Chilli Struggles

Unfortunately the transplanted chilli babies are looking a little worse for wear today. I am not giving up hope however, and gave them all a good dousing of water before I left for work. The seedlings in the original egg carton seem to be doing a little better than the ones in the new carton.

CHILLIES IN ORIGINAL CARTON

Onto a completely different topic however, a partial lunar eclipse occurred last night. As I was driving back from work, I saw the moon in the sky ahead of me. It looked like someone had taken a small bite out of it. As I drove on towards home, it seemed like the bite grew bigger. I put this down to my (sometimes wayward) imagination and also thought it might have been one of those optical illusions which could occur in nature.

About an hour after reaching home, when I went outside to give the seedlings their nightly watering, I noticed the moon had now become a HALF moon! This time I knew it was no illusion or imagining. I had an inkling it might have been a lunar eclipse, but as I don't remember having really witnessed one before, I wasn't sure what it truly was. A couple of hours later, my boyfriend observed the moon was actually full. Strange... I thought.

Today, the news headlines confirmed what I witnessed last night. Apparently partial lunar eclipses only occur around four times every two years. Within Australia, last night's eclipse was visible only to its Central and Eastern parts. I wondered how this may affect plants, and their dependency on cycles and perhaps even the moon. I know of practitioners who truly believe in gardening during certain phases of the moon. A subject I know very little of, but which I am curious to find out more.

Seedlings Are GO!

Four days into the ground, three of the pumpkin seedlings seem to be doing well. Another is doing so-so, and the final two are perhaps not-so-great. I placed cardboard protectors around the seedlings (tip from a gardening book which I can't remember!) after seeing that they were being battered by fairly strong winds on the first day. It seems the three which are doing well are also the ones which are getting the most sun. This is because the pumpkin patch is right next to a fence, which I thought would help block out most of the winds - wrong! Unfortunately the fence is doing more to block out the crucial sun. The cardboard shields add to the block-out effect, but I figure at this stage, the sensitive pumpkin babies need more protection from the harsh wind. Perhaps the cardboard may positively affect the seedlings' growth spurts, as they strive upwards more quickly to reach the sun? Only time will tell.

Onto different seedlings now, I have thinned out a batch of chillies which have proliferated in an egg carton, up to 3cms high. Not thinking that they would germinate so well, I made the mistake of putting about six chilli seeds to each egg holder! So the most productive holders yield the full crop. The seedlings that have arisen are quite thin, and most have about 2 leaves on them. According to one book, I should wait till they have about 4 leaves before putting into the ground. However, in order to salvage most of these little chilli babies, I have painstakingly pulled some out from overcrowded egg holders, and transplanted them into a NEW egg carton. I have used only organic compost in the new carton, as opposed to plain potting mix. I also gave both egg cartons a thorough (but gentle) soaking. Here is to their survival. Go Seedlings GO!!

This morning I also weeded some grass seedlings which have popped their heads up through the topsoil... Hmmph! They're tough little critters! I don't mind the grass growing back in the areas we have designated as walkways between the pumpkin patch and the rest of the garden beds, but anywhere else and they're history!

Pumpkin Patch Creation

Well I planted my first actual plants in the yard. I allocated an area next to the clothesline which we've named the "Pumpkin Patch". I've been successfully germinating some butternut pumpkin seeds in egg cartons, thanks to some encouraging words from a kids' gardening book. Unusual I think, but original.. it's called "How to Guzzle your Garden", by Jackie French. The author basically sees gardening as an enjoyable pastime, likening it to eating. I even thought of planting herbs in old joggers, as suggested by the book, but have since put it on the backburner. It would give the yard an interesting look!
Out of the 12 little eggholders in the carton, 6 have successfully grown into seedlings about 6cms high. I figured it was time I transferred them into the garden, and prepared an area about 1m x 1.5ms. I filled it with topsoil, manure and topped it with organic compost. It was a bit difficult getting the seedlings out of the eggholders, as the potting mix was shallow and not very compact, but I did my best. There were tiny, ever-so-fine roots which actually extended much longer than I thought from such a small seedling! As it was getting dark by the time I actually got all six seedlings into the ground, I just watered them - finally bought a watering can today - and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I will mulch them tomorrow with some of the hay bale. But I'm happy to say that butternut pumpkin is IN THE GARDEN! Whether or not it will survive is another story.

BABY PUMPKINS

The Seven-Month Lead Up

Here is a quick summary of the seven months it took to get the backyard looking the way it does now.

November:
Things were pretty overgrown. On all three sides were colourbond fencing. On the fourth, the back verandah and door leading into the yard. On the left, a concrete slab lay beneath the clothes line. Other than that, all the eye could see was an uneven horizon of grass around 60cms high. Through the kitchen window I saw cute little birds which hopped around, pecking at the seeds on the ends of the grass stems.

December / January:
With the help of a friend's whipper snipper, my boyfriend slashed through the swathe of couch grass, which had grown even higher by now, due to the ample rain of the Wet season. There was enough grass clippings to fill two 240 litre wheelie bins. However, now the yard was looking much more inviting and manageable. As there were no trees or shrubs, we almost had kind of a lawn.

February:
Again, thanks to the monsoonal rains, the grass had grown quite high once more. This time, we borrowed a lawnmower from another obliging friend. My boyfriend left a tuft of grass in the centre of the lawn, to be finished off the next day. I discovered a little mouse which foraged in amongst the undergrowth. It had made a temporary home behind a heap of tarp which we had left on our back verandah. The feeling that the backyard could be made into a place which was habitable by nature was appealing.

March:
I started borrowing books on gardening, garden design and such. It was quite daunting at first. But the authors seemed quite encouraging, and most books advised to have a plan in mind and go from there. Except one book "Clueless in the Garden" by Yvonne Cunnington, which advised the opposite, which I found interesting. Nevertheless, my enthusiastic boyfriend downloaded free software which enabled him to design a 3-D model of our ideal garden, replete with border garden beds, a full-grown tree, an outdoor entertainment area and a pond. It was pretty cool. Until we decided that this plan would either take at least 5 years to undertake ourselves, or a LOT of money to hire someone (and a team) to complete our grand vision. My idea of the garden was basically to create a productive space using recycled or basic materials. I knew I wanted at least one veggie patch, some trees and herbs, and also a screen for the back fence, as it backed onto a public laneway.

April:
We began looking into municipal tips and newspaper fleamarket ads for materials with which to make raised garden beds. In the tropics, wood / timber would not last very long due to termites and the unseasonably long rains. We decided bricks or pavers would be used instead. My enterprising boyfriend found someone who wanted to dispose of their pavers, and after several trips back and forth between their home and ours, he gained us around 600+ pavers at no cost other than fuel, and quite a bit of sweat and gruntwork.

May:
Through multiple visits to local lawn (or yard) sales and the hardware store, we accumulated gardening tools, gloves, a hose and also a wheelbarrow. I even bought a Soil Test kit after reading that it was a good idea to determine what pH the soil was, in order to plant things that would SUIT in the soil, rather than adding things to the soil in order to make plants grow. This was another philosophy which suited my style of gardening, which I was quickly finding out would be No or Low Fuss.
Several books I had read suggested to rid the soil of any existing grass or plants before creating garden beds. As I did not want to use and herbicides or poison, I was recommended glyphosate as a better alternative by a local landscaper and gardener. He said that glyphosate was not a poison, but a salt solution which deprived the affected plant from receiving any water, thereby killing it.

A week after spraying the yard with this stuff, the green grass was effectively reduced to a brown wasteland. I was not overjoyed at seeing this, however, I affirmed to myself that it would be for the greater good in the end. I then bought some potting mix, organic compost, manure and a bale of hay. Things that would help the garden grow again. It was also around this time that we began composting our kitchen scraps to add to the garden in future.

June 6th:
My boyfriend and I attended a "Tropical Garden Spectacular" at the local Botanical gardens. It served as quite an inspiration for sustainable, environmentally-conscious gardening. There were talks on gardening with chooks, getting to know soil, recycling and much more. We acquired an aloe vera plant, lemongrass, cassava and sweet potato. These would be added to our existing collection of desert roses, guava, golden durantas and a mangosteen plant.

June 12th:
The soil that my boyfriend ordered arrived. All 8 cubic metres of it. So began the two-day event of transferring all of the soil into our backyard from the nature strip, where it was unceremoniously dumped by the soil truck at the front. I definitely commend my boyfriend on his unbridled enthusiasm for hard physical labour. The sunburn that came with it however, is another story. Luckily, we had aloe vera...

BEFORE & AFTER SOIL:

In the Beginning....

It all began with a garden didn't it?

However, I'm not talking about Genesis here, but a vague sense of responsibility that I should actually do something with the backyard which came with the small unit I had recently purchased. This unit and block of land was now my permanent place of residence.. in amongst a concrete jungle, in the middle of tropical suburbia.


Moving in took place about seven months ago, but during that time, the vague sense of "I should do something to the backyard" began building into something more substantial. The niggling voice in my head (for there are several) turned into a palpable sense of required action. Maybe it stemmed from my reluctance to pay inflated prices for average-quality produce at supermarkets. Or the idea that a nice garden would increase the value of my home. Or the thought that I could perhaps contribute to a greener planet, while lessening my carbon impact. Or maybe it was purely about learning self-sustainability and self-education.

Whatever it was, I eventually made my mind up to DO something about my backyard. This blog will detail what happened/happens in putting that plan into action.