Garden Diary

Just a quick one today :)

The Protea is in flower now, the buds started to open over the past week.  I also noted that Arum Lillies in the area are starting to flower.  Ours are in pots and used for cut flowers, because although beautiful they are invasive...  I think this is why ours flower a bit later.

We've also been collecting feijoas for the past couple of weeks and are getting a little sick of feijoa crumble!  Will be freezing anything else we get for use later in the year.

Broad beans still flowering like mad, but so far only a few pods off those.  Dwarf beans not seeming to produce any flowers since the first lot, but could be slug / snail damage.  The peas however have done great and we've lots in the freezer to keep up going.

Rain did for the corn.  2 weeks of rain when the corn was tasseling then silking not so great for pollination it seems. Has not stopped us from picking and eating the unpollinated corn cobs though.  Not as sweet as baby corn would be, but larger and still tasty enough to eat fresh.

For those of you growing indigenous plants in the same area as me, this is a great time to be taking cuttings and increasing your stock.

Beautiful sunny day here at the moment and lots of seedlings popping up everywhere - really makes you appreciate life :)

Garden Diary

After a single day of sun, we're back to mostly dull and rainy. The slugs and snails are loving it, and winter is most definitely on the way!

During last week we planted radish, salad and iceberg lettuce in one of the raised bed and have also sown a green manure in the other. That bed will have corn in it next year, so will benefit from the extra boost.

The salad and iceberg lettuce got munched as soon as the seedlings popped their little heads up, so I've re-sown and put my home-made slug rings round them and also put a tiny sprinkling of slug pellets under the large parlsey next to them.  This should give the new seeds a chance to get a good start.

I do NOT like using slug pellets in the garden.  Partly because I am increasingly unhappy with the use of chemicals, but also because I have young children and cats.  Putting a tiny sprinkling under a thick plant should keep the pellets out of everyone's view (and mouths!).

I was also badgered into planting more silver beet for the kids, so this went in one of their tyre gardens (which was previously peas).  Their other tyre garden is still providing tomatoes, so will leave that to see if the plant dies off from the cold weather or not.

The silver beet seedlings have also met with a slug induced death, so I will try and resow these too and secrete some slug pellets in under the rim of the tyre.

The rhubarb is done for the season I think.  We now have two additional heads having grown through the season, so next year should be a good crop :)

Bush garden at the front benefitted from around 40 barrows of matured mulch and some of the composted mulch was also added to the small garden bed we have there for growing herbs that like lots of light and poor soil.  Yeah, I know this means we'll be improving it a bit, but the soil there is water repellent and acidic, so could do with the compost!

Things are now fully clarified in my brain regarding how I want the garden to look and where plants should go.  The verdict?

Wherever they like!
:)

Mulch - is it really a fire risk?

I've just spent a lovely autumn morning with my girls spreading wheelbarrow, after wheelbarrow, of decayed tree-lopper mulch around the large established trees and shrubs in our front garden.  We also took time to remulch the areas around newer plantings and generally enjoy being in our bush garden.

Whilst doing this, a tradie was working on a new car parking area next door and my girls couldn't resist in engaging him in conversation.  They frankly never stop talking, so I'm glad they found a new target for their endless questions!

The tradie had watched me carting wheelbarrows full of mulch around for about 30 minutes before he said: "You do realise mulch is a fire risk here?"

[sigh]

Garden Diary

Slacking a bit at the moment on the garden front, as there's been so much other stuff going on!

Garden Diary

It's obviously the time of year for aphids!

I managed to rid the broad beans of the black aphids, but the corn now has green corn aphids...

Garden Diary

Peas, dwarf beans and broad beans sown on the 8th Feb began flowering over the past week.

That was 6 weeks from being sown, which is pretty bang on and the plants are very healthy.

Getting to Know Your Soil: Colour

Every soil has it's own combinations of characteristics, that affect the nature of your soil and how it performs.  These characteristics can be broadly grouped into three, inter-connected, groupings:

• Physical
• Chemical
• Biological

Lets Get Physical!

The physical characteristics of your soil are the aspects that you can actually see and feel.  They include it's colour, texture, structure, strength, depth and stoniness.

In this post, we're going to look solely at the colour of your soil.

Soil Profiles

"dark, crumbly with a hint of stickiness,

3000 years young, 

seeks similar for fun and good times!"

Okay, so not perhaps the kind of profile you were expecting... :)

The soil profile is a 3-dimensional section of the soil.  In this, you can detect different layers (the 'horizons'), which are influenced by different factors in soil formation (see the 'Soil: What it is and where it came from' post) and also drainage and management practises.  A soil profile can vary from as little as a few centimetres, to many metres in depth.

The different horizons can be detected by being able to distinguish the separate colours, structure and textures from one to the next.  In theory...

Soil: What it is and where it came from

It has always amazed me how many of us are ignorant of the earth we stand on.

Even gardeners are often confused about where their soil came from, what type it is and how it can affect the plants that they grow.  Many will follow standard instructions on adding sand to clay to help it drain, and lime to sweeten it, without really understanding why they're doing it or the effect these actions may have.

So, to try and increase our knowledge a bit, this is going to be the first of a series of posts designed to give the average Joe (or Wayne if you're an Aussie!), a good working knowledge of soil.

Glyphosate: a revisit

Back in the UK when I was a lowly agri student, the prospect of reducing costs in an agriculture enterprise by being able to happily spray a broad spectrum herbicide, that apparently had no affect on fauna or the soil, and having crops that were resistant to this, was interesting.

I had always been uncomfortable with the use of chemicals, but willing to use them in certain situations, when I could ensure that they were being used as safely as possible.  So, to me, glyphosate was "just another chemical".  One of the many that were used in agriculture.