PracticeFarm

We’ve had eggs nearly all through winter.
Hens laying or not laying, what to feed them, what not to feed them, is an ongoing discussion had amongst poultry people (it might be THE most commonly discussed topic).
There are two things that seem to be working at the same time at my place.
1. I think I have timed the ‘succession chickens’ right. These are the new POL girls I bought in, in Feb as my OG flock was close to 3 years old. The new girls were laying before winter started and haven’t stopped. The older girls first started again just after the equinox. Two of them had their first big moult at the end of summer and I knew they’d be out of action for a while.
2. I really think the fermented/sprouted oats I have been feeding them as a supplement to their commercial food is helping to support their health and therefore their laying.
The oats experiment was driven by the cost of their feed. I was looking for something I could buy in bulk that was still highly nutritious to alternate with the commercial food and make it last longer. I’m going to keep doing that another month or so before I share the cost savings, just so I have enough info to share.
With eight chickens in total my yard is at capacity (in my opinion). I know people keep a lot more in less space, but I think this is what leads to completely bare chicken yards with no diversity for them to scratch and peck.
So for now, this means no new chickens until spots become available.
Or, we move to a bigger space 🤞🏻.

Todays the day to pick this big boy. Easily the largest I’ve grown this season and probably since we’ve been here. Weighing in at 452grms, this is a Black Krim but I realised they don’t actually turn black . I bought the seeds for these for $1 on the markdown rack at my local produce store as they were about to go out of date. They germinated really easily and have grown well too. Definitely saving seeds from this one.

Growing dahlias in your garden in Brisbane.
I bought my first dahlia tuber in 2018. Somehow I had come across an Instagram account of someone growing cafe au lait, and I HAD TO have them.
Fast forward a few years and I’ve grown several different varieties through very different seasons and with different results.
If your new to growing these beauties and wondering why your having issues or don’t have great results then keep reading 🤓.
1. The vast majority of advice on the internet and in fb groups is from the southern states. Always, always find out where someone is located before you take their advice.
2. Our growing season is different . A lot of the dates for planting, harvesting and lifting dahlias are based on a colder climate. This might work for you in the inland areas of Qld, but it doesn’t work for coastal areas. I can have shooting plants in August and first flowers in September in the sunny parts of my garden. If I try to stop my plants to catch up with the season then that means they are trying to flower in the hottest and most humid part of summer. That makes them more prone to the pests that love those conditions. If I just let them flower when they want to I have better success.
3. You don’t have to lift your dahlias. This is especially true if you have well drained Sandy soil and a sunny position. This way the plants tell you when they are ready.
4. If you do lift DO NOT store your tubers in the mediums they use down south. Anyone else seeing a heap of mouldy tuber pictures online with people asking for advice ?We have this thing in Qld called humidity even in the colder months and something like wood shavings or similar works much better.
5. Grow what works in your garden. Dahlias are no different to anything else in this regard. Some of the best plants can bloom right through a very hot January, resist those pesky spider mites and go on to produce an abundance of new tubers. Others will not like our summer showers and start to rot before the season ends.
When you find the ones that work for you, grow more of them!
Do you grow dahlias in Brisbane or a sun tropical climate? I’d love to hear what you have learnt!

Photo dump from yesterday.

Finally got around to planting out this last bed.

Trying direct sowing even though I don’t usually get great results, I had limited time this weekend and so this is how it got done.

Planted:
Paris Market carrots (even though I said I was done with trying)
Blue Kale
Spinach, a type you can pick and eat fresh like baby spinach.

Also threw in some random seeds in other spots like:
Coriander
Borage
Sunflowers (yep I know it’s not the right time I just felt like it)
Radicchio
Marvel lettuce
Zucchini

I may have gone to Bunnings for a drill bit and some celery, capsicum and French marigolds found their way into the trolley and so they got chucked in as well.

Apparently it’s going to pour down the next few days so it’s a bit of a ‘survival of the fittest’ vibe, we’ll see what makes it!

Sometimes I wonder about this ‘growing your own food caper’.
Like am I actually saving any money, by the time I make the beds, get the soil, feed it, buy the seeds etc and then there is the time investment 🤦🏻‍♀️.
Then other days I go to Woolies and find that the cheapest tomatoes they have are $10 per kilo. Then I think about the amount of fruit I have about to ripen and how much I enjoy shopping in my back yard and not a supermarket and……….it’s all worth it!

The first tomato!🍅
For two years I have struggled to get tomatoes to grow in this garden.
I’ve tried ALOT of different techniques, varieties, timing and even tried leaving them in the grow tent.
Somehow a combination of the grow tent lights, then moving into creates and growing more now that the weather has cooled has worked and I have my first tomato and many more on two plants, with 4 more just starting to flower.
I also have been removing planting their suckers and this is working too.
‘Touch wood’ but I’m not needing to bag the fruit because there isn’t fruit fly around either.
I’ve just put about 20 more seeds in the grow tent of heirloom varieties and about 90% have germinated, so hopefully many more to come!

Full Moon & Fire Gazing 🔥 🌕 🖤
I took this photo looking over the back fence last week.
We’ve been sitting out in the late afternoon and early evening enjoying a fire and the change of temperature here in our little part of Brisbane.
Days are still getting up in the high 20’s(c) but the evenings and mornings have started to drop into the mid to high teens.
We don’t really get warning that the seasons are changing here. Back in NSW, where we used to live, you’d see the typical signs of autumn approaching, but here it’s hot,hot,hot then not so hot 😎.
In preparation for the cooler weather, my husband has been busily building a permanent fire pit and seating area that he has been planning in his head for a few years now.
It’s still a little way off, but will look amazing and I can’t wait to share pictures of what he’s creating!

Prepping for roses 🌹
My order from is due in may and four of the bush type ones are going here in the front yard.
This area gets ALOT of sun, including the afternoon heat.
The bigger fence we’ve installed also blocks the bay breezes we used to get here, but I’m hoping as the lily pily hedge grows up, it will help with cooling things down.
I got a paid subscription to blog purely to get some of her rose magic. Even though she’s way down south, the bed prepping and feeding info she shares together with her mind blowing rose garden layout, is amazing.
Even though I’m a way off my delivery date I’ve started building out this bed. Firstly with cardboard I laid down a couple of months ago, then mulch and I’ve just put this organic soil and compost mix on.
Next I’ll add some cow 💩 and more mulch on top to keep adding nutrients into my soil. It’s very,very sandy almost silt like and water beads off it. So heaps of organic matter being added on an ongoing basis is key.
I’ve got to do this same process down the back as well for the two climbing roses, but at least that area has had the chooks on it and already has a little bit more substance to it.
Fingers crossed I get a little baby rose garden here come winter.
Please feel free to share any of your rose growing tips with me!

Meet the new Girls!

GWEN, is a silver laced Wyandotte and a bit of a bully. She is the most approachable of the new girls and I can see her eating of my hand in the not too distant future.

NESSA, is a araucana cross Scots Grey. I wanted an araucana and a Plymouth rock, so once I seen this lovely girl, I knew she’d be perfect. Nessa is very timid and also still manages to fly with her wings cut!

SABINE, is a Vorwerx and has the sweetest little face. She pretty much hangs on her own and has already started to lay. She also is relatively quiet even when she sings her egg song it’s not loud, which makes her perfect for suburban life.

These girls join the existing flock, Alice, Valentina, Gladys, Dottie and Gina.

This is all that’s left of the majority of my dahlias.
The majority where infested with mites, dying, falling over and generally in a really bad state. Some had started reshooting by themselves, so I took that as a sign to cut them down and see what happens.
This year I was so determined to have a beautiful front garden filled with dahlias. I put more effort in than ever before, but Mother Nature had other plans.
So now while I start getting the empty beds ready for roses and rebuilding my soil, I’ll wait to see if they all reshoot. For those that don’t I’ll try and lift them hope for a better season next year.

Baba ganoush + flat bread made from sourdough discard.

I tried these recipes out on the weekend. There was a few eggplants in the fridge and I have more on the plants so I went looking for a recipe that needed a few.
This Baba ganoush recipe is from . One thing I’d recommend is start with less garlic as I found it to be a little strong. I also substituted Smokey paprika for the chilli powder.
With the flat bread my kitchenaid is in pieces as my husband is in the middle of fixing it, so for the last few weeks I have been feeding my starter (Elvira), discarding and putting her back into the fridge.
This week I was determined to use it and so I found this recipe from and it worked really well. Next time I might try making them on my sandwich press instead of the frypan to see how they turn out.
Both links are in my stories.

My first attempt at pickling jalapeños !
I thought I had enough but turns out to fill a little jar you need more.
I didn’t ‘can’ it to seal it, because this will be used straight away.
The recipe was from and pretty easy to follow.

I soaked these little golden beetroot seeds in water on the weekend in preparation for planting.
Which means I forgot all about them until Monday morning.
Thinking I didn’t have time this week to pot them up I put them in this bag (which I reuse to freeze sourdough in) with some paper towel and water.
This morning I checked and they’ve started to sprout inside the bag!
Going to grab so time now so I can go plant them out whilst they are still keen to grow.

I’ve been hiding in the shade the last few weekends and sticking to the jobs that can be done out of the heat, and as a result I having been posting as much.
Normally I would be sharing pics all over the place of my dahlia patch but, my poor front yard dahlias are about to call it quits and most of the stuff out there is struggling.
We’ve had constant heat and not that much good rain. My water tank for the garden ran out yesterday.
But I found one great thing in the front yard. This is my diva hydrangea that looked like a dead stick for two years. It’s now producing these beautiful heads of blue flowers.
So happy to see this, as I’ve only every had pink before.
It doesn’t get much sun at all so I’m assuming the humidity doesn’t bother it much and it looks so good!

Zinnias 🥰
I planted a couple of packets of zinnia seeds about three years ago.
These beautiful flowers now self seed at will in all sorts of places.
They are so tough I can pull them like weeds, dump them in a shallow hole where I want them, not do too much more and they will thrive.
They love full sun and don’t need a heap of water. They are definitely suited to our climate.
I have noticed if I put too many together they can get some issues when it’s really humid.

The bees love them too!

Time to join the fun!

This is a photo of me doing bee things and is my entry into for the Most Photos of Women + Beekeeping Uploaded in 24 hours.

Apparently we can help set the record by uploading a photo of you doing your beekeeping thing 🐝

Thanks to I seen this in your profile !

It’s been a while since I said hi 👋🏻 and introduced myself.

I’m Sam and I live in Brisbane’s Bayside, together with my husband, youngest son. (19yo), 2 mini schnauzers, 6 chooks and Kevin the cockatiel.

The garden and everything I share here is all located on our 866sqm block that we purchased in 2016.

I started a small garden in the backyard in 2018 with a view to grow some of our own food and live a healthier lifestyle.

Previously, I worked in a pretty stressful corporate role, whilst my husband built his business (working crazy hours). We also raised our three kids, and somehow renovated two houses 🤯.

Somehow along the way I thought the best thing to do was leave my corporate role and start my own business, which I did successfully for 4 years before realising I was actually completely burned out and needed a break, so I decided to sell.

If was after the sale of my business I started my plans for a garden to grow food.

The best bit was that it also became a wonderful medicine for all those years of stress and pressure and introduced me to an amazing and supportive community of like minded people as well 🥰.

My garden has changed many times over the last few years and is now something than I never could have imagined at the beginning.

I love sharing what’s going on here, and being inspired by all the other accounts I follow as well.

FINALLY! 💡
I’ve upgraded my teeny tiny grow light to one of these fancy pants ones from
Not 💯 sure I got the right size for my grow tent but the price was what I wanted to spend, and anything is an upgrade to what I was using.
My tomato season is so bad this year I’ve bought this light and a temp/humidity sensor from to see if I can get a better result inside the grow tent I already have set up under my house.
From there I also want to use it for seed starting in the colder months, and maybe even for propagating dahlias, but I’ll probably have to use a humidifier as well for that (which I have for growing mushrooms).
Of course I’ll post pics as I go.

What is up with my dahlias ?
No, it’s not some sort of virus or belated Christmas decoration.
My plants have had a healthy dose of flour this morning.
Why ?
I live with a heap of pests in my garden and don’t use any harmful sprays to control them.
Most of the year the grasshoppers are manageable. We have a resident friendly magpie family (Swoopy Girl and Her Babies), and I can catch the bigger ones and treat the chickens.
BUT when the conditions are just right the front yard has a plague of baby grasshoppers descend and they start to eat everything. All the new growth l,which includes the beginning of flowers and that’s not on.
I read about this flour technique on a vegetable gardening forum. When there isn’t much wind about and ideally when the plants are wet, you apply whatever flour you have to hand quite liberally.
Usually it takes one or two goes before the 🦗 population is back to a normal level and the damage on the plants is reduced.

Just before Christmas I harvested some of my red cabbage.
I was so proud of growing these out and picking the grubs off every morning, but it wasn’t enough. When I started to peel the leaves back there was caterpillars and slugs (which I’ve never seen in my garden) a fair way through. This is why they ended up so small.
Lesson learnt, never grow cabbages again without netting.
It did give me the opportunity to try fermenting them. I wanted to cut it all up and wash it thoroughly.
These little cabbages gave me two jars, one of which I overfilled and it had to discarded (mould grew 😖).
But, the second one is delicious and was ready to eat after a week.
If you want to have a go yourself, I used a simple technique from YouTube channel.

Random photos from the productive garden.
This time of the year everything looks a bit chaotic, js being eaten by something, and a lot are going to seed.
It will continue to get warmer and this will die back, so I’ve learnt not to get too worried about it all being so overgrown.
The wicking beds look like something that’s been abandoned- but really I’m interplanting with stuff that will survive summer and at the same time, letting other stuff go to seed so I can collect and potentially have a go again in early autumn.
In the chicken space I’ve got volunteer pumpkins, nasturtiums and tomatoes. Letting it all happen so that the ground is covered as the loquat trees are taking their time to grow back after a heavy prune.
You may notice a single dahlia in the pics, it’s growing between the gooseberry and a tomato plant.
It’s not staked and I’ve given it no love at all (it’s a very different story in the front yard), yet it’s standing strong and ready to impress me with its first flowers.

Today is a good day ☺️.

✅ Potatoes
✅Tomatoes
✅ Eggs
✅ Honey