Candy Cane Vegetables
Now you can’t buy vegetables that look like THIS in the shops!!!!! Isn’t it much more interesting than the boring run of the mill, standardised size and shape zucchini’s they ask you to pay MONEY for??????
The Bomb (aka 4 year old DS) proclaimed it as a “Candy Cane Zucchini” 
Leighton (aka almost 10 year old DS) said it looked like a “J”
Singstar Princess (aka 7 year old DD) asked if we could have the “candy cane zucchini” for tea.
Mum (that’s me) has decided that this gardening bizzo is a HUGE success!!!! 
Never before has such excitement over vegetables been heard within the Lightening household.
While we’re on the subject of my pickings from the garden:
My FIRST tomatoes!!!!!! I’m so EXCITED!!!!!! It took some hunting through the jungle to find them…..
During conversation over lunch I mentioned that perhaps next year I needed to plant a little less in the plot.
Farmboys response (that’s DH): “You reckon?”
My comeback: “How was is I supposed to know they’d grow that big?”
Followed by “you need to build me another garden bed!” 
(that smiley is meant to be me sucking up to DH 
)
My dream one day (now that I’ve discovered I can actually GROW something and I’m not a black thumb after all) is to have the vegie garden and chook run combined to put into practise some permaculture principles. That requires farmboy building some infrastructure so that I have 3 chook runs - 1 for the chooks, 1 for planting and 1 for harvesting.
Babysteps Lightening…..Babysteps……
Gardening is almost as addictive as blogging!!!!!!
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Quick!!!
You can be the first person to leave a comment on my new blog, just as you were with the old blog….
I know what you mean about fun with vegies. I hated it in the winter…. it was too cold and wet to drag myself out there after work, so it wasn’t a huge success.
But I love it now!!
That’s it!! my DH is in trouble now!! Garden beds MUST now go in lol
**heads off to research winter vegetables**
How exciting when you have success. Will have to add something in about my vegies on my new blog when I get a chance, I’m waiting in anticipation!!
One thing to remember is that a zucchini is a small marrow. So the monsters we grow at home are technically marrows. That said it all tastes the same to me, and if anything the marrows are jucier and richer in flavour heh.
Lightening - I fully agree that gardening is as addictive as blogging heh.
Hey Frogdancer - think I already was!!!
Does that make me a stalker????
Bettina - ROFLOL!!!!
Katrina - waiting for vegies or waiting for your blog???
ShadowKnight - I’m not sure I’m all that clear on what a marrow is??? Same as the pumpkin family? Or do you mean that once it gets to a certain size it’s called a marrow rather than a zucchini?
Timely stuff - we’re debating whether to use our spare corner for a cubby house or a vege garden. Nothing like real tomoatoes off the plant. yum
You need a mobile chook run. When the chooks have finished scratching up the ground (cultivating), eating all the insects (bug control) and eating the left-over from harvesting greens (weeding), you move it and them to the next site (right next door to the old one) where you have just finished harvesting, so they can start over, while you dig in all the chook manure in their previous site. Meanwhile site no. 3 is ready and being harvested. When the chooks move on again, the first site should be ready to replant. The process is explained much better in a book I’ve got somewhere, either “You Can Have Your Permaculture And Eat It Too” by Robin Clayfield, or “Backyard Self-Sufficiency” by Jackie French. Another excellent book is “The Permaculture Home Garden” by Linda Woodrow. I think this is the one with the mobile chook run and mandala garden layout. If I ever get a house and yard again instead of my current unit, the mandala is the one I’m copying.
Oh I am so envious of your veggie garden. Planning to put a container veggie garden together this year but got to get a few other financial obligations dealt with first.
Karen - ooh, that would be a hard choice!!!
River - I have read some of the permaculture books but a mandala takes up quite a bit of space and we’re not keen on having to move a chook tractor around. Because we have the room next to the chook house, this set up should work well for us and once it’s built it’ll only be a matter of opening and shutting certain gates.
Marita - I know what’s it’s like waiting. It’s taken us a few years to finally get a vegie garden happening here.
Yay you! Great growing
Well done, Jodi!
My garden is micro-scale, but I was happy to pick a red capsicum and a few basil leaves for tonight’s dinner. 
And home-grown capsicum is sooo much sweeter.
I didn’t know growing vegies could be so exciting either! We are picking our zucchinis, cherry toms, romas, cucumbers and broccoli at the moment. I EVEN enjoyed blanching the broccoli just because I grew it!
I’m glad you ae having a great success with growing vegies now
and it’s wonderful that your children are excited about it too!!
Kez - thanks
Emma - my capsicums came to nothing this year
Maybe another year. Glad to hear you’ve had success. Every bit counts!!!! 
Madly Saving - you see, you and I ARE twins!!!!!
Except I have only grown a few cucumbers….need to try a different variety (plus one lot got choked by the zucchini plants 
Ali - thank you.
Hey, I have a few cucumbers growing that look just the same!
oh a woman after my own heart! We discovered last year that we could in fact grow stuff… and that it tasted pretty damn good too! We now have a HUGE vegie garden, fenced off from the chooks normally but I am on DH’s back to build me a mobile chook run so that we can wack the chooks in one garden bed at a time and let them ‘do their thang’
Congrats Lightening
It’s amazing how kids will suddenly eat vegies they used to reject just coz you grew it lol.
We rest some of the vegie boxes and let the chooks run amok in them,scratching,fertilising and cleaning up any weeds/bugs. After a few weeks we plant it out again.
That’s so exciting! We move into our new house next weekend and I have already got a section in the backyard just waiting for my vegie garden to go. I have always wanted one so I can’t wait to get in there and start growing them.