having to change the water in my tank weekly or fortnightly, the old water is being used as a fertiliser on my plants out the front - lets see if this is any good...
here's the algae I'm trying to get rid of - any fish experts around?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Myrtle - The Crepe Myrtle
You may remember that back on Australia Day, I'd planted Myrtle (http://fbpod.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-arrival.html)
I was a bit worried about Myrtle over the winter months as her leaves dropped and a bare skeleton remained. Did I plant her too late, was she established enough to make it through her first winter alone? Looking around the neighbourhood, I could see her cousins all coming into flower - but not Myrtle
and then! leaves! She's making a beautiful comeback and is looking very healthy
The Veggie Garden
The sun did not shine
It was too wet to play
so I sat and I gardened
on that cold cold wet day
Have planted some more seeds and seedlings today into the garden - it was lightly raining and plants told me they were happy
This year I've planted
- Tomatos seedlings
- Capsicum seedlings (most in the veggie garden but a few in the big pot out the front)
- Eggplant seedlings
- Some more lettuce seeds - I seem to have a lot of success with these straight from seed and being all year, I keep adding more seeds every month or two There's lettuce coming up now that we're eating and some more coming up that are about 4 or so weeks old
- Some zuchinni - Couldn't fit these into the veggie garden, so I've put them inthe the garden under the bedroom window - will have to remember to give them water now though!
- Some more leek seeds - there were some already growing and about 10cm tall, but a very keen pair of gardeners kindly went out and weeded for me the other day - I found the remaining about half a dozen plants and transplanted to a safer area
- Was also going to plant some carrot seeds but ran out of time
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Lawn Corer
The lawn out the back and in spots out the front is looking pretty daggy - A few weeks back I'd had to spray for bindiis - (last year I'd handpicked them, but this seems to have made them come back with force this year!) so this, coupled with the constant dog trampling and also unloading pavers on a muddy, muddy day have caused it to be very compacted.
Put all this together and you get a pretty crappy looking lawn
So... I've bought a lawn corer - What's a lawn coring? It's a way of aerating the lawn by pulling up "plugs" of compacted dirt. This leaves lots of holes about as thick as your thumb but after a bit, the soil in the area can expand and hence allows more air into the soil and to the roots of the lawn
I was looking at hiring a big motorised one and also thought about welding some bits of pipe to some old wheel rims and driving around the yard. Lisa wouldn't let me do the latter and the former was still quite pricey - so I bought a hand or foot powered one from bunnings for about $50
So after a day of using this thing, my leg is very sore and the yard is quite holey. I've tackled this fro ma few angles too - Coring is only the first step
I've also thatched (used the metal rake to get rid of the dead under growth) and cut the lawn a bit lower than I'd normally have done (more so to try and pickup the remaining loose thatch)
The future step will eventually be to start adding soil a few centimeters at a time to try and build back the top soil. I'd noticed in areas while coring that the top soil is only a few cm deep. I've bought some lawn seed from Bunnings and will try and sprinkle across some barer patches and rope this off from the dogs for a while - oh and also a bag of lawn fertiliser
lets hope it works!
Put all this together and you get a pretty crappy looking lawn
So... I've bought a lawn corer - What's a lawn coring? It's a way of aerating the lawn by pulling up "plugs" of compacted dirt. This leaves lots of holes about as thick as your thumb but after a bit, the soil in the area can expand and hence allows more air into the soil and to the roots of the lawn
I was looking at hiring a big motorised one and also thought about welding some bits of pipe to some old wheel rims and driving around the yard. Lisa wouldn't let me do the latter and the former was still quite pricey - so I bought a hand or foot powered one from bunnings for about $50
So after a day of using this thing, my leg is very sore and the yard is quite holey. I've tackled this fro ma few angles too - Coring is only the first step
I've also thatched (used the metal rake to get rid of the dead under growth) and cut the lawn a bit lower than I'd normally have done (more so to try and pickup the remaining loose thatch)
The future step will eventually be to start adding soil a few centimeters at a time to try and build back the top soil. I'd noticed in areas while coring that the top soil is only a few cm deep. I've bought some lawn seed from Bunnings and will try and sprinkle across some barer patches and rope this off from the dogs for a while - oh and also a bag of lawn fertiliser
lets hope it works!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Autumn
OK - so it shows how long since the last update when the title is the season "Autumn" but I've been busy in the garden and lazy on the puter...
Well actually Lily and I have been busy in the garden... Lily now comes out every morning and diligently waters all the plants and feeds the animals - I'd like to say that she's enthralled by the sight of emerging seedlings and seeing her efforts result in beautiful flowers and food on the table - but really she's quite happy just to be making a mess with the water in the mornings and yelling "go get it!" to the dogs with a gleeful chuckle after she pours their kibble into the feed bowls - She does enjoy giving the flowers a good 'ol sniff though
The front veggie garden has been dug up and and had some compost and blood and bone turned into it - the compost is from the grass clippings and leaf litter that has been getting put across the back of the garden to keep the grass off the fence and to act as a bit of a path. Apparently, as this sort of mulch decomposes (well actually when wood chips decompose...), it draws nitrogen from the soil , hence adding blood and bone replaces this and keeps things happily balanced - that's the theory!
Anyway, out the front, Lily and I have planted lots of winter veggie seeds - this was done about 2 weeks ago - say 10/5 (I'll update my calendar) - veggies in the ground from memory are lettuce, silverbeet, broccoli, cabbage and possibly some other similarly boring winter veggies - yes, the guarding part is fun, but the range of winter veggies falls very short of the exciting and flavoursome summer crops!
Out the back and under the roses, the butternut pumpkin continues its battle - seemed we'd only get 1 pumpkin of this as the vine isn't agreeing to well to the colder weather, but some rain a few weeks back saw a flush of female flowers, and with a bit of help from father farmer brown nature, 2 more pumpkins now seem to be taking quite well - fingers crossed!
The roses have had their time in the sun - The standards have all had reasonable prunings and are no slowing down - Yes, it is a bit early as they should be pruned after the last frost but they were in desperate need of some taming, especially the strong one which had branches about 3 times as long as the main stem!
Some action in the garden though! Some nasturtiums that were kindly given by Sandra have been planted under the crab apple trees - these appear to be taking well and already have 4 flowers! Also starting to flower are the zygo-cactus which are all budded up and ready to bloom - will post some photos soon once these are all up and going!
Another winter chore yet to be done is spraying of the lawn - Seems to be alot of garbage growing through this year- much too much for dealing with by hand as was done last year with good results - seems the lack of spray last year has given the dormant weed and seed a chance to grow- oh well, at least its green!
So anyway - that's about it for the moment - next post will have some exciting pictures - I promise!
Well actually Lily and I have been busy in the garden... Lily now comes out every morning and diligently waters all the plants and feeds the animals - I'd like to say that she's enthralled by the sight of emerging seedlings and seeing her efforts result in beautiful flowers and food on the table - but really she's quite happy just to be making a mess with the water in the mornings and yelling "go get it!" to the dogs with a gleeful chuckle after she pours their kibble into the feed bowls - She does enjoy giving the flowers a good 'ol sniff though
The front veggie garden has been dug up and and had some compost and blood and bone turned into it - the compost is from the grass clippings and leaf litter that has been getting put across the back of the garden to keep the grass off the fence and to act as a bit of a path. Apparently, as this sort of mulch decomposes (well actually when wood chips decompose...), it draws nitrogen from the soil , hence adding blood and bone replaces this and keeps things happily balanced - that's the theory!
Anyway, out the front, Lily and I have planted lots of winter veggie seeds - this was done about 2 weeks ago - say 10/5 (I'll update my calendar) - veggies in the ground from memory are lettuce, silverbeet, broccoli, cabbage and possibly some other similarly boring winter veggies - yes, the guarding part is fun, but the range of winter veggies falls very short of the exciting and flavoursome summer crops!
Out the back and under the roses, the butternut pumpkin continues its battle - seemed we'd only get 1 pumpkin of this as the vine isn't agreeing to well to the colder weather, but some rain a few weeks back saw a flush of female flowers, and with a bit of help from father farmer brown nature, 2 more pumpkins now seem to be taking quite well - fingers crossed!
The roses have had their time in the sun - The standards have all had reasonable prunings and are no slowing down - Yes, it is a bit early as they should be pruned after the last frost but they were in desperate need of some taming, especially the strong one which had branches about 3 times as long as the main stem!
Some action in the garden though! Some nasturtiums that were kindly given by Sandra have been planted under the crab apple trees - these appear to be taking well and already have 4 flowers! Also starting to flower are the zygo-cactus which are all budded up and ready to bloom - will post some photos soon once these are all up and going!
Another winter chore yet to be done is spraying of the lawn - Seems to be alot of garbage growing through this year- much too much for dealing with by hand as was done last year with good results - seems the lack of spray last year has given the dormant weed and seed a chance to grow- oh well, at least its green!
So anyway - that's about it for the moment - next post will have some exciting pictures - I promise!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
What's been happening?!
OK.... so the blog hasn't been updated for some time now - I've been slack and the garden has been dry and rather un-eventful
With some recent rain though, it's been making a come back. The roses are all out in bloom and the grass is starting to turn wild
Most interesting though is the unexpected addition to the back rose garden. After mulching very thickly some tiny little plants started to emerge. They appeared to be melon or pumpkin. They continued to grow and I watched on - wondering....
The growth continued and apart from odd watering and some minor taming of the vine, it's been left mostly alone.
Seems there are 2 plants there. One MIGHT be a watermelon??? This only has 1 fruit so far
The other one is a butternut pumpkin. This currently has 1 large pumpkin (about 20cm) and lots of smaller ones emerging - 1 cute one if less then half the size of my pinky fingernail!
so there you go - I've been wondering how the seed got in there and have come to accept they must have been from the veggie compost I'd added before putting the tree mulch across the top
Here are some pictures
Monday, January 26, 2009
A New Arrival!
There's been a new arrival in the garden today - A Crepe Myrtle Lagerstoemia Miami (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/7905/)
This went out on the front corner in preparation of the future "one day" garden
The soil was rock hard and it took a fair amount of effort to dig the hole with just a shovel. I ended up digging about 3 to 4 times the size of the pot and filled the hole with water a few times to give it a good soaking. It took a good hour or so for the water in the hole to drain - not a good sign of my soil quality!
I also added some blood and bone and water crystals to the base of the hole... Fingers crossed!
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