Sic Transit Gloria Seami

Update

Got back from the beach on Friday, and (thanks Molly and Cat) everything is pretty hunky dory. I think I've managed to massacre all the propagation plants I was hoping to plant out in the next couple of months, a few newbie mistakes.... But live and learn! I have plenty of spare seeds anyway, they come in packs with hundreds of seeds so I can try again soon.

Newly planted beans, beetroot and basil are all going swimmingly. Must be a letter B thing I've got going on.....

Today

Not much going on today. I found out that potassium is good for beans (which I didn't know) so I gave our butter beans out the back a fistfull of potash.... I dug up the second ornamental spinifex bush thing up the front, freeing up a small area of dirt (2m by about .8m in all I think). It was fun. I like destruction.

Next

Well, there's some re-sowing to do come Feb.... But I've got a better idea of what I'm doing now, so hopefully we'll get better results. I'll be re-sowing most of the vegetables, so yay! I've also now opened up that space in the front.... Rosmary bushes.... Yeah.

UPDATE:

Not much to say. The water's been good for some plants, not so good for others.... Generally things are unchanged. Everything's a little bigger, some plants are saying "NO MORE WATER FOR A BIT PLEASE..." and others don't give a rats one way or the other. There are a couple of things happening with the seeds sown earlier in the week - a bunch of them are sprouting, although I quickly realised I have no idea what's what...  But that's okay! I think the stuff that's agressively sprouted is cabbage.... I'll find out when they're a bit bigger I guess. Newly planted coriander is sprouting too. So yay!. The exciting news is that our basil appears to be sprouting left right and centre - who knows, maybe for once we can grow it without killing it.

I hear 2 opinions on basil:
1) It's easy to grow and basically unkillable, or
2)It's delicate and snails eat it within 3 seconds of it emerging into existence.

Our experience is unfortunately in line with the second....

TODAY:
I didn't water. I haven't watered in days, there's plenty of it about. What I did do was plant out more seeds. I ripped out the bean plants in the front (ave atque vale beans!), and spread compost over the site again. Not just any compost but our "Bokashi" compost. It had been burried for about 4 weeks after its time in the fermentation bucket. So it's ready. It was thick, a bit smelly and generally pretty soil like, so win there!. I then sowed new beans into the front. A combination of Scarlet Climbers and bush beans. We'll see how they go!.

I also planted a couple of other new seeds, cauliflower and brocolli. Theyr'e in the tray out the back, should be good.

NEXT:
More planting. Root vegetables this time. Beetroot, turnip and some other stuff.... I forget. Anyway that happens before we go away next week. So yay! winter seed sowing is just about done. Go garden!

So, in light of a recent new years resolution I'm going to track my gardening activities here. Feel free to heap praise on my efforts, also if it sounds like my activities are going to kill something, feel free to speak up!.

I'm going to format this thus: A quick update giving the overall state of play of the plants, an outline of my activities for the day and a note about future plans:


UPDATE:

Looking over the pots things are looking reasonable:

We've got about 14 tomatoes coming, all very green and quite small at this stage, but that will improve.
We have butter beans out the front, that I think have now done their dash.... Time to replace them with something!.
Zucchini's are flowering a lot, so hopefully we'll see some fruit soon.
Capsicums look healthy, one of the containers of chillis looks about dead, but that's okay, there's plenty more.
Cucumbers, carrots and onions all look pretty stable to me.

Our worm farm looks like it's about ready to have the bottom tray rotated again, which means MORE FERTILISER! (not really caps worthy, but I'm excited), which would be a good idea. Haven't given the plants that kind of feed for a while. Just worm juice weekly....

Today:
Today I got something out of the way, I finally transplanted the silverbeet. We had 6 plants growing in a foam veggie box, and they were a bit cramped. The soil in the box was also too shallow, so I topped it up. We now have 3 silverbeet in a round pot and 3 in the original container. See if that prompts some more growth.
I watered them in and gave them some worm juice to keep them happy/alive. Also gave everything a water, so that should keep things ticking along.

NEXT:
The plan is to start planting out some of the winter things in the next couple of weeks. We're going to grow from seed this time, so we're giving ourselves a chance to propagate and then plant into containers. We'll see how it all goes....

Just got back from the specialist, and Loki had his stitches out. He's fine, the surgeon is happy with he way it's healing up, happy to hear that his breathing is normal and thinks that Loki's going to be fine from here in.

So that's one saga over. Silly cats!

The other one is fine too. Just fat.

He's back, as per Chris' earlier post. He's okay. He's eaten a bit, done a wee and drunk some water.

So all in all he's pretty normal. Very quiet, very dopey. The scars are muchos impressive. And I don't envy him.

Oh, and by the way for all interested watchers: http://www.petplan.com.au/

Loki's treatment was in excess of 3 grand all together. And this particular pet insurance costs between 180 and 250 a year (depending on the kind of cover you want). We've signed both boys up, and if you're the 'I'm not putting my cats down unless it's on humane grounds' people we are, it'll pay for itself one day....

This week has been quite boring. I've been holed up at home sick (came home early from work on Tuesday, haven't been back), and as such I've been remarkably unproductive. I haven't picked up the publicity material for The Bacchae, I haven't written a press release, I haven't gotten the forms into the box office to open the shows up for bookings, I haven't really been doing much at all....

I've played zelda, while I had the breath to do it without coughing much. And I've spent a LOT of time stuffing around on the internet....

So yeah....

Not much fun.

But at least I've had Christina as my co-sufferer, so it hasn't been all bad. I know that all things considered she's had a lot more to put up with than me sickness-wise, so i can't really complain.

But yes - now taking antibiotics (the doc advised I wait a couple of days to see if things improved before I started - I didn't improve.... meaning it's more likely to be a bacterial infection than viral - so the antibiotics might actually do something).

So we'll see what transpires over the weekend.

I also hear that Helen isn't doing so well, so again - I can't really complain....

This weekend has been kind of productive. ( this is drivelous and boring )
And that was the weekend: Buying lots of meat, David moving in, fixing lots of shelves.

What a weekend... :).