Child of the Planet

I thought this zucchini plant had 'done it's dash' for the summer. Look at the base of the stem... keep looking, right down the bottom of the photo... A tiny shoot appeared during the week. I chopped off the old stalk today and I hope shoot continues growing.

Perseverance, research, and bloody mindedness. All useful. Some plantings have come easy to me in the garden. Such as tomatoes, zucs, garlic, cucumbers. Other things I struggle with.... This blueberry plant is into its third summer and I think it might pull through. There are some green shoots adding bulk to the canopy. Peas again! I have no idea what's killing them. I have a few surviving plants and hope to get some seed off them this year. Try again in 2019. After several years of planting seed, I've got a few basil plants growing. I planted four packets of assorted seeds but only a few have survived. I give the plants a quick squirt with the BT when I’m doing the toms. Now that the garden is becoming established, life is a series of small victories This capsicum is colouring, hidden away in the bottom of the plant. Up till now I’ve had to make do with green immature bug riddled fruit. I guess gardening is all about perseverance, research,...

I go away for a week and they go to 'def con Triffid'! Glad the weather has warned up and things are beginning to ripen. All the green fruit was causing the stakes to 'pisa'.

During the week, the local waste management folk released a load of damaged wheeli bins to the public. For free! I had to hunt through a stinky pile, but some of them were hardly damaged with intact wheels, lids, and basically water tight. Double, triple, I dunno whatever the numbers are, I can move about heaps more mulch in the wheeli bin Rain barrel Tool caddy (no more forgetting a tool and making extra trips). Mobile worm farm, comfrey tea brew, the uses are endless. I even scored a bonus pair of underpants!

The thing about gardening, is that you never know what the environment is going to throw at you. A problem arises, you fix it, and learn something while you're doing it. I don’t know that you can ever have everything ‘under control’. This year I thought I had tomatoes 'sussed'. A bumper crop was packing out the raised gardens, Then a few holes started appearing in leaves. 'not a prob' I thought. Like last year, must be a couple of caterpillars lurking amongst the leaves. This week holy armageddon was unleashed up at one end of the bed. I could almost hear the munching rising up from the plants. Day by day, it was definitely working its way down the lenght of the garden. Up until now, I’ve been squash’n them between fingertips. One at a time, search and destroy. In the past I’d feel a bit sorry for them, as some would pop fully formed, straight out of their skins. Last week I was over it. After the last couple of years of battle I’m immune to empat...

The zucchini and cucumber are drinking up the sun and rain and are fruiting like mad. As a response to the explosion, I’ve made piccalilli for the first time. The idea to make this condiment came to me after I had decided I was bored with making zucchini fritters, zucchini omelette, zucchini chips, zucchini crustless quiche, etc. The numbers of bottled cucumbers were advancing across the shelf so I needed a new spin.  There is a half full jar of the commercial piccalilli sitting in the fridge. Maybe like mayonnaise, I can rid myself of another store bought product? I harvested a large zuc that was making the bolt to marrow status, clipped a couple of cucumbers, and found a few capcicums that had survived the catapillers.    After the storms we had this month, I noticed several posts on Facebook from people who had lost tomato plants, and now had a heap of green tomatoes that they had to dispose of. For my part, I've lost a couple of plants to stem rot. ...

A few years back I started out with a compost pile out in the front garden. It's job was to feed the new raised gardens I had installed. It was almost two by two by two meters square and the photo on the right is it’s remains. The spot where it lived (it was literally alive) is going to be a third raised bed, so I started a new compost heap. This is perched on the top of a slope where the backyard gently falls into the neighbours property. Friends who can’t compost and a local gardener drop off their green waste at my place and I incorporated this material into the heap. As green waste rolled in this became two, and a third started to form between a couple of the apple trees. These mounds proved to be inconvenient when I decided to plant a windbreak of akie akie along the fence. This corner of the yard is getting a bit crowded. When I uncovered an old feed bag I had stored in the wood shed, I thought that it was time to build something a bit more permanent and tidy. ...