A busy day of disaster!

Well no photo's again today... I got up to my potato bed being dug our along with my tatsoi and bok choy :-( .  Naughty dogs!  So Brandy harvested half a bucket of small Ruby Lou potatoes. I think they may become next years seed potatoes.

I found my hydroponics run dry again so cleared out some roots, filled it up and removed the thyme and planted it into the garden... which revealed another problem... SLUGS!  Ugh! I guess that explains a bit!  I guess I should not have been surprised though... I found them in the worm farm which I take the water from to fill the hydroponics (so technically vermiponics at time.) So for now I have just put multiguard (iron based) slug pellets around where I planted the thyme.  Right next to the Cherry tree that finally has a set of leaves woo hooo!!!  As does the ginger right next door. :-)  I love spring.  It is just so exciting.

So now I have emptied the bottom two pipes and I am going to replace the little pond with a 220L barrel and probably pull around some of the shelves and set up some more grow beds and maybe add some fish.

I then used the excess coir / potting mix from the destroyed vege beds and filled the wicking pot for the grapevine.  It got popped in with lots of organic fertilisers.  I hope it does well and that is one more job off my list!  Grapes here we come :-D

I checked on our newly moved curry leaf tree and she has sent out new leaves so hopefully that is a good sign! :-)  I really hope she thrives in her permanent home.

There's currently a constant flow of strawberries, cape gooseberries and herbs into the house.  The boys seem to have overdosed on cape gooseberries so I am either going to try drying or jamming them.

I gave my new worm farm some residents today... I hope they like it!  There are so many worms in the original worm farm that we definitely needed an expansion.  So twice the home hopefully twice the production ;-)

Happy Gardening *hugs*
Sarah

An outing and a visitor brought carnage!

Dear Hubby took me shopping today to Bunnings *swoon*... so I could get two brackets to sure up the  new arches and a roll of corrugated drainage pipe to go into my wicking pots for the trees.  We also stopped at the bottle shop to get a beautiful bottle of ... Swan Draught *chuckle* fear not!  It is not for us but for our slugs and snails that have been extremely busy pruning my plants.  It seems we should have got several other bottles as I ran out after filling the first 6 traps!

On our return I walked out the back to set a cup of beer in the worm farm for the slugs that have decided to squat in there I came upon carnage... pipe fittings; hydroton (round expanded clay balls); pipes and mess all up the back corner... and two very, very excited dogs.  Well I followed Rex who made it quite plain he had found something... I am actually quite relieved this little bobtail was whole and unharmed but probably had several nose prints on his back as the dogs investigated his obviously interesting odour!  

Ice-cream container to the rescue and a quick walk out the front and this lil garden buddy got to go explore under the cape gooseberry bush... so I guess its now the season I better start wearing shoes in the garden as the snakes will start coming out of the conservation land!  

Now I know that technically I should not harvest my rhubarb this year however it was so crowded at the top of the fence I decided I better thin it out and taste test... yet to taste but so exciting.  So Strawberries from my garden (big ones) and hydroponics (little ones), cape gooseberries, broad beans and snow peas. Not a big harvest but every little bit helps :-D

I enjoyed my afternoon watering with seasol and aquasol... hoping this is the pick me up some of my plants need to survive the onslaught of the never ending caterpillars, slugs and snails.  Anyway that's it from me tonight..

Happy Gardening!

*hugs*
Sarah