and then it rained all day

yay

the week in review

increased precipitation from the sky meant less time in the plot

Kids pulled out some sunflowers and made all sorts of weapons tools out of them
A few remain and have been earmarked for the changing-colour-experiment

the weeds grew
it all looks a bit scraggly
I need to take a walk down there each day

need to pull out spent beans and lettuces and silverbeet
need to deal to the monsters leaving lace patterns in green leaves
need to plant out some more seedlings
need to pull out and reposition some strawberry runners so we can use the path

basically need to spend a few hours down there
coz the work doesn’t do itself

unprincipled

racing through the supermarket at breakneck speed yesterday I grabbed two boxes of poisonous green pellets that should ensure my newly-planted brassica collection doesn’t turn into a sacrifical lamb

as we rounded the bathroom cleaners corner I wondered what natural alternative there is (besides handpicking and squashing)

but for now, green poison it is

it’s a miracle

the powdery mildew is almost gone……never mind giving it a week to see what would happen….when I went out to water just a few hours later the leaves were mostly green

afternoon

forgot to mention we also remade our paths this morning…….they’re actually just pavers that got chucked randomly onto the bare garden patch at the end of a very long day months ago, but they seemed to be more or less in an OK position, except that the gaps in between them have been increasing as we’ve walked on them (we did not dig out earth and pack it down and arrange them tightly - as I say, we chucked). So I did some remedial pull-them-back-together work and now we have tidy paths again. Yes, they will move apart, and yes I could *not have to* do this again if I did it properly the first time (see, Mum, I did listen to you, not that you read my blog!), but I couldn’t be bothered have hopes that this is merely a temporary garden and that one day I’ll have a big permaculture circle with real paths that I dig and stuff with sawdust, so this one doesn’t really matter. Anyway, it’s done.

Plants with big leaves that got covered with powdery mildew while we were away have been sprayed with water and detergent. I read somewhere that the mildew doesn’t like water (who woulda thought eh?) and that it sticks to the plants better with some detergent (high school science would confirm that hypothesis, so I assumed the first one was true too….and to be fair, the plants were enveloped while there was no daily watering so the evidence does start to stack up). We’ll see if this will be enough to kill it or if I’ll have to prematurely remove the plants from the garden - they are totally white, even the stalks, so I don’t want it infecting everything else.

While I had the sprayer out I bokashi-ed as well. A good splosh of bokashi juice to however much water the sprayer held.
How useful will that information be next year?

Counted the Chinese Cabbage…….it really looked more than a couple of dozen. Yes, double that. We won’t get skurvy this winter.

Planted out even more silverbeet.
We might turn green this winter.

Spinach is still waiting to grow a bit more!

the garden doesn’t go on holiday

We went away Thursday to Sunday. Not that long really, but so much happened in the garden.

For a start, it dried out and lots of plants are tinged yellow. Makes me realise my watering fanaticism has been justified (most conscientious mothers would sit with their family while eating a it’s-very-late-and-we-just-got-home dinner….this one couldn’t help but notice the light was fast dimming and so she excused herself and sprayed life-giving water around…..eventually in the dark).

The sunflowers are bowing away from the tall central one in an outward circle – a bit Joseph-ish! (and a couple fell right over – but with six heads on one stalk it’s no wonder).

The potato greens shot up. Not having enough compost or dirt to mound up, J11 mowed the lawns this morning and used the clippings (is that OK or will it kill them?).

The newly-planted seedlings (yes, I was still planting the morning we left – gifted lettuces and some Chinese Cabbage) survived.

And everything was much bigger. 

 

This morning’s pressing task was not to commence our new read-aloud novel or to hang out the gazillion loads of washing (although we’ve done as many as will fit on our clothes horses)……we got stuck in to the garden. Of course. Pulled weeds. Pulled spent plants. Realised leaving the self-sown tomatoes to *do their thing* resulted in a huge crop of tomatoes, but at the expense of an entire patch of garden and so we pulled them out too. Tried staking them, but it was too late. We will have a bonus crop of green tomato chutney and the broccoli seedlings they were condemning sheltering will now have access to sunlight.

Planted HOMEMADE Chinese Cabbage seedlings. A couple of dozen I think.
Brussel Sprouts ready to go after lunch.

they ain’t called russian skyscraper for nothing, you know!

Sunday morning

in the rain

wearing a white dressing gown

planting gifted cucumber seedlings so they would make the most of the forecast-for-the-whole-day-gently-falling-drizzle

I think I’m hooked.

peas, snowpeas and butter beans

all planted out

with supports

I keep doing these things and thinking, “It’s really not that tricky, is it?”

A year ago I wasn’t growing seeds from scratch and it *seemed* a big idea in my head, but when you take baby steps along the way, you gather momentum and you start running to catch up with those ideas, because they no longer seem too big.

Remembering to spread around (and even learning to make) seaweedy brews still seems a long way off, but it’s only a matter of time!

And I can’t wait to get my hands on a lunar calendar - but I’d better dig the dirt out from under my nails before I go to the library.

sweet

we ate our sweetcorn crop last night

15 seeds planted (I only know that because J12 planted them and he remembers Things Like That)

12 germinated

11 got corn, one got two ears

12 corn cobs

one meal

(and a photo from last year!)