First Fruits

After waiting for what seems like A-GES.. our passionfruit vine has finally started to fruit! We didn't even notice the flowers - we were away for a week - and one day while checking the trellis I noticed a passionfruit almost the size of a tennis ball growing! Very exciting.

PASSIONFRUIT

Our big guava tree has also started to fruit. Just one at the bottomest branch at the moment. My problem now is deciding when to pick it. It's about the size of my fist now, however, it's not showing any signs of yellowing, the skin is still quite green.

PASSIONFRUIT FLOWER

Having never eaten guava before, my boyfriend asked what it tastes like. Guava has the texture of a pear, with a similarly thin skin. However it has many small seeds on the inside. Being a yellow guava, our fruit should grow larger than the local cherry guava. The fruit should also be quite fragrant.. and hopefully sweet.

YELLOW GUAVA

The Last Day

I thought I'd use the last day of the year to recap what 2010 has taught me...

1) Patience. Without it, I would have never discovered that worms WOULD grow in my worm farm. Guavas WILL grow on the Indian guava tree. And eggplants WILL develop when given the proper conditions - after 6 months of trial and error. (They are also extremely thirsty!)

2) Progression. The garden will continue to evolve, and remain in a state of flux. If something dies, it can be regrown. Or replaced. There is never an absolute, absolutely. I will continue to view it as a journey, and not as a final destination.

3) Natural does not always mean Non-harmful. Take the case of Neem Oil for example. Spraying it on capsicum plants caused fruit to rot. Leaves were also affected and appeared 'burnt'.

4) Perseverance. Like some of the plants in our garden, which have amazing abilities to persevere despite my mistreatment of them; I too, must learn to overcome setbacks and keep going.

Full Wet Season

It has been raining just about every day. The Wet is - without a doubt - finally here.

The buckets I have strategically placed about the garden are doing their job and I have plenty of rainwater to water the undercover plants with.

The passionfruit trellis has sufferred a setback; the vines are so vigorous they have collapsed the archway! Hmm... I'll have to motivate myself to do something about it soon, but have been busy entertaining a visitor from south.

A strange thing has been happening to the capsicum plants. The capsicums are growing and ripening, but when picked, they are soft and rotten. I have a feeling it may be the Neem oil I have been spraying to deter mealybugs, which are everywhere in the garden.

Although deemed organic and has been used for centuries, Neem oil is also harmful to certain plants. It seems to kill mealybugs ok, but may also be responsible for the rotten capsicums. So I have stopped spraying Neem and am now just waiting for a good capsicum. If I'm wrong about the Neem, then it must be a rotting disease - heaven forbid!

Oh, and the zucchini plant has well and truly died. It had blossom end rot. The rot starts at the flowering end of the fruit and spreads, rendering malformed lumps on the fruit and eventually the whole fruit decays - from the inside. The zucchinis looked almost normal except for the external lumpiness. I guess the rot spread throughout the rest of the plant and the leaves started wilting and eventually the whole plant died.

I REALLY hope this is not the same thing happening to the capsicums... The chillies are going strong though. Brilliant yellow colour. When will they turn red? It's been at least 6 weeks already...

Passionate Trellis

My ever-helpful boyfriend has brought another one of my ideas to fruition.

I said to him the other day, "Wouldn't it be good if we had a passionfruit trellis?" as I showed him what I meant while we were in the garden.

So, using the existing fence as one side of the trellis, he constructed a curve with chicken wire, and attached it to three star pickets, which formed the other side of the finished trellis.

Now we have a nice arbour in which to provide some shade and cool. It also breaks the monotony of the garden, and adds some height.

The passionfruit vines are flourishing too, with no sign of disease or bug infestation. Which is a relief, after the pruning given to it by a neighbouring possum! I just wonder when it will fruit?

Heartbreaks

Still no change in the worm situation. I have emailed the supplier to see what other advice/tips they can offer.

The worms are hardly eating the food. As it is quite warm here, I am not sure whether the foodscraps in the container is breaking down due to the weather and moisture. I have also poked my fingers around the container in the hopes of finding worms, but there are no signs of them. I don't want to keep poking, as it may stress the worms. Imagine if you're in your house and a big hand comes crashing through the roof trying to see where you are!

Another sad thing is the state of the veggie garden at the moment. My brassica bed has been under attack by small green caterpillars (Cabbage moth). These green grubs have eaten their way through my Chinese cabbage, buk choy and are now chewing through the cucumbers and bananas!

I have looked up several organic options for killing them, and apparently chilli and garlic spray seems to do the trick - provided the caterpillars are in the early stages. But there is also a bio-organic control, called BT. Bacillus Thuringiensis is derived from naturally-occuring soil bacteria. It works by paralysing the caterpillar's digestive tract, and they die from starvation. Bad for the caterpillar, but good for plants and other helpful creatures like bees, ladybirds and earthworms as BT doesn't affect them. Will be applying this onto any caterpillar-infected plants soon. Watch out!

BT is effective on caterpillars such as TOBACCO HORNWORM (Manduca Sexta)

The two cucumber plants in the large bed have also shrivelled into yellow-nothingness. I'm not 100% sure whether this is due to the hot weather, the mealybugs (which are ALL over the plants) or the caterpillars. Maybe a combination of all.. but apparently cucumber plants only grow in the cooler months of the Dry. They were still fruiting up to about a month ago. The lone cucumber in the middle bed is struggling on. It's still fruiting sporadically and producing some huge female babies! I have never seen the female buds this big before, probably because the plant knows the game is almost up. I haven't fed them anything else that's for sure.

My lemongrass has also fallen victim to its home relocation. It was moved to a different spot, along with only half of its roots. The other half are probably still in the ground from where they made their way out of the container and got ripped up.

Still.. the zucchini is doing well. (Except I've learnt not to plant them in beds anymore - they just take over!) So is the basil, pumpkin, Ceylon spinach (not that we eat it!), most of the chillies, and the marigold. I now have golden moss in a hanging basket. The cosmos have also bloomed! And our "watermelon" is thriving. Turns out it is a chilli plant! My boyfriend still has no idea how it got into the pot where he was growing a watermelon seed.

Worms!

The compost worms I'd ordered finally arrived. Two thousand of them.. in the form of 'worm bombs'. Apparently there will be an "explosion" of worms once they get settled and feed and... hopefully, mate with each other!

We decided to use a polystyrene container with holes punched in the bottom (for drainage). Recycled shadecloth as lining (so worms don't escape). The most important thing was the bedding, as this is where the worms will breathe, eat and (hopefully!) live.

I had done a bit of initial research on appropriate worm bedding, but different sources say different things. Some said to use shredded paper, others said soil, but the instructions which came with the worms said to use compost and well-matured manure. A friend of mine whose dad once had a worm farm said he used lawn clippings.

So in the end, we decided to go with a mixture of shredded paper, compost, grass clippings and a bit of soil. After moistening it and mixing it all in together, we let the worms free!

We left the worms to settle in overnight. The next morning, we fed them a handful of chopped up cucumber, buk choy, banana skin, carrot and potato peel and even a teabag! When we checked later that night, unfortunately none of it had been touched. The instructions did say to leave them to settle for a day or so before feeding, as they may take time to get comfortable after their big trip.

Checked again this morning and still no joy... no food eaten and no signs of worms. I sprayed the entire surface to keep the bedding nice and moist. Worms have no way of controlling their body temperature and rely completely on their surroundings to keep them within the right temperature range.

Will write more once there's something to report....

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Been a bit AWOL on this blog lately... However, there is change in the air, heralded by the torrents of rain we have been receiving - unseasonably early. It is welcome news to me.. as the rain brings some cooler air temps and gives me time off from watering the garden!

Grass has shot up everywhere due to the extra rain, hiding the growing pumpkins.

I haven't watered for the last four days now. But am still spending time in the mornings harvesting, mainly cucumbers, and pollinating whatever's flowering (mostly cucumbers, a handful of pumpkins and the odd zucchini).

My boyfriend and I have also been busy scouring the neighbourhood for unwanted goods for our garden. It is what's known as Hardwaste Collection. The northern parts of Australia are susceptible to cyclones, and as Cyclone Season approaches, the local councils will take away any bulky material / goods that is no longer required by households.

We managed to scavenge quite some good stuff! Among them were hanging baskets, chicken wire, shadecloths, metal poles, sprinkler heads... and an old carpet. We lay the carpet onto one of the heavily weed-infested areas in the hope that the lack of sun and air will smother them.

So while I have been busy at work, the boyfriend has been busy adding improvements to the garden. He has put in an entirely new irrigation system for all three garden beds:

The latest additions to our garden:

A mulberry sapling...

A watermelon seedling....

A yellow-flowered shrub.....