Today marked another day off for me, and yet another day in the garden while it poured rain the whole time.
We started the day with a trip to our favourite nursery where we purchased a Tahitian Lime ( a dwarf grafted variety) and a Meyer Lemon (another dwarf). We also picked up another Blueberry taking my total now to three. I also got another six pacific blue eyed fish to go into the pond, as the last lot I bought coincidentally disappeared with the appearance of two Ibis strategically resting beside the pond ($60 worth of rainbow perch, an expensive fish dinner).
The citrus have now been potted up along with the left over as yet unpotted Mandarin from a few weeks ago, complete with some strawberries & alysumm around the stem, and the Blueberry put into the ground in front of one of the 'fixed' panel parts of my new garden fence.
In addition to this I picked up & planted a dozen corn seedlings right near the pond area. My success with corn hasn't been great, the first lot didn't get enough water, the last lot grew well, and really healthy looking, formed what looked to be perfect cobs, only to find that they were hollow inside after little bugs (I guess they would have been something related to weevils) had moved in & gobbled up the insides. On a positive note, a large number of tiny green frogs also were living well & happy amongst it, even though we didn't have a water source nearby. So my hope is that this lot of corn will provide at least some protection for the tadpoles as they emerge as tiny frogs, and give them somewhere to hide from the local fish eating Ibis. The corn if it works this time, will just be a bonus.
I've put in some Cos lettuce (my favorite especially for Cesear salads in summer) and some Bok choi in what was the sweet potato bed that had been overun with cherry tomatoes. The sweet potatoes had all been removed & dug up. Actually that's an overstatement! When I say 'all', it was actually just one! An entire garden bed, thriving shoots above ground, plenty of time to grow and almost nothing to show for it. I did however find at least a dozen or more big (really really big) witchety grubs living there, so I'm wondering if the lack of potatoes may have something to do with these guys? I don't know enough about them to be sure.
Finally, I planted some basil out in the front herb garden, near the Artichokes I planted a while back. My first basil plants grew to gigantic proportions in the 'no dig' layered garden bed, but I've not had the same success since. After some research it would seem that Basil isn't partial to chook manure, which would explain why it hasn't thrived in my 'chook maintained' garden beds. I've put it in near the Artichokes as I've found out a few weeks back from watching ABC's Gardening program, they like a feed with sheep manure & potash, so hopefully it will appeal to the Basil too. Also this garden isn't part of the chook rotation & doesn't get 'turned over' by the chooks when they free range around the yard.
There were still some more punnets of seedlings I didn't get too, but they have to wait until my next day off, along with the promised photos!
