Vegetable garden ~ August 2013

My vegetable garden late winter to Spring Day!

My Swiss Chard is coming together very nicely, can't wait to harvest and make delicious creamy spinach, yum-yum.

My Barley is growing pretty quickly, it should take about 55 days to harvest. This little patch, was an experiment to see how Barley will grow where we are based. If I get a healthy crop I'm hoping on ploughing up another bigger patch for a big harvest.

With the Barley seeds I get, I put them in our home made, make shift, sprouter and grow them for fodder for the chickens, pigs and horses.

Yummy cabbage! Last year I made sauerkraut, and can you believe it, I got the recipe wrong, I mean how hard is it to get the recipe wrong for sauerkraut. If you have ever made sauerkraut it's pretty simple and only 2 ingredients, salt and cabbage and lots of time! Well I added too much salt. Anyway not to worry, I'm out on a mission to make the best sauerkraut around.  Sauerkraut and Pork Eisbein, it's delicious! Defiantly one of my favourites! Sauerkraut was introduced to me by my father-in-law who is a German descendant and is very fond of it. I can't wait to harvest this cabbage and start persevering. 

My Amadumbe (the large leaf plant on the left). The only way I can describe Amadumbe is, as a potato like plant which when boiled is absolutely delicious dipped in a touch of salt. When the leaves start to turn yellow I will harvest which is in about 8 to 10 months from planting. I'm looking forward to trying out some different ways of eating them. Grilling, baking, boiling and frying.

Tomatoes are coming along, most of my tomatoes are from my worm compost, for some reason the worms don't break down the tomatoe seeds, so wherever I throw the worm compost, up comes tomatoes. Im not complaining I love it. 

My nasturtium are growing all over, giving my veggie garden lovely spots of stunning colour and they lovely in a salad, both flowers and leaves.

Delicious Garlic chives, I pop these flowers in a salad, they give a lovely garlic flavour and chop the leaves up and add them in the kids food as well as ours. 

My compost heap is made up of 

Horse poo

Pig poo

Chicken poo

Garden refuge (like leaves and smallish branches)

Charcoal from our left over fires

Vegetables that our worms and pigs don't eat (garlic and onions etc)

Hay from the horses, pigs and chickens.

In Winter it's the best time for me to collect compost, as it's colder so we make more fires, I generally have a lot more hay, and the horse poo (which is my main ingredient) is available. In Summer we are in competition for the horse poo with the dung beetles, which are fascinating little creatures. It's a beetle that makes a ball out of dung (animal poo) and use it as food or for a brooding chamber. Some will make round balls and roll them away to bury them under the ground, or they will bury them right under the dung itself or they live and eat in the dung. So we don't really collect horse poo for compost in Summer, we let our fellow dung grabbers get there first!

I love the smell of ready to mix fresh compost, it sends pure joy through me, when you start digging and digging and you feel the heat in the compost and you start to smell the goodiness of ready for potting compost. Such a nice accomplishment and I know, I made it, from my throw-away refuge, and that its going to give my little herbs and veggies a super duper charge for life. 

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Our Delightful Home
Mamal Diane