Seeds

We have been harvesting our own lettuce seeds for years.  Just one plant will provide more than enough seeds.

Close up picture of the seeds.

Bak Choy seeds.

Coriander seeds

Chickpeas, carrot and more

 Planted some chickpeas, to use as 'green manure'.

chickpeas

carrot - before harvest

baby carrot

3 of my chicken, they are no longer 'babies'.  We collect 3 to 4 eggs daily, occasionally 5.

I have no idea how I am going to collect the tomatoes in the middle of this bush.

Cucumber

We planted some potatoes as well.

We have been picking the tomotoes since early Jan. Notice how some are green, while others are ripe?  That's the beauty of growing your own.  We get to pick and eat tomatoes over a long period rather than harvesting all at once.  This is batch 1, batch 2 has started producing fruit, batch 3 has just started flowering.

First batch - 3 tomato plants

This is from the same plants above. They are still flowering and producing tomatoes as we picked them.  The later ones are getting smaller, guess the nutrient in the soil is depleting.

The big picture

I took this picture late Dec, we have since harvested and ate them all!  This is the dwarf beans, we still have climbing beans to harvest.

Have been harvesting zucchini as well.

I waited for a very long time, this is the first sign of watermelon!

Australorp

We got new chicken this year to replace the old ones.  This time I decided to get Australorp.

Collected the first egg on 29/11/2011.  Noticed how small the egg is.  Fay loves them, in her words, "They are so cute!".  The eggs are bigger now, but still not as big as those produced by Isa Brown.

Updates on the vege patch.

8 days later, we can see the fruit.

Planted second batch of tomato seed in Oct.  Here is a picture of the seedling.

Protecting cucumber seedlings from the snails and slugs using plaster bottles.

4 weeks later ...

Have been harvesting coriander, they just keep coming.

Beans ...

They are climbing!

Strawberries ...

4 weeks later ...

Attempt to grow watermelon.  It took a long time to grow from seed to this. 

On the other hand, Pak Choy seems to grow very fast, according to instruction, 8 weeks from planting to harvest.  I put egg shells to prevent snails from getting to the plant.  It seems to do the trick.

My first attempt at growing chickpeas.  To feed the chicken as well as using it as green manure.

Lady Fingers - grown from seeds we saved last year.  Seems to take forever to grow.

Batch 3 of tomatoes was unplanned, just sprouted from the compost.

Jan 2011

My favourite type of vegetable - 'cut-and-come-again'.

A surprise addition to my backyard - mango tree.  This one just pop-out of the compost.  If I have a greenhouse, it might survive the cold, frosty winter of Melbourne.

Just harvested my very first cherry tomotoes this summer.

We finished our first batch of beans.  This is the second batch - you can see the baby beans sprouting out just under the flower.

The eggplants have lots of flowers but I don't have many eggplants.  I have noticed that there are not many bees in the backyard this summer.  Consider keeping my own bee hive in the backyard.

I thought we didn't have pumpkin this year, next thing I know I have pumpkin popping out everywhere (literally).

Among the bush below, there are two rockmelon plants growing.

Here is a cucumber almost ready for harvest.  We have harvested a few of them and stirred fry for dinner.  The kids love it.

Bitter gourd

Asian vegetable - great for cooking tom-yum soup

Zucchini

Almost time to make chilli sauce.

Another species of chilli plant

This watermelon plant was a real surprise.  The seed was mixed in the asian gourd seed pack we bought.  Hoping the plant will make it to fruition.  No flowers in sight.

Asian gourd - not flowering yet.

Red Russian (planted from the seeds collected from previous season)

Carob tree - hasn't it grown?