War in My Vege Garden

 I'm in a war with vermin. 

Every time I walk into my garden, several blackbirds fly out. They are getting into the netting through small holes and having a field day.

I have had to replant many of my pea plants and three or four tomatoes. I found the husks of my sunflower seeds and no signs of plants. I have had to buy more plants and seeds to replace the damaged and missing ones. 

Over the weekend, my replacement cucumber suddenly died. It had been growing beautifully for two weeks, then overnight went greyish and fell over.

I questioned everything I had done. I thought the previous one had suffered wind damage so this one was well protected from the wind. It got plenty of sun and I was careful to water the soil and not the leaves. I put slug and snail bait around it. Maybe there was something wrong with the soil? But surely that would have shown up straightaway. 

The next day it was gone completely and there was a small hole where it had been. A tomato plant that had been nearly a foot tall and starting to flower was also missing. I picked up the next tomato plant from the path and replanted it in its spot. 

My peas have had their growing tips trimmed off. Where I'd had a 100% hit rate from my seed, I suddenly found gaps. 

I made windchimes and a rough scarecrow and noisemakers. I fixed up the bigger holes in the netting. I tried leaving a patch of soft turned over soil for them to play in. 

Yesterday, I saw a small rabbit running out of my garden as I went in. 

Today I found devastation in my brassica patch. I also found the hole the rabbit had gotten in through and blocked it up.

It's getting hard to stick to the concept I wanted in this garden. I feel like it's going to turn into a fortress rather than a fun peaceful garden. 

Growing Potatoes

 I've always heard lots of stories about growing potatoes. I'm told my grandfather grew them in 44 gallon drums and had to either chip them out carefully or cut the drum because he was so successful. 

But there are so many stories and different ways of doing it. They need a lot of water, but water sparingly or they'll rot in the ground. Plant potatoes to prepare a plot for future gardens, but not anywhere where you're going to want anything else because they will keep coming back forever. Cover them completely when you mound them up but leave some leaf tips above ground. 

A few years ago I tried growing them in tyres. As it grows, you fill up the tyre and then add another. When you're ready to harvest, tip your tyre pile over and pick up the potatoes. It worked beautifully. 

Dad and Hubby weren't convinced, so the year of the super garden we had both tyres and traditional rows that got mounded up. There were more potatoes in the mounds but they were mostly very small, think golf ball sized. In the tyres, they grew to easily fist-sized and bigger, but there were fewer of them. We still got an excellent crop and didn't need to buy potatoes for most of the year. We also kept Mum and Dad in potatoes. 

I'm doing tyres again this year. Mostly, I'm finding where potatoes are popping up from previous years crops and putting a tyre on top. Some are taking off and some are slower. 

I'm filling the tyres with layers of grass clippings, manure, leaf litter and wood mulch. 

I am curious to see how high I can get some of them before they start flowering. 

California Thistle in My Vege Garden

 When I wrote this morning about clearing the last patch of my garden and how long and slow it would be, I neglected to mention all the California Thistle in there.

Right now, as I'm spending I don't know how long picking thistles out of the soft parts of my hands, that is feeling like quite a big omission. 

On the surface, California Thistle is easy to get rid of. All its spreadability lies in the root system. What looks like hundreds and thousands of plants spread over a patch is actually only one plant. Cut off everything at ground level and it will die. Seeds are not viable, they're a distraction. 

However, in a patch like this, growing in and around the flowering quince that I'm leaving to cut tomorrow, taking it out at ground level is a lot more difficult. 

I've found that a gentle tug on the stem pulls out that stem plus some rootlets, so I've been doing it that way. I'm having to go into it by feel and there's a whole lot of last year's dead and dried stems lying around ready to stab unsuspecting fingers. 

I would normally be wearing gloves for this, but I rather foolishly (and for the first time) left my gloves in the garden last night and it rained. 

I will get there but I'm swearing a lot about it right now. 

My Netted Vege Garden

 After realising that blackbirds were responsible for damage in my garden, I was rather upset. It wasn't helped by the plants they have just pulled out and broken. I've had to replant several peas, tomatoes and marigolds. 

I did the bare minimum in my garden for about a week. What was the point? The gobshite blackbirds were just going to trash it anyway. 

But in the back of my mind, I was thinking of solutions and working through the pros and cons for each. 

I could make a scarecrow, but for how long would that be effective? Would windchimes make a difference? What about a sparkly wind spinner thing?

I've made windchimes out of some old wheel braces and car jack parts, but finding somewhere high enough and strong enough to hang it is waiting on Hubby. It's currently hanging in a nearby tree, but doesn't get enough wind there to ring often. 

It occurred to me on the weekend that I used to net my gardens to keep chickens out. I have lettuces and brassicas netted to stop the brassica moths and any other caterpillars causing pests from doing their thing. Why don't I just net my young plants? Once they're big enough with a more established root system, I should be able to take the netting back off again. 

I also bought more plants and seed over the weekend. 

I was planting more sunflower seeds in the ravaged spot under the net this time, when I found a young sunflower close to breaking through the soil. It still had its seed husk capping the tips of the first leaves. That made me happy, but I also realised that I was finding plenty more but they'd all been broken off just below those leaves. 

I had a poke around the pot where I had planted zucchini seeds, just to see if anything was happening and found one about to break through the soil. So I'm much happier about the garden and more excited to get back into it this week. 

The last bit to clear is dragging out. Or maybe I'm dragging it out. There's a lot of flowering quince to remove and that's slow and frustrating work. 

Flowering quince is all through this garden. We have tried digging it out, but it is very deep rooting and the tiniest piece left behind turns into more. Several different pigs have dug over this patch turning it into a wasteland for a time and they didn't get it all. It throws up lots of suckers and gets quite dense at the base. So I hit Google. Several fora and websites said the only way was to cut and paint the fresh cut with undiluted concentrated glyphosate. 

I went to Farmlands and had a chat with someone there. I came home with a picloram gel product that has the brush top. 

When I clear around the base of a patch, I  leave it until morning after watering as you need to be sure there's no rain forecast for 12 hours after application. I cut and gel. I pick up every last piece I've cut and put it in the incinerator. I'm burning this stuff, I won't risk having it come back again. 

Then I have to leave the blue painted tips undisturbed for the day. I don't want to risk accidentally poisoning anything else. So I have to find a different spot to work in. 

The last part will be slow but I'm feeling motivated again. 

Heartbreak in My Vege Garden

 Peas and radishes are growing beautifully, potatoes are taking off and delicate carrot fronds are definitely a thing. So where are the beans and sunflowers that I planted?

Where I thought I had bean sprouts, I found they were more potatoes. There might be some baby spinach plants in among the puha that's coming up. It's too early to be sure. 

So I did some digging. When I found a bean seed, it had a hole in the side and the rest was either hollow or rotten. Something has been eating my seeds. I went all along the rows and it was the same everywhere I'd planted them. 

There was an entire packet of Kentucky Pole beans gone.

I have a container of bean seeds that I'd harvested quite a few years ago. It was a mix of the pole beans and two colours of dwarf beans. 

I also had a paper bag of runner beans and purple beans from about 20 years ago. I've been meaning to give them to the chickens. I'm not particularly fond of runner beans unless I pick them when they are really small and tender. 

I decided to float them to see if they were still viable, with a very few exceptions, they all seemed good. 

I've planted them out in much heavier concentration than before. If anything is going to eat them, hopefully they won't get to all of them and the odd ones will grow first.

I still have some left in case it doesn't work. 

While I was planting them out, I noticed sunflower seed husks scattered around where I planted the sunflowers. The seeds are gone and the husks have been broken up and spread around. Even the ones coated in fungicide. That was three packets of seeds.

I'm blaming the blackbirds for that.

I think I might have to start seeds in pots and transplant them out. I didn't want to do that because I don't usually manage to harden the plants off very well and forget to transplant them in time. 

I'm a little gutted.

Sycamore Maples Everywhere

 We have three large Sycamore Maple (acer pseudoplatanus) trees. They've been there since before we moved to this block. They are lovely big old trees. 

Every year, there are heaps of small seedlings popping up. Almost none of them usually make it taller than about 20cm. 

Until we took out the macrocarpa hedge. Now there are hundreds of seedlings, varying in size from barely emerged to a metre and half tall. They are everywhere. 

We have moved a lot and planted them out in shelter belts. They're excellent for the east-west belts as they are deciduous, fast growing and have a good canopy. 

They are drought-hardy, don't mind a frost, all round useful trees.

So it seemed a shame to be just pulling out the excess. We contacted a couple of big tree companies but they weren't interested. We spoke to a chap at our favourite nursery, he told us that it's now listed as a noxious weed and they're not allowed to sell it. 

They do spread quickly and easily, and in more tropical climates, like the North Island, they can smother anything else. He said there's no real need for their pest status down here, and he thinks they are an awesome tree.

But we have to either find new homes for them here, give them away or just discard them. Which makes me sad.

My Sprouting Vege Garden

 I have sprouts!!

Some of the seeds I have sown are turning into plants. The peas I planted first have an almost 100% strike rate. I'm not sure if the gaps are because a seed hasn't germinated or because I missed a spot.

Immediately following the peas, radishes have been popping up with their distinctive heart shaped first leaves.

I spread radishes (as I always do) through the carrots and it thins the carrots without sacrificing anything. The radish seed was at least 20 years out of date, so proof that sometimes it's worth ignoring the best before dates. I think I can see early carrot fronds poking up too, but so far they're too small to be sure.

I'm not keeping up very well with the potatoes. There are so many and they are growing very quickly. I've stopped rescuing the potatoes I dig up, unless they are at least palm sized. I'm not going to need to buy any seed potatoes this year.

I also think I have a couple of beans up. I'm watching to see if more happens. 

I'm maybe halfway through clearing the patch. I think the difference this year is I'm planting as I'm clearing. Normally, we'd clear the whole area before doing anything else and nothing would happen for at least a month. 

It's a battle to not plan everything in advance. I start to worry that I'm going to run out of ideas or repeat myself, but then I get to the next part and I'm inspired again. 

Hubby is laughing that I'm taking anything that's not nailed down. The water trough, the cracked wheelbarrow with a broken wheel, a few pots and there's an old concrete laundry tub sitting in a paddock waiting for me to move it into my garden. I think I'm cleaning up loose bits in useful ways.