June Update

With June, comes the beginning of Winter gardening in as much as you can call subtropical weather “winter”.

As a whole I would say this month has been a month of harvest. There has been harvests of Dahlia bulbs, Pigeon Peas and the start of harvesting Chia and Zinnia seeds. The mandarins have been going wild and I’ve also started harvesting some of my Ginger (however this season I intend to simply split to regrow more next year).

I have also spent a fair amount of time this month working on giving back to the garden. I’ve spread a great amount of shredded bark along my gardens footpaths to help trap water from flowing down the slope. I’ve also begun spreading the horse manure I collected in April amongst the plants as well as using watered down chicken manure as fertiliser. The grass from the final mow of winter has also gone into mulch around the garden as the grass now tends to die back until Spring.

It’s also been a month of animals with the addition of 15 new chickens (14 ex-battery farm hens and rehoming one rooster for a friend who doesn’t live in a “rural” classed zone) along with the discovery of invasive flatworms, native flatworms, blind snakes and giant earthworms!

As it currently stands on my iNaturalist account we have 333 individual species of wild animals identified.

Due to the increased number of Chickens added to our flock, I’ve also been experimenting with chicken feed by slightly fermenting it and harvesting plants we have grown for them.

How was your June in the garden?