Cloudehill Gardens- Olinda

Looking forward, we have big plans to divide our little farm into a few distinct areas: 

One will include the house, sheds, outdoor entertaining and park-like lawn area.

The orchard, olive grove, food forest, beehives and berry vines will be in another area to the north.

The organic fruit and vegetable garden beds and chicken coop will make up the proper 'farm' area of about 3 acres. 

The vegetable beds at Cloudehill

 There is a paddock of about 4 acres with a dam, which will either be a pony paddock or a small vineyard depending on how things work out, and we hope that a separate 2/3rds of an acre allotment will be a lovely farm stay, built using natural methods.

Love the paving and pebbles here...

Perhaps the grandest plan though, is the acre and a half that I would like to turn into a formal garden, full of flowers and beautiful places to relax and enjoy.

Bricks are used liberally and I love the structured plants either side of the stairs.

When I look at the bare paddocks we have right now, all this seems like a very big dream, but then I remind myself that huge cities were built one brick at a time and just keep working on it, tiny bit by tiny bit.

To maintain the energy and motivation I like to visit beautiful, already well established gardens. Where better to soak up the vibes, gain knowledge of what plants grow best when and where and of course...steal ideas!

The photos are from our recent visit to Cloudehill Garden in Olinda , a magical place where much inspiration was gained. A lot of the pathways and retaining walls have been made using bricks and volcanic rock, readily available on many of the 'free to good home' websites. I cannot wait to use so many of these ideas in our garden!

Natural Pest Repellents

We used to live in the Dandenong Ranges, a beautiful place which is green, lush....and filled with spiders, rats and numerous other pests that you'd prefer not to have in your house.

We lived in a wooden house with more gaps than even the dullest spider would ever need to gain entry. Needless to say we had to deal with quite a few. I wish I'd thought to look up a few of these natural pest repellent recipes then.

**Spiders don't like Peppermint apparently- so grow some on your window sills or by the door if you have the right amount of sunlight, or you can do what we did and spray the outside and inside of your window and door frames with Peppermint essential oil. 

I used about 50 drops in about 100ml of water. It isn't water soluble so you'll need to shake the bottle often as you spray. You will be left with a delightfully minty fresh and (hopefully) spider-free home.



** For a natural Mosquito repellent, blend cinnamon, clove, geranium, peppermint, and lemongrass essential oils. OR, try cintronella and lemongrass oils.

** Apparently Peppermint Oil is also a Mouse and Rat deterrent, but you need to re-spray fairly frequently, every 3 days or so. Blocking all gaps and keeping food secured in glass containers is probably a better bet though. You might consider growing peppermint near your compost and chicken pens though, mice and rats might not move in quite so readily.

Now that we live in beautiful Gippsland hills, Snakes are now also a concern. We have used 'Snake Chasers'- available at Diggers- which are plastic stakes you stick in the ground to emit a pulse every 30 seconds to deter snakes. These are about $35 each (and then you need about $15 worth of batteries to power them but they should last a year) and cover an area of about 300 metres square.



In addition a neighbour forwarded me a natural snake repellent recipe recently, so I'm going to give this a go too...can't be too careful. 

Weeding, progress & a 3 sisters garden

So, weeding is not the most interesting task, but when it comes to organic gardening you just have to accept that is a fundamental part of the process. 

Before weeding....

I haven't done a lot of weeding in the side veggie bed because... well I didn't know what was an emerging vegetable seedling and what was a weed!

Anyway, the broccoli, carrots, sugarloaf cabbage, tatsoi and onions are all starting to come up and I can tell which is which is which now so it was time to get into the weeding. 

It was surprisingly satisfying to see a (largely) weed-free bed at the end of the day. 

And after weeding...

With the weather drying out a little sooner than expected this year, I hope that this will mean that the veggies get the majority of the available water and nutrients in the soil and not the weeds.

I have also put in some new veggies:

- Celery

- Mesclun

- Carrots- Baby, Danver & All seasons

- Beetroot- Globe & Egyptian

- Leeks

- Zucchini- Black Beauty & Garden Green

- Cucumbers - Mini Munchers

- Spring Onion

- Radishes

- Parsnips

I even managed to source a few seed potatoes from a lovely local business- Jones Potatoes in Warragul, who very kindly dug out a few different sorts for me an gave me planting instructions to go with them!

I have experimented with a few by trying to grow them in this half of an old feed barrel that I found in the shed. I'm hoping to use it like the tyre system and will add a couple of old tyres to the top when (and if) they grow.

I shared some with a neighbour because I need to dig furrows for the rest of them and that will be a bit of a mission. We also had a chat about my next project, which is a traditional companion planting garden of the '3 sisters', Corn, Beans and Squash, or Pumpkin. I have gone with a non-hybrid heritage seed for the corn 'Golden Bantam' and need to have the same type of corn growing in the immediate area to prevent cross-pollination, so I'm grabbing some for the neighbours next time I'm at the Diggers. 

The idea is that the corn provides something for the beans to grow up, the beans add nitrogen to the soil and the squash shades out the weeds. 

I found this on a facebook post (gotta love it) and these are the instructions:

1/ Plant corn when the frosts have passed

2/ Plant the pole beans when the corn is 5 inches high

3/ Plant the squash seeds one week later

I'll be doing this in the next 2 weeks, so will post with progress.