Lemon Tree!

I have a number of projects that I want to get going this year. One is planting a lemon tree. So today I finally got one!
We are now the owners of a Lisbon Lemon. It's a beautiful and healthy plant and I am so excited to finally have it and a little nervous about getting things right for it's care.
Still have to get the bed for it finished but hopefully it will be int the ground in the next couple of weeks.

Juice Fast.

Okay, back to health.
I have not been kind to myself over winter. I slacked off on my juicing and started eating too much sugar again.
And my bodies been telling me what it thinks of all that. My skin is not good at the moment, even though I stopped drinking milk. And I have just not been feeling well in myself lately.
I have been skipping meals too, breakfast being the main one, sometimes not eating till early afternoon. All habits that are not good for someone who has diabetes running through the family.
I decided to go a little extreme this time, instead of just adding juice in to for my breakfast. I thought I would attempt a 10 day juice fast and see how I go.
With the way I am eating now it can't do any harm and if I don't succeed, I can always keep juicing for breakfast and lunch then have dinner with Winnie which is still pretty good health wise.

So this is the first day. Breakfast this morning was a juice of; Celery, kale, carrot, apple, parsley and cucumber.

I am using my cold press juicer so there is lots of body to the juice, it's not a pure liquid and is not oxidized by a fast spinning proses. An added bonus is I really like the juice and feel energized from it.
Now all I have to do is get through the sugar withdrawals. Blah!

Spring is hitting hard already!

Winter has been quite mild here, but we still got some good rain with it which was really nice, the ground is nice and saturated.
Now it seems we are getting an instant spring. The weather is already really warming up fast. We usually don't start planting some of the more frost tender plants till October but there has been no hint of frost and I am nervous that we will be heading into an early and hot summer, so I am getting suck in with my planting now, just in case.
My strategy is to plant things as close as possible this year, utilising smaller areas and keeping things well mulched.
If it gets too hot too fast I will have to abandon the annuals and just concentrate on the trees and berries.

I have already gotten into the blackberries and cleaned them up.

The lemon balm has self seeded in a couple of places and I want to plant some other mints in this bed too. I have left some weeds behind too. Dandelions, small oxalis and a type of broad leaf grass that is great for insect photography.
There is a nice crop of self sown parsley on the right and I want to add some other herbs too.

I took a risk and planted a herb garden this winter, shifting rosemary bushes and sage into a new bed and adding other culinary herbs.

The larger bushes have all seemed to have taken and it already looks good. I will add some basil to this plot, Winnie is using a lot of it in his cooking.

The raspberries are still getting cleaned up. It's hard to believe we ate the last fruit off of them only a month ago, I trimmed the last cane the other day.
I have planted veggies in the corner. It's a nice sheltered spot with really good soil and until the veggies take over this spot completely I will utilise the space as much as I can.

The lone boysenberry is till in the other corner. You can't see it very well because it's being dwarfed by the giant parsley bush and the pineapple sage that managed to survive last summer.
There are raspberry suckers coming up all over this patch and I'm not sure how well they mix with  the boysenberry, so I might have to shift it.

Well that is what is happening for now. the rest of the garden looks like a jungle and the weeds are huge. My mad weeder (winnie) has been working hard, but there is still a lot to do.
We are still planing out the new berry beds and the place for the lemon tree, that's going to be the big project this year and I will leave it for another post.

Worm Stations

Okay this is another one of those ideas that you find on the internet, as you do.
Worm stations; The idea is simple, you bury a pipe of bottomless container, with a lid, in the ground and use this as a worm farm/compost type system.
Now I do have my bathtub worm farm, but I very rarely take material from the top, because the worms are always still munching away on it, even though I change the sides I feed them on. I mainly use the liquid that comes from the bottom of the tub. So I thought that this was a great idea to get my worms out there into my garden.
The worms I have are tiger worms, they like compost and won't just live happily in soil, they need lots of decaying goodness to munch on, hence making them these feeding station.
So I took some old pots that I have and knocked the bottoms out of some, others already didn't have a bottom. and set up my stations, using terracotta pot bases as lids.

These were set up over winter and I am happy to say that the worms are still there munching away and they seem to be working will so far.
The big test will be over the warmer months. I am interested to see if they have a big effect on plant growth.

First plantings for spring!

Was feeling a little crappy this afternoon, but instead of going to bed I went and worked in the garden, just pottering around and putting in the first of the veggies for this spring.
Planted; Beans, lettuce, spinach and beetroot.

Koala sighting!

Well not much has been happening to my weedy winter garden. I did come outside today and try and catch some sun, but it keeps hiding.
One thing that did happen though is I saw a koala in our street. I have never seen one here before, not this far in town before, anyway. She has a baby on her back too.

Winter is here!

Well I have not been keeping up with this too well.  But then things are slow here at the moment.
Had my 45th birthday on Saturday, very relaxing and nice, nearly snowed too, that would have been some birthday present, but sitting home by the fire was nice enough.
On Sunday I went with my mum to a citrus workshop, put on by the, Diggers Club. We had a great time. The speaker, Ian Tolley, was brilliant, and even with a really bad cold, still gave a great talk.
I feel more confident about putting in a lemon now and will need to get cracking to prepare the ground for a tree this spring.

In other gardening events; The herb garden is put in, the raspberries are cut back and the blackberries are mulched and trimmed back, ready for spring.
The cold weather has finally arrived here, it has started feeling like a real winter for the first time.
Still lots to do, but now I have the excuse that it is too cold. LOL