A Touch of Red: Revamping Kitchen Chairs

Dull uninteresting kitchen chairs transformed into too bright red  with blowsy rose coverings.

Cover for Lounge Chair

I have one tired and scratched but much loved single lounge chair that never fails to put me and the cats to sleep.  The advent of visitors meant the making of a cover so that it was at least respectable while they were here. But what to use?  I had some upholstery fabric from a sale but not quite enough. Fortunately there was just enough matching but different upholstery fabric left over from curtain making.

Old Velvet Chair

Much Scratched Old Chair

Cover put on.

Recovered Chair

Recovered with just enough material to do the job.

Not enough material for the seat or trim.

Used left over curtain material for seat and trim.

Mmmmm think I will make a dark green seat cushion.

June in the Garden

Broad Beans

 My Winter broad beans are coming along steadily. The branches from my garden prunings are coming in handy as stakes. I haven't done any watering since the first time at sowing. I am attempting to not water at all throughout Winter as we do get good rainfall.   Not long after I took this photo the strawberry pot went topsy turvey  on its head.

Garlic

Further along in the strawbale bed, on bitumen (asphalt), the garlic is also showing green and strong. I have lots of garlic around the garden amongst the apple trees, roses and pretty much wherever I felt like putting them.

Celery & Snow Peas

The last third has some left over celery and snow peas: again the pruned branches come in handy as supports.

Spinach

Spinach is showing green in the smaller strawbale bed.

Shrubs into trees: prunings

Prunings

The shrubs along the side fence grew into trees and now cut off the Winter sun for the back deck. #3 son has been pruning them for me. It will give me wood for woodwork, firewood, kindling for a rocket stove and fire and leaves for mulch in the garden and for pathways. 

Coriander

 Coriander is growing beautifully in a small plastic grow box.  I must do more of this.

April Yard Work

Hi Aunty,

The yard has kept me busy these last few months.   There was harvesting of potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins, the spreading of compost on beds, the putting up of some more straw bale beds, mulching of garden waste and the sowing of seeds in the small greenhouses for Autumn sowing.  Replacing the straw bales around those beds yielded the best compost and all without any tossing and turning. Sweet!

Large straw bale bed on bitumen. Broccoli & Garlic. All covered because of the birds.

Small Bale Bed for Spinach

New Bales on the Strawberry and Mixed Bed. Beautiful Compost!

Pumpkin Patch at an End

Transplanted Strawberry Runners

Small Plastic Greenhouses

Water Storage

Neighbours Garden Waste Awaiting Chopping up for Mulch & Wood

Mulching Post

My favourite seating spot under the deck is a prime spot to chop up garden waste. The green leaves and finest branches make excellent garden mulch  for beds and for covering the paths between beds.  The thicker branches make excellent kindling for a rocket stove and the thickest will dry out nicely for the fireplace or firepit.

Cucumber, Tomatoes, Potatoes and Bird Netting

 Hi Aunty,


Finally...the cucumbers and tomatoes are coming in and boy, are they tasty.

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

I cleared the raised potato bed. I harvested about 150 potatoes...mostly medium to large...with several small ones as seen above.  These ones were used in a stew and tasted great. I still have 4 pots worth and those in the lawn bed as well as assorted plants around the garden.

Bird Netting

I got so tired of the resident birds digging up and eating my seeds or at the least casting aside the seedlings I was trying to grow.  I finally remembered that I had some bird netting.... Dur!....cast it over the raised beds and relaxed. It worked!  What a relief!  The bees can get through the holes but the white butterfly and birds are kept out. I wonder if I will have enough sunny hot days left for the melons to grow and ripen. I was so happy with the success of the bird netting I have bought some more. WOW, I can grow broccoli, cabbage and brussel sprouts without worrying about the white butterfly and its young eating  my plants. I will definitely be using bird netting whenever I can from now on.

My Fall/Winter crops are in.  I have sown carrots, radish, broad beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts, spinach, cabbage and lettuce.

Firsts

Dear Aunty,

These first 14 days of the new year have seen big red tangy and tasty strawberries, gorgeous dark green and light green zucchini, knobbly crispy and juicy Marketmore cucumbers, tarty deep red raspberries,  long skinny runner beans and snappy juicy snow peas,  frilly mixed lettuce leaves as well as fan shaped ones which crackle as eaten, mostly green stalked rhubarbs, feathery coriander and different coloured and shaped basil and tiny cherry tomatoes to go with them. ....AND not a photo to share.  They have all disappeared down hungry mouths the moment they arrived in the kitchen. Perhaps I will catch the larger tomatoes when they start turning red.

More rockmelon and butternut pumkins were sown and transplanted as seedlings AND covered with bird netting. All my other seedlings were dug out by our resident birds as they hunted for worms and bugs. I have lost a lot of direct sown seeds to my industrious little predators. These may not have enough hot days left in the season to fruit successfully but we will try. Perhaps plastic coverings over the hoops might extend the season.

One little black bird family has delighted in tossing off the straw and mulch through out all my garden beds during these last few days of steady rain. What a mess they have made.  Fortunately they left everthing alone for the 24 hours before new sustainable gardening friends arrived to have a garden tour and chat.

We had a lovely time getting to know each other and look forward to the next home visit and chatting about raised beds, climate change, seeds, Autumn planting and children. One of the ladies brought her three delightful little children with her. My daughter had a special time babysitting.

I was relieved to discover that my son, you and my other Queensland and Brisbane friends were safe following the flooding that has covered most of South East Queensland.  There were so many sad stories of lives lost and property destroyed.  You don't think that you will see two such floods in one lifetime. The 1974 floods don't seem so long ago.  We have had some flooding on the East Coast down here in Tassie too.

If the rain eases I will be outside putting the mulch back in the garden beds and thinking about what shopping has to be done before the two youngest go back to school after the Summer holidays.

Lawn Bed, Swales and Raspberries

I have/had a  rough uneven and unattractive lawn full of tussocks and bare patches even though it had started off as rolled turf.  It desperately needed aerating, seeding and topdressing.  A couple of attempts at aerating solid clay saw me try something different.  I started throwing down potato peelings in a row along part of the lawn. I have had good luck with changing impenetrable dirt into soft soil using potatoes in other parts of the garden and figured that waiting a season to have soil I could work with, would be worth the wait.

The potatoes took and grew and grew. I started looking at the lawn as a potential vegetable bed. It is the only spot I get any sun on soil. The rest falls on the bitumen areas. Then my son kindly dug some swales for me above the rows of potatoes to halt the runoff of water down the slope.  These I dug deeper on my own and filled with what hand chopped twigs, leaves and straw mulch that I could within my own yard. More will have to be added. 


The potatoes kept growing and next thing I knew I was cardboard layering the grass between the rows and putting down compost and more straw. I have tried some seeds as well as plants but there isn't much happening at the moment. I don't expect to get back to doing the grass in this area and have plans for a corn patch there next year when the soil is softer and the grass dead.

The Lawn Bed Growing Potato Peelings

Swales are the slightly lower lines above potatoes.

Plenty of Straw for the little bird to throw around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support Stakes from Branches

1kg of Raspberries. Picking half this each day.

Yummy with Cream