The compost pile

 This week was compost pile week as determined by Tracey who went to fetch the manure.

We had a trailor load and the back of a Ute , so our pile was slightly bigger than usual. Luckily there was a lot of organic matter around at the moment to do the layering of the pile. We spent a fair while clearing up the old pumpkin vines and dragging them into a heap as well as weeding out lots of grasses that had grown over the summer.

I also picked up a few seedling to plant in an area that i dug compost into last week.

We now have Paak choy, coriander, cabbages and chinese cabbage in that row. Hmmm not terribly well planned to avoid a pest outbreak.

We are picking some Fennel bulbs off of the previous years plants which are very flavoursome and we are now getting a few sno-peas. Of course the frosty weather has now reared its head which will reduce or prevent the setting of some fruit. So far we don't have week long periods of frost forecast.

The hoop structures can still be seen. These were used to support shade cloth which was keeping the grasshoppers at bay. The large white structure was last years hothouse.

The home garden is producing Broccoli, greens, shallots, Diakon radish and some celery - as well as Citrus from the trees. The citrus got a trim of their dead branches-I didn't quite get around to spreading chook house muck under them but this should happen soon. Also this  weekend and the Mulberries got a major trim. The olive also got a trim to see if i could shock it into flowering this year - its way too big not to be flowering.

I have 3 varieties of Orange plus a grapefruit.

Washington Navel - earliest fruiting in April

Lanes Navel - picking in May , june and hold fruit well over winter.

Valencias - we begin picking in September from memory and try to have them off the tree by the end of November due to fruit fly.

The grapefruit is a Wheeney and we pick from march. It usually holds fruit very well and for many months in the abscence of fruit fly attack as we found out this year.