Just went for my first solo drive after passing the driving test this week. I thought it only appropriate the drive should be to go and get new plants :) I went to Polhmans Nursery-braving the motorway there and back. And turned out I had points on my customer card so got the plants for free! Shane's been putting up a carport behind the shed…creating more room in the shed for projects-and motorbikes. I'll be happy when I can park the Jimny in the carport instead-I so do not have the coordination to jump up and grab hold of the roller door to pull it down. I've resorted to getting a step ladder. That and I need more practice lining the car up for parking properly ;)
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How slack have I been keeping this updated! I've been a bit slack in the garden too actually. But with a couple of long weekends I finally started getting caught up on the gardening chores. I started weeding the vege beds, around the herbs especially. I was pleased to find seeds from herbs that were dying back had started sprouting, hopefully these will fill in the spaces now the weeds are gone. I cleared out the rest of the watermelon vine. Shane was wrong and the fruit flies could get through the tough skin-they'd burrowed a big hole in one side of a melon. When I went to pick it up it imploded-thankfully I had a bag over it so didn't have to look at any of the grubs. We got some peas, spinach and rocket seedlings to go in this bed. Stuff that hopefully won't interest fruit fly. The carrot seeds are growing well-I've been thinning them out like recommended. I decided to leave the weeds in this bed, as some critter is still nibbling and the weeds provide some cover. The weeds have grown much faster than the carrots though-so not sure i'll leave them. We pulled out our first carrot-and it was twisted! What's with us getting twisty carrots-I made sure the soil was nice and loose with nothing to impede growth. The silverbeet and bokchoy seedlings have grown lots and we've been able to start using them. So far they haven't been attacked by caterpillars, but I might start some preventative spraying just to be sure. I gave all the citrus a dose of fertiliser, the leaves were starting to yellow again. We still have no idea what's wrong with the mandarin, more and more branches are dying off. We're considering just removing the whole tree in case it's some sort of disease-but apart from the dieback, there's no sign of any. I removed the dead branches and will see how it does the next few weeks with the fertiliser. The sweet potato vines are still going strong. Shane showed me where you can see the big sweet potato bed from the Google Earth satellite image before zooming it in. It just keeps spreading. I thought it was too early, but we've been getting blossoms on our apple and peach trees-I thought blossoms were meant to come in Spring. I don't mind when they come as long as they still produce fruit. The roses have been growing really well too-all flowering. I've been having to keep up the spray for black spot, and I'll need to get in and give the beds a weed. This weekend just gone I was staking them up-they were getting tall and trailing over the paths. I was also having to untangle the climbing rose and the passionfruit-thought maybe getting some arches to put over the path between each of their fences could look nice. We've been getting plenty of passionfruit off the vines-even with sharing them with the cockatoos. Our blueberry plants have started producing blueberries too-I gave them a dose to add more acidity to the soil-so hopefully we'll get good fruit. Maybe we should get some more blueberry plants, they are nice looking when not fruiting, and if we had more I might get enough fruit to make jam. Out front the bottlebrush have been flowering. My favourite is the light pink/cream one. The snowflake we pruned back at the ground have also grown well and are really bushy. They have screened the front-would be the perfect hedge if they didn't lose all their leaves at winter!
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"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." William Shakespeare Archives
February 2017
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