Just a little video on planting tomato seeds.

 Just a little vid to show how I plant my tomato seeds.
( I've been trying all day to put a backing track on this video but youtuba are taking forever so I'll post it as is.)


The seeds I planted here are the free 'Santorini' heirloom tomato seeds attached to the cover of September's issue of 'Burke's Backyard' magazine.

  According to the mag the seeds 'are from the famous Greek island of Santorini in the Aegean sea. We (Burke's Backyard) sourced this heirloom variety from an old Greek farmer who has been saving his own seeds for 50 years.
  On the dry, volcanic soils of Santorini, the old grower says he never waters his plants and his tomatoes are sensational, so in most areas of Australia normal, natural rainfall will be enough. They're very sweet tasting, 5-6cm smallish fruit produced on a knee-high bush that doesn't need staking.'
  

What an absolutely fabulous day

What an absolutely fabulous day I had today. It started like any other day when I was up at five to start work at six but when I got to the cab I couldn't find the keys ( why I need keys for a cab on a Sunday is another story) and considering I had the same problem last Sunday I developed some attitude and had a dummy spit at the same time and said stuff it, turned around and went back home. Ok I thought to myself what am I going to do with a day of unplanned time on my hands.

Well with all the buzz on the Aussie movie Red Dog I thought that was a must, plus I had a library book to return. So with plenty of time up my sleeve I set of to town on foot enjoying the early Spring day. Library book dropped off and I still had plenty of time so I dropped into my favorite coffee shop for a coffee (what else of-course) and a ham and cheese croissant.
 
Off to the cinema, purchase ticket, sit down and laugh and cry and laugh and cry and laugh and cry my way through the next hour and a half. Three thumbs for Red Dog the movie.

Still a beautiful spring day so a slow stroll home and out with the mower (some good rain yesterday so it needed a trim)  for the footpath and driveway and a good weed for the flower bed out front.

Still a beautiful day so it was tomato seed planting time, a bit of potting mix, some seed raising mix, a few seeds and just add water.

Finished the day weeding with the radio on listening to the Broncos beating the Bunnies 22 -10.

And now I'm here typing

Cheers

Stewart.

100+ ways to cook Zucchihi.

Have I been veggie gardening? Not bloody likely. I've spent the last fourteen sun shinny days in the cab and on my day free it rains. Oh well, such is veggie gardening.

In the meantime and with a nod in the direction of the coming growing season and courtesy of the Tree Hugger team hear is a few things you can do with Zucchini.

100+ ways to cook Zucchihi.

Coriander

In their opening paragraph Best Recipes state If there was ever a herb to divide a nation it would be coriander.

And seeing as we are a divided household when it comes to coriander on its uses and taste I thought I'd share a link here to the full story at Best Recipes on coriander. 

I'm currently sharing mine with a possum but I do enjoy adding it to recipes and it does have a strong but enjoyable flavour to me.

Coriander at Best Recipes and here is some more info at Dishbase



What do you think? How do you get along with coriander?

Cheers

Stewart

A 'myriad' of problems

A 'myriad' of problems were need to be solved in the chook pen.


Myriad definition, a very great or indefinitely great number of persons or things. 

Damn I really wanted to use myriad but as it was I only had two pressing problems that needed to be solved in the chook pen so scratch (pun intended) myriad. Both problems, though,  were solved with the purchase of a chook feeder thingy which (as you can see in the photo) cost me the princely sum of twenty three dollars and eighty cents and should pay for itself in no time flat.


The first problem was the wastage of food. This occured when I would put their food in the piece of guttering you can see in the photo. The problem was that their feed contained molassis soaked sunflower seeds that they went absolutley mad for and in the ensuing rush to get as many sunny seeds as possible they managed to spread the rest of their food all over the place. This was making it easy for regular birds to help themselvs to a feast and costing me a bucket of extra food a week in the process. Since using the feeder I have reduced my feed usage by about half.


My second problem was that now that I am driving day shift in the cab I don't have the spare time to just wander up and feed them any ol' time I like so I needed a semi automatic way of feeding them and now all I need to do is load up the chook feeder with food and there good for three or four days. (Note to self. Must fill chook feeder tomorrow)


So there you have it. Not quite a myriad but a good result none the less.


Cheers


Stewart

Comfrey potatoes.

Slack bugger am I. Been busy getting fat off the land.
Been harvesting heaps of cauliflower and broccoli as well as carrots and potatoes.

And speaking of potatoes do you remember the spuds I planted with comfrey placed in the bottom of the row? (You can catch up here if you like)

Ta da. Three potato plants worth. There was more growing left in the plants but the frost ended all the green bits above the ground that are necessary for further growth. These are the best sized potatoes I've ever grown for myself here at my veggie garden though.

Am I going to call adding comfrey to the potato rows a success? Hard to tell really though it appears there was no detrimental effects. I'll definitely be doing it again with this season's crop though.
They had a good growing season but I also used aged stable manure mixed with garden soil for hilling and then there was the run-away chook that kept scratching all the hilling away and then finaly there was a week of frosts that finished them off for good so all things considered I'm more happy with the results compared to previous crops I've grown here.
Cheers

Stewart.