft 4!! There's a photo of them standing amongst the plants, showing off of course, and you can barely see them!! Here are the ones he brought me, planted into the outer edge of the round garden. They're going well so far and have fresh green tips.

The self seeded cucumbers look healthy and will survive for as long as the frosts hold off.

It was root vege day on Thursday - Drew and I went to the nursery and chose orange carrots, purple carrots, beetroot and three types of onions - spring, brown and eschallot.

The lettuce that I sewed last week are doing fine but something has almost completely destroyed the new spinach seedlings.

The zucchini's look really fresh and healthly and are a lovely colour - planted directly into old feedlot manure and spoiled lucerne biscuits.

These are what I'm most excited about - roma tomatoes. The first one to ripen will be all mine - I'll share the rest from then on. They look so beautiful on the vine; how much better will they look when they're a glossy juicy red colour?

The seed veges (broccoli, cauli and cabbage) we planted last week have really taken off - this photo was taken a few days ago and already the plants are much bigger.

The peas look a bit thirsty though.

This is the first sign of trouble - a very hungry caterpillar in the mature spinach plants. I suspect it's him and his mates who have been feasting on the new spinach plants as well as the cucumber leaves.

I'm almost (not quite) embarrassed to post this photo - Megan was desperate to pick some carrots, just to see how they were going - not very well obviously!!! Well, they are supposed to be BABY carrots!

This doesn't look too good either - the first flush of tomatoes, those on the bottom of the plants, are doing very well but as the newer fruit has developed at tier two and three they have developed a dark brown spot at their base and look like this. I don't know if it's a bug that's causing it or maybe irregular watering ie too much one time, not enough the next. I need a tomato expert.

The silkes continue to lay their lovely little eggs but I've now got seven clucky hens; three of them try (and succeed) to cram themselves into the nest boxes (it must get awfully hot in there) while another couple sit outside. Any egg that is laid is quickly snavelled by one of the magnificent seven and is sat on for a few hours until I come along and steal it from under them.

We're taking a posse to the Maleny chook show this weekend; I'm taking two white hens, two black hens and a black rooster. I'll have to wash the white hens on Thursday; they look a bit too dirty for an outing.