Sonya's Blog (7)

I was really really excited yesterday to see that a few of my strawberries have flowers! I didn't expect that they'd be out this early - it's not even Spring yet!

That said, we are starting to see signs of Spring all over the place... The jasmine is starting to flower, my pomegranate that was dormant over Winter is starting to sprout leaves, the fig cuttings I have on the windowsill are starting to go mad...



SPRING!!… Continue

37 garlic sprouts and counting!



This weekend we had a mad planting frenzy - stuff that is usually sown in early spring, but we thought we'd experiment and see how they go inside, on an open shelf in front of a window. We've had to wrap it in frost cloth to keep the dear darling (*&@#*&@#*) kittens from playing with the soil... I already lost a spinach seedling to Stella. Little snot.



Last week, Hester let me borrow her NZ Gardener fruit tree book which was very… Continue

I have had an awful cold, so while I've wanted to do some work in my garden, I haven't been feeling up to doing much this week. That said, the awful weather hasn't given me much opportunity to get out there anyway! I did get a couple of things done though:



- built a new cloche for the lettuces from an old hose, bamboo stakes, and some clear plastic that our new mattress came wrapped in.

- moved the compost 'heap' into two wool fadges. One is full while the other only has a… Continue

I've been excitedly watching my garlic come up, and may sort of be going out to check the patch most mornings... I've got a total of 9 garlic sprouts so far! That's not actually all that many - I probably planted about 50. :D



Not much going on in the garden at the moment, otherwise... My few winter crops are slowly doing their thing. I'm waiting for cabbages (red and standard), bok choi, snow peas, lettuces, and spinach to be ready. We've been steadily using the celery, silverbeet,… Continue

I took my gumboots off last night and out plopped a big fat black spider. It stuck to my sock. ARGH. I jumped around like a big girl going "eek eek eek eek eek eek eek!".



The gumboots usually get shaken before putting them on because cockroaches love our laundry (where I keep the gumboots). Typical - the one time I forget, something is in there!



Things about gardening I find hard to handle: cockroaches, earwings, milli/centipedes, and SPIDERS. Oh, and picking up a clump of… Continue

The Mrs challenged me to build a chicken coop last night. She should have known better than to say something like that. :D

There's something very exciting about turning your compost and noticing that it's _steaming_! I must be doing something right. Those bags and bags of leaves I've collected from work seem to be doing good things for the pile, and they've certainly provided some lovely looking mulch for my veggies.



I've done a bit of a garden rationalisaton and pulled out anything that wasn't doing well anymore (am a bit of a slash and burn gardener, since we're short on space for the moment), so now… Continue