Numero Uno

Hi All,

Cheers to everyone that took the time to trek here to the new incarnation of Serendipity Farm in a blog. It’s starting to feel a bit like Dr. Who around here with all of the swapping and changing bodies. Sanctuary is a lot like a Tardis so I suppose its easy to draw that conclusion. Well here we are back where it all started at WordPress.com all over again. Why? Well we talked about it and decided that as neither of us have decided to embrace a career in web design and so springing for another (much more expensive) year of hosting seemed a bit of a waste of money to be honest when there was a free blog hosting platform that I could utilise to share what we are doing here on Serendipity Farm with whoever was interested.

Welcome to Serendipity Farm where even the gutters have trees…

What can you expect here? Well we have decided to plant lots of edibles so far this year. We have planted Dragon fruit (one of the cuttings is sprouting!), lychees, tropical paw-paw’s and recently I found the remains of some pink gooseberries that I had been given ages ago in the fridge. We won’t talk about what kind of a state they were in (back of the fridge syndrome) but needless to say they were ladled out into some potting mix and fingers crossed there were enough seeds left, amidst all of that mould, to have a go at growing them from seed.

I have harvested this potato seed pod and am going to have to work out what to do with it now.

I am most interested in growing edibles from seed and will be pursuing it in earnest this year. I am going to see if I can get hold of all sorts of unusual things as I want to see if I can grow them and if they will adapt to our climate here in Northern Tasmania. The top secret hush-hush project that will see Sanctuary completely renovated over the winter period and running a completely new and exciting series of permaculture systems in the Spring, Summer period of 2016-2017 is about to get started.

This avocado seedling, that grew from an ancient compost heap, now has a little brother growing close to it as well as a neighbour about a metre away. I have been reading Jackie French’s book “Backyard Self-Sufficiency” that Stevie-boy bought for me recently, and in it, she says that you can grow avocado trees a metre apart and keep them clipped as an edible tall hedge!

It’s cooling down nicely here and after Steve and I lay waste to the front acre over the next week or so, we are going to start on the project. We have almost a month off from TAFE, thanks to a fortuitous conglomeration of circumstances and public holidays this year, and we are going to make the most of it before what is promising to be a very cold winter settles over us.

This is what’s known as a Chinese lucky (aka money) plant (Pilea peperomioides). I got it from TAFE years ago when a glasshouse renovation was being undertaken as a tiny piece of discarded plant. As you can see, it grows like topsy and has emerged from every hole in this pot. I will divide them all up and start them in new pots of their own. You can never have enough Chinese luck, or money in my opinion 😉

I will be sharing all of the exciting things that we are about to do with you all and again, thank you to my dear constant readers who have followed me through thick and thin. Hopefully this will be the last move for a few years and “welcome to the new blog” 🙂

Whilst these raspberries are long gone (as are the rats that ate them…) there are still a few stray raspberries on the shrubs as well as a crazy branch of our cherry tree that thinks it’s spring and has flowered and set fruit at the beginning of autumn.