I've been out pruning our many fruit trees, some of the bigger ones have needed quite a bit of work and that's very time consuming. I've been fairly brutal to them poor things but they did really need to be 'minimised' - we don't want huge fruit trees with inaccessible fruit for one thing! While we may not get such a great crop this next season, I'm hoping the following one will be good.
The pigs are growing fast. They've already eaten all of the root fodder we grew for them in their paddock (mainly mangels and sugar beet). And they've eaten just about all of our pumpkin harvest too - although I was loathed to feed them one of the only Musque du Provence pumpkins that grew in the drought - have kept this for a few winter soups for us!
They're now guzzling their way through lots of milk, crab apples and the odd handful of pig pellets.
In the vege garden, while things have slowed down over Winter, we're still managing to harvest a few greens for the dinner table.
The broccoli has been performing well, we've eaten quite a lot already with more yet to harvest. Apart from the standard green heading, I've put in some purple sprouting as well.
The cauliflowers are doing quite well. I planted purple ones this year for a splash of colour -
Also in the garden lots of spinach, silverbeet and herbs - coriander and parsley. I have found the odd chilli out there too which is amazing! Hope your garden is producing well over the Winter months.
I missed this update! At least you do have something growing. All I have is some silverbeet and that is it. Redoing all of the fences at the moment. It has been an awful wet miserable winter I think. I'm hoping we have a better Spring and hopefully not another summer drought. Stay warm! Love to you and the family
ReplyDeleteLiz
Thanks Liz. My hubby is redoing some of our fences too, will be a lot more secure for our cows - such a nuisance to have wandering stock!
ReplyDeleteI hope we don't have another drought too, must get organised with irrigation this year!
Take care
Wow your broccoli looks great! I had some cauliflowers but they got too wet and rotted before they were big enough to pick. I have a few small ones that will hopefully hold off till spring. Regarding hellebores, I would say that if you get some frosts at night it's cold enough for them! They like to be shaded in summer from the heat so planting them under deciduous trees is ideal. They are so pretty it's worth giving them a try :)
ReplyDeleteI'm from Ruth's blog! I've never seen the purple cauliflowers. Love to eat pickled ones,so I'll find the purple one! Your vegetables look great! Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth, might see if I can find some plants somewhere!
ReplyDeleteHi Keity, thanks for your comment. Hope you can find some purple cauliflower :-)
Someday I hope we can grow a respectable head of broccoli! Yours looks wonderful. And that purple cauliflower!! I will have to tell Matt and I am sure he would love to grow one. He is so pleased with irregularly colored veg.
ReplyDeleteHi BLD in MT
ReplyDeleteI think these have been the biggest broccoli so far, I guess prepping the beds with manure helped.
The purple caulis were pretty, but they did head up very well, photo is of the first and best! Read somewhere that one has to be careful about buying seedlings that are too old/pot bound although I didn't think they were.