Middle of August

We are nearing the end of summer, and I'm finally harvesting the orlando mini eggplants. They are delicious grilled on the barbeque!




We are also eating quite a lot of pumpkin.



The first capsicum is turning red!



I'll need to come up with some ideas for all this beetroot. I think we'll be roasting the first one....



I grew onions for the first time this year, from both set and seed. My favorite is definately the red onions which are waiting to be braided. I also grew shallots from set, and some parisian white skinned onions pictured below...



The peach tree was fantastic and I even made a batch of peach and cinnamon jam, unfortunately the wasps have taken over the show now, so I dare not get too close.

Time line of our Herzogenburg veggie garden 2009

It's now early August and I want to record a timeline of our wonderful garden here. We have two dwarf plum trees (the plums are dwarf, not the trees), two apricot trees, a peach tree, a cherry tree, about 10 metres of raspberry canes, two soft fruit bushes which I think are redcurrents and lots of wild strawberries. Our veggie garden consists of six beds which are 3.5 x 1.2 metres, four raised beds of 2.8 x 1.2 metres and one other of 80 cm x 4 metres.

So we started with just a concrete path and what was once a vegetable garden here is filled with cut down blackberry, nettle and weeds:


And of course a fence that needs replacing. These pictures where taken in early March.


So I started digging! I cleared it all by hand. It took months to finish it all, so I focused on one bed at a time.


I didn't take any pictures for a while, must have been too busy digging the weeds out! We used the concrete batons from the top of the dismantled fence to build paths between the garden beds, then I put some green plastic garden borders around the beds to hold the soil in.




One of the pictures above shows a bed I didn't finish until the middle of June when I finally planted six Aubergine orlando plants.

In May I convinced Willi that I needed lots more space for all the seedlings I'd grown. The first task was to build a long bed along the back fence. I planted runner beans on the edges, a gold rush zucchini in the middle, two butternut pumpkins and two halloween style pumpkins (can't get the seed packet to check the name, cat on my lap). I also had some watermelons on the sides, but they never grew any bigger.



But I wasn't satisfied with just that bed, I had another plan. I wanted to add four more beds opposite the six existing ones, and I wanted them to be raised. Well dear Willi got all clever and decided that first we needed to level out the soil on that side of the path. So farmer Viertl brought a tractor load of top soil over. We spread that out and rolled it out. Then We went to the local quarry and bought gravel for the paths and rocks for the edges to hold the soil in. Willi's next clever idea (I love him so much!) was that we should have a rockery for herbs at the end of each bed as well as stone steps. And he built the four beds for me. We collected some beautiful dark compost from the council in Krems which was only €10 per cubic metre. We ended up taking three trailer loads and I put it on the other garden beds too.



The compost:






Filling the beds, building the paths and steps:





And the end result with herbs and veggies planted:






The fence has been finished in the last picture above too.

Thanks for all your help guys!

Since the last post, we have moved house twice! We finally sold our house which had been on the market for over a year. Then we moved into an apartment temporarily until we found a nice house to rent. We lived in the apartment for four months over winter, and I really missed my garden. Now we have a nice big house with a huge garden, and I'm free to grow as many vegetables as I can manage. We are very close to the Danube, and it's a bit warmer here than in our old village. There is an existing garden bed which is about 10m x 3m and covered in blackberry and grass. I also want to build some raised beds opposite for herbs and strawberries.
The weather is still quite cold with forecasts of snow, but I've seen plenty of signs of the coming spring. I've started digging out the blackberry and am looking forward to the next warm day to get my hands back in the soil.
Till next time!

Long time no post

I've been back in the garden since the weather warmed up, which was about the start of April. Gardening during pregnancy gets harder and harder. I convinced my husband to buy me a little plastic greenhouse, and was able to grow many things from seed in there. Over the last month I have been planting out into my tiny veggie garden. So in the garden I have cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, another hot pepper plant that I bought (because mine took so long to show, I doubted they had taken), garlic which I planted in December, climbing beans, rocket, butter lettuce, apple lettuce (a red leaf), basil, oregano and heaps of parsley. I've also planted marigolds around the tomatoes.
I still have zucchinis, coriander, more tomatoes and more pepper plants in pots, and I'm waiting for a new garden bed to plant them in. If I don't get it soon, it will be too late for the zucchinis and tomatoes! Although I think the eight toms already planted are enough for us. Coriander has proven very difficult to grow. I don't know if that is normally the case, but it certainly has been for me! I started with a window box and planted a row of seeds in there. Only three came up out of about 20 or more. I thought maybe it was too cold, as I had sown those seeds way back in the middle of April. Today they only have one true leaf each, and are about 1 cm high. So I tried again with my mini greenhouse. Two pots with plenty of seed. They are doing much better than the outside ones, but still only about four seedlings per pot. I've used the last of the packet in another attempt in an outside pot, so I'll see how that goes.
I think I almost had heatstroke this afternoon whilst working in the garden! It's so hot now, about 30 c everyday. I suppose 38 week pregnant women should only garden in the early morning or late evening. I can't wait until my mum arrives from Australia and we can share the gardening pleasure together! And I won't be pregnant then either!!! Maybe baby will show up this weekend, my doc thinks so anyway!
I'll take some photos of the garden when I have a bit more energy...

Christmas Ponies

Ginny was my pony. Choc was my sisters pony. Today they both died. I'm always scared of getting a phonecall from Australia with bad news. Today was the first time it happened. My poor mother who has been looking after them both had to make the difficult decision to put them down today. Choc was in his late 20's which is a pretty good age to live to for a horse. He had been a champion show horse, won an arabian horse race, bucked his first owner off, and eventually came to my sister when he was in his late teens. Caroline learnt much of her riding on Choc. He took her through pony club winning competitions every time they entered. I don't have a photo of him in Austria, but he was a beautiful liver chestnut with white socks and a blaze down his face. My sister seems to attract a certain personality in animals. Her long time cat companion had a similar personality to Choc, and that is strong headed, strong willed, won't do anything they don't want to, but also amazingly strong creatures that can achieve so much. Yesterday something happened to Choc. My mother went to feed the horses and Choc didn't seem well. She went back this morning before work and he was worse. The vet came. She said he either had a stroke or was bitten by a snake and it was too late to save him.
Ginny was my pony for the last seven odd years. I can't believe it was that long! I loved horses for a long time and had been riding for years. Many times I had bad experiences, and lost a lot of confidence with my first horse as a teenager after a nasty fall. My aunty who was training horses in those years happened to buy Ginny at a market. She was badly trained or at least had learnt many bad habits, and my aunty trained her for the next few years, attending shows (photo above), pony club and dressage events. Mostly they went trail riding. At one point my aunty set me upon Ginny's back. I was petrified! I had seen her antics, most of the time she looked like a hyped up games pony jogging or cantering on the spot with neck arched, always ready to gallop. But to my surpise she was comfortable to ride with a very soft mouth and very responsive. I learnt to trust her, more than I ever trusted any horse. Eventually I came to own her. I brought her closer to where I lived and we began our own relationship of horse and rider without outside interference. I never competed with her, we just rode out on trails or worked in an arena. I fell off her one time. I was riding her bareback in summer and her bay coat was so shiny I just slipped right off! Ginny was a very sensitive pony. My heels never touched her. Slight pressure from my calves or thighs was more than enough for her to understand to step up the pace. Actually most of the time I was telling her to slow down a bit! For all her crazy antics, I would never trust a horse to be more sensible than her either. One road we always had to ride along had a very narrow edge next to a deep ditch. There was just room for us to fit. Huge semi-trailer trucks would drive at 100km per hour speeding past us. Ginny would tense her muscles as they swept past but she never stepped off our path. A truly brave pony that can never be replaced for me. She taught me trust, gave me confidence and I was always and still am so proud to have known her.
Ginny was retired when I left Australia. I had only been riding her very occassionaly anyway, and had every intention of returning to Australia after one year of travel and to continue weekend riding. Choc and Ginny were kept together for longer than six years. They were close companions even if Choc was the boss when Ginny wanted to be. They were living in a field alone for the past few years until today. My mother had to make the decision for Ginny. Her leg was only getting worse, she stood my Choc the whole time and as we know from previous errors, she frets when a horse is taken away from her(she will gallop around a paddock neighing for 2 or 3 days and won't eat). As there was nowhere else for her to go, the decision was made to put her down at the same time. That means she never has to have any trauma again, no leg pain and not panicking at the loss of Choc. My mum said they were both peaceful and relaxed as they died. I know in my heart that it was the right decision, but I can't stop feeling regret at her loss. If horses could talk, would she have chosen this? Certainly her arthritis can be treated until a certain point, but her quality of life would have gone well below average in my mind. She would have developed more pain in her knee making it hard for this active spirit to move, and she would have been utterly alone. If I was in a situation like that, I would have wanted it that way.
Six days until christmas but who feels like celebrating. I've lit two candles today for their spirits and I'm trying not to cry too much because I'm 14 weeks pregnant, but I will never forget those two ponies who are my memories of many happy days.

Doggy days and Zucchini cakes

Crispy and Samson turn five months old today! Haven't they grown? In the first photo they are just four weeks old. Thank you to Matron for her wonderful Dog Blog!






I've been so slack with writing a new post, no excuses. I prefer reading other peoples blogs to writing my own. But now it's really been too long, so here it is.
The dogs are great. They ate/chewed/pulled up all of my sweetcorn plants that I planted along the fenceline of my veggie garden. But I still have three on the inside. I really don't think I'll get any corn from them as I planted them so late. The weather is already much cooler too (we've had the heating on at nights this week). My zuchhini plants have been the heroes of the season. Yesterday I harvested six zucchinis and they were all huge. They're still producing flowers and there are still quite a few small zukes on the plants. I've never grown them before so have been pleasantly suprised at how easy it is. I've made two zuchhini cakes this week which were/are scrumptious! I'll include the recipe at the end of this post.
I've been baking like mad. For a cousins party I made three batches of chocolate chip cookies which covered half the kitchen table.



My tomato plants, which along with the whole veggie garden, were planted late, have so many tomatoes on them but nearly all are green. I hope I get some red ones before it really does get too cold. Even my peppers (capsicums) finally kicked off and each have two to four peppers on. On the other hand, my cooler weather loving plants are also growing well. I picked a small bucket of pod peas and snow peas, the bush beans (I thought they were runner beans) should be ready for picking in two to three weeks, and my carrots need a few more weeks too. I also picked my first cucumber yesterday. It was prickly! I never expected that. One of the problems of not speaking the language very well is not being able to buy exactly what I want. I think next time I'l
l order my seeds online. Brocolli seedlings are doing really well too. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to eat some!
So here's the recipe for Zucchini Cake (very simplified)
Beat together 3 eggs and 250g sugar. Add the following ingredients:
300g grated zucchini
300g self raising flour
100g ground hazelnut
tspn ground cinnamon (to taste)
150 ml oil
50 ml water
Mix them all together and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for about 35 minutes. From experience, if you put more than 300g zucchini in then the cake is very moist.

My new energy saving background

I've been lazy and haven't posted here in a while. I don't have a good reason, but I do have a good reason for posting now. My best friend on the other side of the world sent me an email this morning as follows:

For those worried with energy consumption and all its downsides.
When your screen is white, be it an empty word page, or the Google page,
your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it's black it consumes only 59
watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would
be
achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge
number of
page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year
would be saved.

In a response to this article Google created a black version of its
search
engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white
version,
but with a lower energy consumption, check it out:

www.blackle.com


So I thought I better log in and change my background from beloved green to an even 'greener' black background. Considering the amount of people that view my page, I'm sure it makes no difference in the general scheme of things, but it's my input for the day. Now I'm off to do some searches on blackle.com

Oh, and a quick garden update: I have some green tomatoes, nothing close to ripening yet. My sweet corn is growing steadily even though it's too late in the season, my broccoli has disappeared, lettuce is going great guns (we eat some nearly every day) and a second crop needs to be transplanted into the garden bed, climbing beans and peas are taking ages to grow-still only 10-20 cm high, capsicums have hardly grown at all in two months and I might pull them out to make space for radish, cucumber and especially zuchinni's are fantastic (my home seeded plants are bigger than store bought seedlings and about four weeks younger, although different variety. All in all I'm quite happy with my garden!