Thursday 14 March 2024

Potted grape and trellis

 So I made a decision recently to only buy more plants if I had a place ready to put them. Then we went to Bunnings where they had a grape vine on clearance...

Now to be fair, I put it back, then changed my mind and went back to get it again before actually buying it. So then I spent the drive home trying to figure out where on earth I was going to build a sturdy trellis for these grapes. By the next day I settled on where I want them, and the trellis I'm planning... but that is really low on the priority list.

After some more research, I made a quick, rustic stick trellis in a large pot for now. Future plans are to build a trellis along the side of our house that gets full afternoon sun, and where we store a whole lot of untidy junk for everyone to see as they drive past! I'm thinking I'll have shade cloth between the house roof and the grape trellis so I can use that space for my orchids and ferns. When the grapes are dormant I'll grow peas on the trellis to keep the privacy and shade.

Until then, I'm learning how to care for the grape vine, and will be able to propagate using cuttings when we have their future trellis built.

Thursday 7 March 2024

Toddler wrapping paper

 Toddlers, well mine at least, love painting! I've been getting her to paint useful things as Ray is getting quite the stack of Lily paintings on his desk.

This one was just from a roll of brown kraft paper that I normally use as wrapping paper with some pretty ribbon. But this time I put blobs and swirls of paint on the paper (cut to size for the intended present) and let Lily do whatever she wanted with the brush or her fingers, then repeated with the next colour.

For the cards and envelopes we do the same thing, but let it dry in between.

The kids presents for Christmas were painted and stamped the paper grocery bags, and we have done the blob and swirl technique on them as well, but they weren't big enough for this gift.

Thursday 29 February 2024

A sun hat for myself

 I made myself a hat!

I used the free Set Sail Hat from Patterns for Pirates. I made the biggest brim size but ended up trimming a few centimeters off and finishing with bias binding. The interfacing was some old stuff I had at home sand ended up being rather floppy so I added extra interfacing and lots of top stitching. It's still a little floppy so I might trim another couple of centimeters off and see if that helps. Probably would have been smart to just buy what was recommended...

Anyway I'm really happy with it, and even happier that I don't need to keep replacing my straw hats that never last long and can't be washed!

Thursday 22 February 2024

An english mulberry tree

 When I went to visit a plant nursery, I was looking for maybe a mandarin or a few natives, I definitely didn't plan to bring home another mulberry tree!

Terrible photo I know, but this is an English Mulberry which has very different leaves to all my others... obviously I had to buy it! So I've got the cuttings from my black mulberry we had at our old house, the native mulberry and this new english mulberry.

And then Ray went to "Coles" and bought me a weeping mulberry for Valentine's Day! And yes he did go to Coles on his way home, I was wondering what was taking him so long!

Thursday 15 February 2024

Beetroot harvest

 Most of my garden has not been enjoying the heat, but thankfully the beetroots have done well!


The varieties I planted were cylindra and golden globe. Both grew well and tasted nice, but I got the cylindra variety thinking it would be easier and more consistent to slice.

Beetroots are actually pretty versatile, the leaves are edible so we used them fresh on sandwiches, and have used them like spinach in stir fries as well. Some beets were grated raw into our salads, and added to the pan for roasting, while the rest were boiled and pickled following a recipe by Emma on Kitchen Mason. I did the first batch with white vinegar because I didn't want to drive to the shop just for vinegar, and the second batch using brown vinegar. Now we're trying to wait two weeks before we do a taste test!

I did pull all the beetroot out of my garden bed because it was in need of a refresh, but I regret it now that we don't have any beetroot leaves for salads or beets to add to roasts! I have sown more seeds, and will be doing succession plantings to have a continual supply of beets ready for whatever we need.