Recent content by TheFatBlueCat

I am in the process of planting more perennial crops. I already do a 'kitchen sink' permacultureish approach to all my gardening. I have several fruit trees already mature 15-20 years old (peach, plums, lemon tree, fejoa tree), and a blackberry I've had in for three years now, as well as...

Frosty start to the morning here. But spring must be on it's way! My earliest plum tree is covered in blossoms, and the southern highbush blueberries have set some fruit already. I've had several hens in and out of the broody hen pen to STOP being broody. My trooper little pullet Ginger Bonnet...

That's a lot of broodies! I have the potential to have 15, but I hope they won't all go broody at once!

One week till hatch day. Still 9 eggs in the nest as of yesterday. I candled them and the ones I could actually see into appear to have chicks forming and be at about the right stage. I can't see inside all of them, my green shelled eggs are like trying to candle a brick. One of those brinsea...

Here comes broody season! Broody number 2 has accepted the move to the broody hen pen and is currently firmly parked on a couple of fake eggs. I'll ensure she is still in it to win it by the end of the day tomorrow, and then she can have some eggs too. But I'm now all out of broody hen pens...

Update one week in on the sit. Still 9 eggs in the nest! I will candle them at about day 10 or 11, and discard any that aren't fertile or have quit early. Ginger Bonnet is a rockstar. She is super committed, is turning her eggs, and she is getting up to take a break. I'm letting her out of the...

Hi all, I promised to do a hatch along when I set my first eggs for the season, so here it is! I will update every few days, although there probably won't be all that much to say that's interesting until hatching day. But I'll try to be detailed, as just because I think it's not interesting...

Welcome, I'm in New Zealand. Sorry about the loss of your dog 😥 Sounds like you have a good handle on a range of things. Overwhelm is real! I have what I call a mini homestead - extensive gardens and some fruit trees, and a flock of chickens, but just on 1/3 acre at the edge of a rural town...

Gosh that sounds unpleasant. I hope you get some answers and a pathway forward. Can you eat pumpkin soup? Or do pumpkins have too much fibre? By pumpkin I mean winter squash, we call all winter squash pumpkins, unless it's a butternut and then we can it butternut squash... words are weird. What...

They're a couple of weeks off their leaves coming back.

It's a commercial apple orchard. I'll get some photos to share for those who aren't familiar with them :). The covers are to protect the apple crop from hail. They're actually fairly mature trees for a commercial orchard setting, they're dwarf trees at very close spacing and carefully pruned.

It has been cold, it has been warm, must mean spring is on the way! On Saturday I had the last of my raised garden beds delivered. We had ordered wood for them to build ourselves as we did with our first two new beds, but the supplier wasn't able to get it in and I was getting worried with how...

I hadn't considered using plastic, that's a good idea! I could make it do double duty by killing off the grass where I plan my next in ground garden to go. Thanks! We haven't got poison ivy here so I'm not worried about smoke fumes, but I'd always rather return organic matter to the soil...

Thank you for your welcome, and for reading the long list!

Today there is snow on the hills, and it's pretty cold. Cold is relative I know, we live in a pretty temperate region, it doesn't snow on the ground, just in the hills. The wind is pretty chilly, and it's been raining so that adds some dampness to it all. It's the sort of day you feel the chill...