Just heading into our growing season so the jury is out as to how good or bad it will be.
But so far we have skipped spring and headed straight into summer, bushfire season will be a good one!
I am watching our lettuce expecting them to bolt any day which will annoy me greatly as our salad greens mix is our biggest seller.
Our dams are already down about a metre...have a dozer coming around to do some road work in the next couple of weeks and I think another large dam might be in order.
We go through a bit of water as we are slowly increasing the size of our garden to about 700m sq.

So far though we have had a good amount of shallots to pick, the blueberries and currants are looking fantastic, the Beetroot is starting to form (been picking the leaves for the salad mix), and the rainbow chard and Silverbeet are producing well.

As soon as I have enough money we are going to cover the gardens with plastic and 30% shade cloth, just over the top and leave the sides open to allow a breeze.
I want to put in a totally covered roof area to grow the lettuce as well.

Last year we got washed away...this year we are going to bake!!!

Hello Cares
Sounds like yo have a good size operation going on there.. If your lettuce does bolt could you re-plant for a second crop?
I am surprised that your dams are down so low.. I take it you are not in the region that was plagued with floods a while ago?

Ah the dams still have plenty in them just odd to see them down at all though.
It was mostly QLD and VIC that suffered the floods NSW didn't cop it so bad but we have still had almost constant rain for the last two years but nothing now for a few months and the heat has just been so intense that it is drying things out so much. We live in a dairy valley and it is even starting to dry out there!

Yep we do plant constantly but the little lettuce seedlings are not liking the heat.
We had 35 deg c here this week and we are only half way through spring!!!

total drought this summer. totally sucked.
tomatoes, carrots, onions did better than ever
potatoes were just ok
zucchini cucumber and squash were the pits
spinach, beets and swiss chard were nfg.
very frustrating for all the hand-watering that had to be done (every single day in july as it didnt rain once)
well almost dried up too...sign-o-the-times...

In the ottawa valley area (rockland is as close as I go publicly) but that's about half an hour or so away from the farm.. the garden didn't produce like normal, we say a drop on most things between 40 to 50 percent on most things but because we do three crops and plantings, we had some crops do well, the very early spring potato crop that went in april rocked, the mid planting in may was ok and the late planting in early july rocked it!

But while everyone else is loving this grape season and I agree that they are higher suger content, i can't say they were better then last year.. Tomato were great in the hugelbeds but not good in the garden and they normally are! My hugelbeds and the food forest where the best producers, even with my dry land planting the main garden didn't do as well as the others did..

I watched the Back To Eden movie three times last winter and spring and because we have loads of chicken litter/wood chips to get rid of we just kept dumping them into the garden as mulch. We had more rain than the folks out in eastern Ontario but it was still a dry summer. I only watered when the seedling were newly planted and after that the mulch did the job - and didn't water AT ALL after that. Farmgals hugelbeds work on a similar principle as the wood under the ground soaks up and holds the moisture.

I still have lots of weeds this year but that's because the previous owners let the garden go completely. I was REALLY impressed by the production amounts and the lack of water needed to harvest far more than I have ever harvested before. There is always room for improvement of course. Already looking forward to next year and some new projects and I haven't finished cleaning out the garden yet!

http://backtoedenfilm.com/

I watched the Back To Eden movie three times last winter and spring and because we have loads of chicken litter/wood chips to get rid of we just kept dumping them into the garden as mulch. We had more rain than the folks out in eastern Ontario but it was still a dry summer. I only watered when the seedling were newly planted and after that the mulch did the job - and didn't water AT ALL after that. Farmgals hugelbeds work on a similar principle as the wood under the ground soaks up and holds the moisture.

I still have lots of weeds this year but that's because the previous owners let the garden go completely. I was REALLY impressed by the production amounts and the lack of water needed to harvest far more than I have ever harvested before. There is always room for improvement of course. Already looking forward to next year and some new projects and I haven't finished cleaning out the garden yet!

http://backtoedenfilm.com/

Wow thanks for the tip, I have just finished watching the movie...uuuugh been so busy it got watched a bit here and a bit there!
Picked up a load of wood chips and tea tree mulch today to try it out.
Up until now I have been using sugarcane mulch and haven't been overly impressed as the soil is still drying out too much underneath it and the soil is getting hard and water repellent so after only one crop I need to add so much back to the soil.
First garden bed I mulched with the wood chips and tea tree was a bed growing currants, blueberries, tomatoes, garlic and lots of herbs beneath the berries. It looks so different with the chips, almost barren in fact...but if it works I don't care what it looks like.
Going through less water would be great. We have hardly had a drop in the last couple of months and it has been sooooo hot or Spring it is scary, and this has meant giving the gardens LOTS of water and taking lots o time to do so 😕
I will update through out the season to let you know how the new method is going 😀