Sunday, May 31, 2009

Finger lime time.

Not a finger lime. It's a Sunrise lime, a hybrid between the finger lime and a calamondin.
I was very excited this morning to finally get my hands on some finger lime fruit. It's very tasty, the little vesicles of juice are crunchy and pop in your mouth to release a little lemony burst.
The fruit and some other products were being sold at the Western Farmers Market at FERN at one of the stalls there.
I was also happy to recognise the man selling them was a fellow I met a few years ago at TAFE doing a bit of a bush regeneration course. It had been his intention back then to get a bush food business going, so I was extremely happy to see it had come to fruition.
Also exciting is that they will be selling the trees in about 18 months time. They had some quandong trees for sale and jars of bush fruit marmalade and relish. Fantastic.
This is their website...marvick native farms.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Another go at some vegetable growing.

Happy little seedlings.
The time of year is encouraging. It is meant to be early winter but it has only rained once so far, really. Still it is a little cooler (though plenty of people are still in shorts during the day) and so seedlings don't seem like they will get burnt or dry out so easily.
I planted a bunch of little things into the super-duper improved charcoal soil patch. So far the rats have ignored them. That is good.

In a few days it will be uni break again. My one exam is this week coming. I'm half confident, half not. I really hope I pull through the unit.

There will be time for blogging, gardening and eating properly again when the exam is done.

I just really hope we get some autumn soon before spring sneaks up on winter.

Interesting news at work today. Two crop failures have affected stock availability. Hot weather in Victoria stopped some trees we were expecting and a batch of seed spuds were destroyed in another case. Oh, but there's no climate change...

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Making use of free resources.

At my work there are two 15 year old plane trees above the car park. At this time of year they lose their leaves and make a big mess and blow into the shop.
I was extremely pleased the other day to see that there was someone collecting them up for her compost. She had big empty bags and was doing a fine job of clearing the edge of the car park. Good on her, I say. It saves us having to pick them up. I have taken bags of leaves home before and probably will again. We don't get much opportunity to get large amounts of soft leaves for mulching and composting here. Last year I inadvertently transported some big wolf spiders to my house among the leaves, which was fine with me, but not so good for BF when one was running around in the car.