winter work

25 JULY, 2014

Winter has been so beautiful this year, with lots of crisp sunny days perfect for working in the garden. We emptied bags of manure and organic compost into our raised bed and covered the soil with lucerne and chicken manure.

We also fitted our worm tube where we put food scraps to ensure the worms have a constant supply of food and keep circulating through our bed.

I am yet to add worm poo from my worm farms and am thinking about growing a little crop of a winter green manure just to make sure the soil is flush with nutrients when I plant it up in Spring. But I couldn't help buying a beautiful tray of organic seedlings from Worm Ticklers, which I'll plant in a little patch. Most beautiful seedlings ever, grown with love!

We've also fenced in the chickens. It was so fun to do and we had everything we needed right here, except for the chicken wire which we picked up at the hardware store. So lucky to already have the posts for the gate and some huge hinges already installed by previous residents.

We made the gate out of scraps of wood we found lying around in the shed, screwed it on to the hinges and added a lock. We also hammered the garden stakes in place and made sure we left the nesting box out of the perimeter for easy egg collection before attaching the chicken wire. Chickens fenced! And they have a huge area to free range in still. Am so blessed to have this beautiful backyard.