catch up post: artichokes, bugs, evil birds and more...

I'm having a temporary break from having the internet at home, so for the next month or so I'll be doing fewer but longer blog posts from the uni library (this post is therefore sponsored by UTAS...).  Today, I have a mega stroll-around-the-vegie-garden-style post.  The baby birds that have been tweeting from the gutter right above my bedhead have finally grown up, and just like their parents they like to dig up all my (not cheap) sugar cane mulch and seedlings, eat my strawberries, and fly off with entire pea seedlings in their grubby beaks.  The other day, as I was netting my strawberries, there was a line of 3 birds watching me from the fence with their yellow eyes, occasionally sharpening their beaks on the palings, plotting their revenge...

Initially, sensing a growing threat from the birds as the blueberries grew bluer, the birds multiplied in my gutter, and the sheer cheek of a bird flying off with an entire seedling in its mouth, I bought some 'humming bird wire' from the hardware store (you can vaguely see it in the above photo - it's running above the white netting).  $17.95 for bird wire, with the capacity to cover my entire yard with ease vs $50 for bird netting? I reasoned that the wire was a better option.  I leapt around the backyard, foolishly triumphant as I hammered in posts and attached the wire to old stockings, designed to take some of the slack (on a side note, what do single men use for garden ties?).  However, the wire turned out to be a false economy.  The next morning I went outside, and three cheeky birds were doing the early shift, checking the strawberries for ripeness and sifting through the mulch for worms. My message: don't buy 'humming bird wire'.  Needless to say, I had to pay the hardware store another visit, returning home with a mass of surprisingly expensive netting.  So much for 'saving money' by growing your own vegies...

Anyone (including myself) who has sneered at my Fine Arts degree and wondered what in the hell I'll use a sculpture major for, should check out my strawberry construction.  It's titled Bird Net Over Strawberries and challenges the notion that art and functionality are mutually exclusive.  In all reality it's just a bodgy construction of bamboo stakes, gaffa tape, netting and old tent stakes, but it's holding up surprisingly well.  The bird wire can be seen in the below photo as well.

Bird Net Over Strawberries (2010), dimensions variable

On another triumphant note, my green artichokes are sprouting well.  The mothership looks fairly ready to eat, and the smaller side-flowers are just about there too.  My purple artichokes, mentioned in previous posts are just about gone.  I had stall at a market on Sunday, where I sold a number of them (along with rhubarb and silverbeet), and I suspect that the stocks are just about drained.  I wonder if the purple variety always flower before the green variety, or whether it's just because the green plant is slightly younger?

The Mothership

et al

I also had my first pea harvest (so peas don't grow in frozen packets?).  I picked a decent bowl of pods (after finally establishing which area I had planted the peas as opposed to the snowpeas - an argument for  naming seedlings as you plant), and bought 300g of prawns ready for a prawn and pea risotto.  Just as the rice was soaking up the wine, I remembered that I had to get the peas out of the pods, and got out a big bowl for the peas in anticipation.  I needn't have bothered.  There are SO FEW PEAS IN A POD! Who would have thought...  Oh and it seems that you can eat the pods too, as I gnawed on a few pods out of hunger as I was cooking, and, well, I'm not dead yet...

A not-quite-ready pea

It's not all stories of triumph:  I'm still having troubles with getting a decent head of broccoli. I've tried planting at different times of the year, fertilising, companion planting, but they still go from here (tiny head)

scungy brocoli head

to here:

"but I never even saw you bud!?!"

The cabbages are also quite frustrating, although I can take my anger out on the green caterpillars that like to munch on the leaves.  They're delightfully fun to squash!

The creatures that I haven't come across before are those on my cherry tree that I just noticed this morning:  little black slug-like creatures (pictured below).  Help! what are they? how do I get rid of them?

The nectarine tree (I think - I forgot to mark the trees too), which has the leaf curl is producing cute little fruit things.  Now, I know that people say that you should break off fruit to encourage growth in the first year, but is it really necessary?  The poor tree's trying so hard despite the odds....

Oh and last but not least, my leeks are going to flower.  They're such beautiful forms with their curved buds and so I really have no regrets not eating them all.

For the last year, I've left a couple of almost all plant varieties to go to seed, simply because I'm curious about their life-cycles.  I think it's a good way of learning, and as an added bonus if you're lucky (like I've been), things like spinach and lettuce will come up the next year without you lifting a finger...

Lenah Valley Links Chook Workshop

This morning I attended a Chook Workshop hosted by a local Lenah Valley family, who also manage a information-packed blog called Hoolio's Happy Hens.  The workshop was organised through the local community association Lenah Links, which was only established the same week I bought this house 4 months ago. LL has already had garden workshops and a market; and upcoming workshops include 'how to preserve fruit' and there's another market planned for the 6th March.  It's great that there are so many people in the local community willing to share their knowledge.

The workshop didn't dampen my chook owning aspirations, however it did impress on me how much of a commitment chooks are.

I have a dog who is pretty demanding, but if I go away I have a number of people crawling over each other to look after her for the weekend.  With chooks however, you can't just drop them off at your friends' places for the weekend.  If Pip has fleas I know it immediately because she'll jump onto my lap while I'm watching TV and start scratching (and will often share); whereas to know whether your chooks have lice or not, you have to catch them, hold them upside down and spread their feathers and try and spot these tiny skin-coloured creatures.  As I found out in the very practical workshop this morning, catching chooks is pretty damn hard, and apparently today's chooks were 'placid' and 'friendly'!  Additionally, while pip is quite happy just to curl up on the end of my bed (although she has a couple of cheap dog beds strategically littered around the house), Chooks need a quite involved house and cage system (if I want to protect both the chooks and my vegie garden, as well as having a damn good-looking chook house).

So it looks like I might need a bit more time and stability in my life before I embark on Chook ownership.  Perhaps it's a post-PhD thing?

The workshop was really useful though, and I'm sure I'll use the information in the next couple of years. After all, I've already picked out the names for my chooks...

Catch up post. The garden's original state

I set this blog up as a visual garden diary.  I want to record images of my garden so I can look back in years and exclaim 'oooh, it was so naked' (obviously I'm planning on a few more trees), or 'gee, look at all those weeds' (which I'm actually doing still at the moment'.  I also want to record what works, what doesn't, my mistakes, what I've planted (easily forgotten), creatures that lurk under leaves or emerge by night... and so on....

I've been living in the house for 2 months now, and in that time I've have planted and weeded in both the front (pretty flowers, ornamental etc.) and back (vegies, fruit, practical stuff), but have only scratched to surface really.  I'll be doing some catch up posts ie.  how the garden looked before I even bought it through to the present.

So here are a couple of images of the garden when I inspected the house:

The front yard

The side of the house (unfortunately, by the time I moved in all the daffodils had gone for the season)

Backyard