Vege Garden Update

Well I am feeling a bit happy this morning - my pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber, daisies and poppies have mostly germinated.  I expect within another week the rest of the seeds will have also germinated.  My carrot seeds look like they are finally doing something also.  And I have 1 healthy capsicum plant that I have moved out of the seed tray and into the garden bed.  The broccoli seedlings look a bit sick, but I have put them in the big bed too.  Shame the tomato seeds don't look like doing anything.  Maybe they take longer to start.

Now I just have to remember to get out each day and give them all a drink!

The rain we have had over the past 2 weeks has  moved the straw over the potting mix to create a nice bit of mulch - I like that.

gardening

Had another storm last night - lightening, thunder, the works.  Largest dog was running around the house like a luantic - he hates loud noises!  Lying in bed listening to the rain pelt down I wondered how my freshly planted seeds were going - would they get washed away; would the potting mix be pushed around and leave the seeds to air; would nothing happen?

Checked them this morning - it seems the rain has pushed the potting mix into the straw.  I haven't gone digging through it yet to see what has actually happened - a bit wet still - but that is on the agenda when the rain stops.

I think I have decided what to use as an edge around the new beds.  Hubby wanted me to use treated pine sleepers - cheap and will not rot away.  After some investigation that will NOT be happening - they are still treated with copper arsenate - no way am I having that stuff near my vege gardens.  So I have decided on a plastic bordering product that comes in 5m and 10m rolls.  I'll get the green one, I think, that is 20cm high, maybe 10m of it.  Not sure how it stays upright - I presume some sort of spike goes into it at the back.  If that's the case I will have to watch where I put the spikes - we have under ground sprinklers in the front grass.  I'm sure hubby will not like me puncturing those lines.  What I don't use out the front I can use to make a taller garden bed out the back for the Sunflowers.  May even get a 5m roll for the garden bed down the side.......

Vege Garden Update

This morning, I was up relatively early, so I finished filling up the new vege garden beds out the front.  By midday they were all full, had to go get more manure and straw though.  I  now have handfuls of potting mix in little spots in each bed with Pumpkin, Zucchini, Cucumber, Everlasting Daisies and Poppies in the mix.

I even labelled 2 of the beds with nice ceramic plant labels - hopefully no will steal these.

Here's the beds:

And here are some of the flowers in other parts of our front yard:

I think we may need to weed under those ones....

vege garden update

Saturday night was really windy.  Things were blowing around all over the yard.  I thought I would lose my pea seeds that I had left outside, it was that windy.

Pea seeds were just where I left them when I checked the side way in the morning - phew!  The only 'damage' was my mini glasshouse was tipped over and on the ground and the plastic cover over the cat grass seeds had blown off.  So no realy damage to speak off.  A few sheets of paper from the one new bed that did not get the lucerne/manure/straw treatment had blown out too.

So I put the paper back in and covered them with the lucerne.  It was rather wet lucerne and had started to decay in parts - is this a good thing? - who knows.  I also fixed up the mini glasshouse (it's plastic btw), put the cat grass into it and put some seeds into the peat pellets that had fallen out of it; then watered the whole lot.  So now I have tomato seeds in 4 peat pellets, capsicum in another 4 and broccoli in the last 4.  And I put the glasshouse on the ground...

Yesterday Hubby was mowing the front lawn.  He commented to me that I had made it very hard for him to do that.  Like duhhh.  I told him, yes I know that and the plan is to put a barrier of some sort - wood, bricks,etc - across in front of the new beds for him to mow up to and then I was going to mulch around the beds.  He obviously thinks I did not think of the grass getting mowed!!  But I noticed, apart from  the smell of the wet lucerne, a lot of flies buzzing around the new beds.  I think I may have to set up a fly trap.

Vege Garden

Just spent the last 2 1/2 hours putting together 4 metal garden beds, and starting to set up a no-dig garden in each of them.  The beds went together quite easily - all I needed was a screwdriver; easy to find in this house.

I ran out of lucerne hay, manure and straw for the beds.  Will have to get 1 more lucerne bail, another 2 bags of manure and 2 more straw pallets.  Then I need to figure out what I am going to put around the beds to cover up the grass that is there - I have put these on my front lawn!  I may get a large pallet of straw and scatter that around thickly, though that may cause problems with other things growing from the straw seeds.

So when they are full with hay, etc. I am going to plant broccoli, capsicum, pumpkin, cucumber, zucchini, maybe some poppies or native everlasting daisies just to make the beds 'look nice'.

Sunday's plan go pushed to Monday - sorted out 4 pots and planted some carrot seeds in one of them.  Pulled out most of the weeds down the sideway - I just left them on the garden bed to break down.  I still want to raise that bed up a bit for some more veges.

This morning before starting on the new garden beds, I put potting mix into 3 more pots.  These pots have rods and wheely things to make towers.  In 2 of these I put some sugar snap peas, 8 seeds in all.  So hopefull;y we will have some peas to eat over summer.  If they germinate well I will seriously think about putting in some more.  I also watered some jiffy peat pellets so I can start some toamato seeds for the other tower pot.

I'm off to have a shower - I smell like manure!