Lightening Online

We’ve had so much happening in our lives of late with a holiday and then a trip away for Lleyton’s surgery, that the poor garden has been on the backburner. Last weekend, Farmboy finally had a chance to build up one of my vegie garden beds. We’ve added a level to make it higher and filled it up with some compost we purchased by the cube.

I LOVE a fresh, new garden bed. Empty and so full of promise.

I usually like to plant a mixture of seeds and seedlings. Seeds for the easier to grow plants and seedlings for those that are a bit more of a challenge (like tomatoes and sweetcorn). With our later than hoped for start, I went for nearly all seedlings this time.

This is one of the tomato seedlings. I’ve planted 2 different varieties this year so we’ll see how they go.

One of the things I really love about our own garden is the chance to try some different types of vegetables or different varieties. What you can buy in the stores is usually limited to the most common things. And in our supermarket, variety is even more limited. I’ve eaten yellow button squash before but not green button squash so it’ll be interesting to see how well these grow and whether or not we enjoy the taste.

There was some leftover compost so Farmboy brought down some old truck tyres and filled them up. While I was seedling shopping, I bought some more strawberry plants. We had 5 (only 4 of which were productive last summer) which wasn’t enough plants to do anything with the yields they produced. We now have 10 (and last years plants are much bigger now) and I’m hoping we’ll do a little better with our harvest this year. There is nothing like the taste of home grown strawberries to bring a smile to our faces.

The large plant is a Eureka Strawberry which I hadn’t heard of before and thought I’d give a try. In the centre is my dwarf lemon tree. I have a much larger pot in mind for it eventually but don’t want to pot it into that until our paving is done. Hopefully it won’t mind this temporary home while we get organised. It was getting a bit tired of being in the small pot it originally came in.

Spending time in the garden is such a therapeutic task and I love the sense of hope and promise that a newly planted garden brings. It really makes me smile. You can read more about my gardening efforts (or lack thereof) on Lightening’s Garden.

What’s making you smile this week? It could be something wonderful that has happened. Or finding joy in the small, day to day things. Perhaps you’d like to make everyone smile with a joke or funny you tube clip. Write your Smiley Saturday post with a link back to here and then enter your link in Mr Linky below.

Image via WikipediaI wonder if I could sue for emotional trauma caused by being disconnected from the internet for a WHOLE. 24. Hours. Shouldn’t there be a law against that or something????

This is a quick message to tell you that I’m fine. Actually, I’m NOT fine. I’m a mixed up emotional wreck (which actually has nothing, or at least very little, to do with my lack of internet connection).

BUT, I am still alive. And still here. And back online.

And I will attempt to write you a “real” post later today. We’ll see how my day pans out. And how I’m feeling. And if inspiration strikes. Or runs away scared of the crazy woman who can’t stop crying (and no, it’s not the right time of the month to blame it on “women’s” issues).

I just have issues full stop.

Think I might go and have a shower.

I have written a semi-decent post about my $25 gardening challenge, if anyone is interested. I’ve set myself a goal to grow $25 per week of food in the garden. It’s going to take me a few years to accomplish but I like nice tangible goals. So each Thursday I try to write an update on my gardening blog about what I’ve harvested that week and other moves I’ve made toward reaching the goal (like the fruit trees we purchased last week).

So, feel free to head on over and tell me how awesome I am. Because I’m totally needy like that. And while you’re there, feel free to click on my Amazon widget and buy stuff so that Amazon will give me money toward my Amazon wishlist. Or not.

These are my latest zucchini pickings. It would seem being away for a few days can result in overgrown zucchini!!!! The largest of these is 45 cm long!!!! It’s unreal!

Here I was thinking that my zucchini crop was coming to an end. Turns out they’re a plant that just keeps on giving! Awesome!!!!

Now, I know there are HEAPS of great recipes out there for using zucchini.

So, I thought it would be GREAT to have ourselves a little “zucchini lovefest”. This works a little like a carnival (without using the carnival submission website).

All you need to do to join in this little lovefest is post your favourite zucchini recipe on your blog and send me the link to it. I know some of you have already posted zucchini recipes on your blogs. Send in the links to those. If there is a zucchini recipe you LOVE already posted somewhere, it’s fine to send me that link too. If you don’t currently have a blog but would like to share a favourite recipe, simply send me the recipe and I’ll post it here.

I’ll also be trawling the web for some great suggestions for using zucchini.

I’d like to post my “zucchini lovefest” on Thursday so if you can get the links to me ASAP that would be fantastic!!!!

Here’s a contact form to make it easier for you to send in your links/recipes/tips. Let the zucchini lovefest begin!!!! 

cforms contact form by delicious:days

YES!!!! Our chooks have finally decided to lay. Well, one of them hasn’t. Turns out one of our hens is a ROOSTER. So I don’t guess we’ll be getting any eggs from him any time soon!!!!????!!!!

And for our long wait, we have been rewarded with eggs that are very close to regular size. No little tiny eggs….so far.To be honest I was starting to wonder if they were all roosters?????? They’ve taken themselves a little bit of time to actually start laying!!!!!Said Rooster has gone to a new home today. Friends of ours have decided to breed some chickens. We’d like to do that one day….. just not quite yet.

And for your viewing pleasure (or should I say my BRAGGING pleasure), here is my most recent haul from our jungle garden:

9 corn cobs - dipped in boiling water and now residing in the freezer.

bunch of silverbeet - cut cooked and pureed to hide in spaghetti bolognese sauce. Two bunches were also given to our very appreciative chooks. That should bring us some eggs nice and high in iron (I hope).

1 apple cucumber - cucumbers weren’t very successful this year. This is my second apple cucumber from a total of 6 plants that I planted. I planted some green ones too but I think they got suffocated by the zucchini plants.

2.5 kg zucchini - grated and in the freezer ready to try out a few new recipes I’ll like to try.

1.5 kg tomatoes - some went in the spaghetti bolognese, some were eaten for lunch and there’s still quite a number left for the next few days.

oh, and 2 stalks of shallots to go into the spaghetti bolognese I was making (not that I think you can see them in the photo).

And because I’ve decided I *need* to keep a gardening journal but incredibly bad at it, I’ve started myself a gardening blog. I’ll still make the occasional post here about gardening but more detail of the day-to-day stuff I’m going to put there. Feel free to have a look if you’re interested. I have no idea at this stage how successful I’m going to be at keeping up with it. But I did find a very pretty template to use.

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!!!!!!

For some time now, I have wanted to grow my own Aloe Vera plant. It has to be one of the handiest plants for saving money on medical supplies. I FINALLY have 2!!! For a grand cost of ….NOTHING!!!! It took me some time but I eventually found sombody with their own plant who potted up not 1 but 2 plants for me!!! Gotta love a freebie! Especially a freebie that could well SAVE me quite a bit of money over the long term!I have been doing some research into the benefits and uses of Aloe Vera. I figured while I was doing the research, it might be helpful to put together a blog post about the benefits of Aloe Vera. A lot of these are anecdotal benefits (there haven’t been scientific studies done to “verify” them). Please use some common sense and caution when first using Aloe Vera in case you or your family members have some sensitivity to it.

External Benefits:

skin moisturiser

relief of sunburn

anti-inflammatory

promotes healing

relief for burns

insect stings

itchy rashes

antimicrobal

relief from eczema & psoriasis

relief from acne

aids healing of scrapes and abrasions

scalp care

sore muscles

cold sores

bruises

sprains

arthritis

anti-ageing (apparently Cleopatra used to bathe in Aloe Vera juice to help maintain her youthful appearance)

Internal Benefits:

aids digestion

assists with bowel problems

lower cholesterol levels

fight infection

reduce inflammation

absorb toxins

heal ulcers

aid circulation

alkalises digestive juices which can aid indigestion

aid immune system

GROWING YOUR OWN

How to Grow Aloe Vera plants

This link provides a detailed explanation on how to care for and grow your own Aloe Vera plant. I learnt the hard way that they don’t like frosts. My first attempt at growing a plant from a cutting in our garden some years ago met with limited success as the plant curled up it’s toes at the first frost. Apparently they are 95% water which is why they don’t like frosts. Interesting that they are able to survive on fairly low levels of watering though. They obviously hold onto their water well. I’m sure the shape of the leaf and the thickness of it’s outer coating have something to do with that!

Now I’m growing a couple of plants in pots and so far they seem to be growing and thriving well. They seem to thrive on neglect which makes them a perfect plant for me to grow!!! I tip a bit of water into mine occasionally and they seem fine. If I put the pots outside though, they need a lot more care and attention (I’m assuming due to a higher temperature and evaporation rate).

HARVESTING THE GEL FROM YOUR HOME GROWN PLANT

One of the great benefits of growing your own aloe vera plant is that you have fresh gel on hand at all times. In my opinion, fresh is always going to better than a bottled product that has had to be stabilised in order to give it some kind of shelf life. The down-side is that the juice surrounding the Aloe Vera gel can cause skin and bowel irritations in some people. To apply externally, some people simply break off a piece of the plant and apply the opened flesh to the wound. This is fine if you don’t have sensitive skin.

For those with sensitive skin or who would like to make use of the gel as an internal tonic, the following link provides step by step instructions on

How to Harvest Fresh Aloe Vera Gel

It also provides some explanation of various parts of the plant and which parts are of benefit to us as humans. The writer recommends harvesting a leaf when it is the size of your forearm. I grow my aloe vera in a pot so it’s not likely to get that big. I guess the point is the larger the leaf, the more gel you can harvest from it.

WHY I CHOOSE TO GROW MY ALOE VERA PLANTS INSIDE

I wanted to try growing an Aloe Vera plant in our bedroom as I read somewhere that it is a good plant for removing toxins from the air and aiding a restful sleep. Any plant will help to do this but those with a rubbery leaf texture like Aloe Vera are known to be particularly good at attracting dust particles. Plants also produce negative ions which are good for improving mood (so a MUST for me LOL).

I currently have 1 plant in our bedroom and 1 in the dining room (close to the kitchen).

Here are some links to articles on the benefits of indoor house plants:

Happy, Healing, Healthy Houseplants

Air Cleaning House Plants (mentions that Aloe will remove formaldehyde from the air)

Other interesting links

If you would like to read more on the benefits and uses of Aloe Vera, you might enjoy some of these links:

Herb Info - Aloe Vera

Herbal Information Centre - Aloe Vera

Benefits of Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera

Mayo Clinic on Aloe Vera

I hope you’ve found this article interesting and helpful. I’d love to hear of your own experiences with growing aloe vera and how you’ve made use of it’s many healing properties.

Farmboy LOVES his sweetcorn. So when buying seedlings for a summer garden, I purchased 3 punnets of sweetcorn seedlings. I was *hoping* to manage to get at least 10 cobs of sweetcorn from them, knowing that would about cover my costs.  While I would *like* to actually save some money on my grocery shopping through growing some vegies in the garden, my main purpose has been to provide fresh, organic produce to feed my family.

Well, so far the sweetcorn seems to be doing well.  Given I’m pretty new to all this gardening stuff, I’ve been trying to keep my expectations fairly low so that I’m not too disappointed if things fail.  Every time Farmboy goes outside, I think his mouth starts watering at the sight of the sweetcorn plants and the anticipation of juicy, fresh corn to eat.

I’m not sure if this photo is really going to do justice to the plants but I’m estimating they’re around 6 foot high (they’re certainly taller than me and I’m just over 5 foot).  At first I was worried that I’d planted them TOO close together but they seem to be fitting okay and I know they need to be reasonably close in order to pollinate one another.

You should be able to click on the photo if you’d like a larger view.  I didn’t take it at the best time of day but it gives you a bit of an idea.  I’m not actually sure how many sweetcorn plants we have (I didn’t count them!).  I did do a rough count of how many cobs we have growing at the moment and it’s around 40!!!!  Yippee!!!!

Sweetcorn is one of the few things I buy frozen so I’m hoping to freeze some of the cobs to use throughout the year.  We’ll see how many get that far!!!

Now I have a question for you, my wonderful and knowledgable readers.  How do I know when a cob is ready to pick?  Is it when the hairy part kind of browns off?  I don’t want to pick them too soon (they seem a little on the thin side at the moment) but neither do I want to wait too long.

In other gardening news, the zucchini continues to do well.  Leighton made a comment to me last night that it was one plant he was hoping would NOT do well.  LOL.  But I am in LOVE with zucchini roasted on the bbq.  And the zucchini we had steamed with dinner last night was honestly the BEST zucchini I think I’ve ever tasted!!!!  I must have picked it at just the right time.  I’m also planning to grate and freeze some (I hope) to use in spaghetti bolognese throughout the year.

Here’s the zucchini I picked yesterday.  It’s over a foot (ruler length) long!!!!  I have no idea what they do to the zucchini’s in the shop but they seem so SMALL in comparison.  At the moment I’m picking one every couple of days.  When the blackjack zucchini’s get larger I think we’ll run into a bit of a glut.  But not too much I don’t think.  I don’t have a LOT of zucchini plants in.

I have a few pumpkins growing on 1 vine while a couple of other varieties haven’t flowered yet.  The tomatoes are fruiting but seem very slow.  I did add potash but I think the highly nitrogenous water has made them very bushy.  I even tried to trim them a few times (cull a few branches so they weren’t so bushy) but they still look rather overgrown.  Fingers crossed we still get enough tomatoes from them to make it worthwhile.

I have a few apple cucumbers almost ready to pick but I don’t know what happened to the green cucumbers I attempted to grow.  They haven’t really come to anything I don’t think.  So far the strawberries have been disappointing….we haven’t had a lot of fruit.  I’m not sure they’re getting enough water.

We’ve had a couple of fairly severe heat waves so at the moment I’m just glad I haven’t lost the whole garden.  Next summer I need to be more careful about how much I cram into a small area.  It’s probably been a good thing in some ways as they plants are kind of shading each other.  However, it’s making access to them rather difficult and I think there’s a fair bit of competition for what water we are able to give them.

I’m just happy to have had at least some success.  I still can’t believe how much fun I’m having!!!!

Every day when I look out the kitchen window, I’m sure I can actually see the growth in my vegie patch. This is my first summer garden and compared to the winter one I attempted to grow, things sure grow fast.

In fact, I underestimated the amount of room some of my plants would need so things are getting rather crowded. Oh well, we’ll see what happens when it comes to harvest time. There are about half a dozen zucchini’s growing (when I can fight the forest to get to them) and a few tomatoes starting to form on the tomato bushes (and they really are BUSHES, despite pinching some of the branches out a number of times).

This photo shows some of my tomato bushes (the tiny one in the corner was planted later) and a pumpkin vine (I think) growing out onto the hay between my 2 vegie patches (which was my intention).  If you’d like a larger view, simply click on the photo.

This shows the sweetcorn we’re growing. My 4 year old was riding his bike past the patch the other day and almost fell off. He stopped, got off his bike and went to stand next to it. “Wo-oh. It’s getting bigger and bigger”, he said. LOL. He is LOVING the vegie patch.  I also have more zucchini, some apple cucumbers and some beans growing in that patch.

When I first started attempting to grow vegies I thought it was about providing fresh and chemical free vegetables for my family. I didn’t really expect to enjoy it and find it as therapeutic as I do. And I didn’t expect my children to get as much enjoyment and wonder from it as they do. They are constantly reminding me how much value children really place in the simple things in life. We think that buying them more STUFF will make them happy when in reality something as simple and back to basics as a vegie patch has provided more joy for them than any toy they’ve ever been given.

Given I list gardening as one of the things you might find on this blog, I thought it was about time I did a post about my garden. I seem to have finally graduated from only being able to grow lettuce in the garden. LOL. Which is nice.

I HAVE to start with a photo of my very first strawberry. And yes, I did get to eat this one myself. In fact, I ate both of the first 2 that were ripe. LOL. Don’t tell the rest of the family! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve attempted to grow strawberries without success. At our last house the soil wasn’t great and we were still very much novice gardeners. I managed to get a few growing but nothing of much value. Last year I was determined to grow some but my chooks had other ideas and scratched them all up again!

Well, this year I seem to have finally had some success. These are growing in pots on the front verandah. Away from pecking chooks! I’m not sure how clear it will be in this photo but I counted 30 strawberries on 1 plant in this pot. This is my most successful plant and I bought it as a single, more mature plant. Those that I bought as smaller plants have struggled a lot more and while those that survived seem to be going better now, I think paying the extra for a more mature plant might be the way to go.

Here is the garden bed we set up at the beginning of August. It looks a bit different now to how it looked back then . It’s not easy to tell from the photo but a number of the “empty” sections have seeds in them which have sprouted. Unfortunately I was a bit slack when I planted the seeds and didn’t record what went where. So being a novice gardener we may have to wait until the “fruit” appears before we can tell which plants are where. LOL. Oh well, I don’t mind a bit of a surprise.

This is a view from the other angle. We have lettuces and silverbeet growing like crazy to the left and some beetroot plants to the right. Some of the beetroot is ready to be pulled and eaten. Fresh beetroot will be a new experience for the family. The yellow-ish colours you can see dotted around the plot are Marigolds I planted from seeds my Grandma collected. I’m hoping they’ll work well as companion plants amongst the tomato plants I’ve planted.

Here are some seedlings I purchased yesterday. I decided to just “go nuts” and buy a heap of seedlings. I am having some success growing things from seed but I do find with a lot of plants, it’s fighting an uphill battle with bugs to get them to a healthy seedling stage. Those I’ve started as seedlings have thrived a lot better in the garden. The store was kind enough to give me a seedling tray to hold my seedlings while I was choosing (and to take them home in too). I think that worked out in their favour because I ended up deciding I may as well fill it up so the seedlings would make the 2 hour trip home a little better.

I bought 3 punnets of sweetcorn. DH LOVES his fresh sweetcorn so crossing my fingers we can grow a bit for him to enjoy. Then 1 punnet each of celery, apple cucumber, jap pumpkin, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and zucchini. Now I just have to grow at least $35 worth of food from that lot to recoup my investment. Most of these will be planted in my first garden plot where the peas, lettuces and broccoli are just finishing.

I honestly never expected that I would *ever* grow much of a garden, especially a vegie garden. It just didn’t interest me at all. But now that my life has slowed down a little, I’m finding the time to potter in the garden and it is a wonderfully renewing experience. I’m afraid I may be well and truly addicted to growing our food now. LOL. It’s so exciting watching things grow and then being able to EAT them. The rest of the family seems to be enjoying the process as well.

My new garden bed is finally ready to planted into. Hooray!!!! Lot’s of excitement here (as much from my 3 year old as anyone lol). It’s just been an empty frame for about 6 months or so.

We have made this bed a no-dig bed using compost from a supplier in town. It cost us $75 for a cubic metre - basically a small size trailer full. With the price of vegies I’m hoping that it’ll pay for itself eventually. Not that it matters. I’m committed to growing as many of our vegies as I can manage more for health reasons than anything else. Not to mention freshness and taste.

And it’s turning out to be a very therapeutic hobby for me too. Can’t say as I’d ever imagined myself gardening for fun (in the past I’ve always found it a drag - just done enough so our house doesn’t look derelict). Now that I’m home more, I think it’s easier to enjoy a few minutes here and there in the garden.

This is what the finished bed looks like. The squares are basically a foot squared in size, as suggested with square foot gardening. It’s not exactly a traditional “square foot garden” though. They recommend keeping beds to a maximum of 4×4 squares. We already had the actual garden bed built and it ended up being 7×8 squares, so I’ve simply marked off a row in each direction through the middle to use for a path. I think the reason for keeping beds small is so that you don’t step on the compost and compact it too much. So I’m hoping having a path through the middle, I can still achieve a similar thing. Unfortunately that will take up some of my garden though. But it’s easier for now to work with what we’ve got.

I didn’t really follow any formula in filling it. I did line the bottom with cardboard boxes a while ago and also dumped some old hay and grass clippings in there. Then we just filled it in with the compost. Might have been a cheaper way to do it but at least it’s done and I can use it now. Fingers crossed my own compost will be ready when it comes time to replant.