Monday, July 12, 2010

Our day at the Garden expo

What a gorgeous day outside today! The weather is beautiful this morning, lovely sunshine and warmth without that horrible summer swelter..I have opened up the house to let in some lovely fresh air. I hate having the house all closed up over winter.  Kasey and I got up early yesterday and headed up to the Nambour garden expo. It was a lovely day. Kasey was pretty good considering that I was trapesing around from one end of the place to the other, in between lectures and workshops. She was getting decidely bored until I finally found the playground, then I had some bribing power! I attended probably 5 or 6 workshops, which I really enjoyed and learnt quite a bit. I spent most of my time at the Giant Kitchen Garden, as this is my area of real interest. I can get plants and buy garden bits and pieces any time of the year. I picked up a perpetual moon calendar for $12 which I can use year after year, and I also picked up a HUGE organic garlic from the same man. My other garlic that I planted the cloves of about 3 weeks ago is finally starting to sprout (yay) I had started to give up on it. Apparently I am best to put the garlic I purchased yesterday in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and according to the moon calender I am to plant it out on the 29th and 30th July.  This along with the sprouts I ordered from Vic should hopefully see a nice big crop in summer, and then I can plant my own cloves...here's hoping anyway.  There was a whole new concept in the Kitchen Garden with how to manage your vege and food crops, and your animals etc. I picked up lots of new info, and lots of info of day workshops etc coming up, which I have yet to read through. Here is a bit of a picture account of what we saw and did at the expo.

Protective planting for establishing fruit trees.

Frog  habitat using a black tub
Spiral herb garden
Ad Lib photo at the solar cooking demonstration
 Teacup ride 
 More teacup ride
Fun on the slide
Companion gardening
 
Protective growing frame for summer vege gardening
Teepee frame for peas and beans and other climing plants
 
Mixed planting vege garden
 
More mixed planting vege garden
 
More mixed garden planting.

  All in all a lovely, productive and enjoyable day. Will definitely go again next year. Seeing as it's such a lovely day outside, I will probably do a little mowing just around the house where it is a bit longer than I would like, the front paddock doesn't need any mowing, and I will probably pull out the pumpkin vine as it is now past it's prime, and will replant some new seeds later in the week, I will plant by the moon calendar which says I can plant from Wednesday, I think I am going to get a LOT of use from this little calendar.
  The vine has it's last 2 huge pumpkins ready to pick, but it is looking very scraggly and the new fruit is not growing, just rotting on the vine, even when hand pollinated, so time for a replacement.  I would like to put some climbing teepee style frames in this time for them to grow on, as they definitely seem to grow better when the fruit is elevated. The other option is some reo mesh, and either of these two options will hopefully contain the vine a bit as well, so it doesn't take over the garden so much.

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