Garden Developments

This is just getting worse and worse - at least 3 weeks now since last update - sorry about that, but such is life. At least we have been doing some work here in Cremorne, as well as taking part in the Cremorne Triathlon (more about that later) so there will be two updates completed today, this first one about the garden and the next one about the house.

As it is getting closer to winter, we are getting closer to another busy season of planting trees, bushes, etc. Not only are we planting about 600 native trees (as mentioned in entry no. 74), but we are also butting in about 21 fruit trees and quite a few berry bushes. In addition we have started preparing our vegetable garden.

The fruit trees will be a bit to the south east of the house and directly south of the cabin. We have previously showed pictures of the mounts we created using the excess soil from our reed bed and which were planted with native bushes about 8 months ago. Jodie has been working hard digging holes for the fruit trees and we now have 18 holes inside this orchard ready for trees. As the ground is rather hard here (clay) the holes were first dug to a depth of about 25cm. Then water was put into the holes to soften the ground, before more digging was done about a week later. In addition lime has been added to help break down the clay to make it a nice comfy place for the fruit trees. Finally, straw has been placed on top to help hold the moisture in the ground. As such, it currently looks like a lot of small straw mounds:

We have also started working on our vegetable garden. This will be situated to the south of the house, between the house and the final spot for our container/shed/carport (yet to be constructed) and to the west of the garage/workshop. The eastern part of this area will be used for berries and we are planning to put in five rows of berry bushes. Currently we have only marked the spots for the posts, but the overall area for berries will be around 120m2:

Then comes the vegetable garden. Due to the climate in Australia it is highly recommended to grow vegetables in raised garden beds. We were wondering a bit what to make the beds out of, but then we came across some old water tanks which we now will be using. One was found at the tip shop and purchased for ten dollars. The other - a much bigger one - was delivered to our site for a crate of beer. Just yesterday we found yet one more from a guy here in Cremorne. The tanks have then been cut into segments, each about 45 cm high. This gives plenty of room for top soil, manure and finally straw on top.

Talking about manure: The Mercury - our local news paper - has a flee market section each Monday and last week we were lucky enough to find an add for free horse manure. The lady giving it away lived not too far away from us, so on Sunday we picked up a full ute load as well as a full trailer load of really good manure. The other good news is that she picks up a wheel barrow load of the stuff each day, and she is more than happy for us to come on a regular basis to collect it! Great news, as other people sell it for between 50 cents and 1 dollar per bag along the road.

Then to other activities:  Cremorne Triathlon is arranged once a year and consists of 300m swimming, 10km cycling and 3km running. It is possible to participate as an individual for the hole race, or as a team. It is also possible to do the enduro version which means that you do the full circuit once and then head out doing it all over again. As this was the first time, a team effort was called for, and Geir volunteered to do the cycling section of the race. The other sections were done by Adam (swimming) and Andrew (running). Our overall result was probably not the best - we did not get any prices - but at least we participated. Maybe we will do better next year, unless we go in as individuals.....(???)

The proud participants (it was a bit hard to get a picture of Adam doing the swimming):

Adam	Geir	Andrew

And some more good news: as the winter is getting closer, the days shorter, and the temperatures probably a bit colder (but not really yet) we decided that it was time to sort out our internal toilet situation. We have been living with an outside compost toilet since we moved in to the container, something which as worked really well, but it is not always nice to go outside in the middle of the night.

A couple of months ago, the plumber came and did all the plumbing in the main house. At the same time they did the necessary piping to for us to install the toilet in the cabin. We had not yet lined the walls in the toilet with plasterboard as the plumbing had not been done, but with the changing weather it was time to get started. Putting up the plasterboard took a little over half a day, then the plastering was completed over the next 3 days, as the plaster have to dry for 24 hours before the next coat is done. Finally, we painted the walls with 2 layers of undercoat/sealer and 2 layers of top coat. Geir then headed off to the plumbing shop, got the toilet and the other necessary parts and installed the toilet.

So future guests now do not have to worry !!

Any problems, please email webmaster. This page was last updated 24/07/2008