Friday, February 21, 2014

Welcome to the new year.

Yeah, yeah, a bit late, I know. I blame summer. This summer has seemed fierce. No moisture in the air, not even enough cloud for people to get  grumpy about how muggy it is.. just the heat and the feeble see breeze on some evenings, that only us lucky Freo folk get coz I reckon it must peter out by the bottom of the next dune.

The garden is just hanging in, we probably water too often but the garden is our haven and we don't need much more than a happy garden. Dripper line has given us 20 odd minutes reprieve each morning from having to hand water and the "potted orchard" is all still looking pretty happy.
The pests have changed since putting the drip line in. Slaters are much reduced, possibly also because we have changed our mulch this year. Mites seemed to enjoy the dry out there, though. They like dry situations so, with the lack of spray, they had attacked a lot of plants. Too much shade from the much-too-large powton didn't help, nor did us not being very good at feeding things. Summer is a hard time to do anything out there, really.


If we ate rats and tomato borer grubs we would have had a good summer's feast, sadly it was mostly herbs and the odd dragon fruit, along with three pumpkins which grew themselves. Basil always does well here and that New Zealand spinach stuff that no one actually eats.

In a moment of autumn hope two weeks ago vegetable and herbs seeds were sown across the Perth suburbs as a cloud drifted across the sky and made us think it would rain soon! It'll be interesting to see how long into March this late summer persists. I'll be glad not to need to water so much though, whenever that is. Maybe when it goes down to only a maximum of 32C, maybe then I can plant those seedlings.