Water Chestnuts

Last year I planted 2water chestnuts in a bath and harvested 4 kg's of beautiful crunchy water chestnuts.

Harvested chestnuts are stored in water, in an ice cream container, in the fridge. They will last in the fridge for ages.

I kept pulling mine out and taking them to the market. All that exposure to the light got them started and they sprouted. So I planted them up and kept them in a poly styrene box with the seedlings. No drain holes in the box.

I only take about 18 to the market at a time......and we are running out of time for this season.

This year I prepared 3 baths and planted them up.

 Then I looked at how many plants I still had. They were a bit hard to promote during the drought given that we were not supposed to use water to fill fish ponds etc.

I decided to make and plant a few trenches in our old irrigation channel. The ground had to cleared of all it's giant weeds and slightly widened to take advantage of the width of the plastic. The ground was as hard as concrete as it has not been used for irrigation for about 20 years.

I collected cow dung from the other side of the farm....the dung beetles have been working too hard as most of the pats were just outer shell crusts of cow poo....Takes ages to fill a chook bag with the shells of pats.
I did notice a little black beetle swimming around in the pond and wondered if dung beetles can swim?
A frog had moved in on day one. There is a bit of a frog population explosion at the moment due to the above average rainfall. They are leaping about all over the place.
I think I have left my run a little late for this season....better late than never was my motto on the day.
There is still the entire autumn for some growing. Time will tell. I will keep you posted.