Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Seedlings' Update - Spring Onion, Purple Buk Choy, Oriental Radish, Snow Pea.

Possums are a huge problem for me as a gardener since I am renting a house next to a reserve with many tall trees and bushes. They are here every night and I can hear them moving on my roof. While they are cute creations, they are not very welcomed visitors for me. My spring onion seedings have all germinated under partial shade after sowing 16 days ago. Looking forward to spring onion omelette. I love the thin spring onions because they cook easier for omelettes.
My oriental radishes are growing rather slowly thanks to the gloomy weather and thus they have not been receiving much sunshine. I have them protected under plastic containers at night but I am already working on large proper covers for them once they develop more. Keeping my brain juice churning! In my previous batch of oriental radishes, they grew very fast and leafy but their leaves were practically eaten away by some mysterious bugs/creatures when I went holidaying in Tasmania. See their gorgeous leaves here. And when I returned 2.5 weeks later, it was like this.
The snow pea seedlings are getting me a bit concerned. They are growing well. It is just that they could be eaten up again. My whole purple king bean plant was eaten up without a trace. Now that the snow pea seedlings are still small, they are protected as I do with the oriental radishes and buk choy. But when they grow taller and bigger, I have to figure out a way to protect them at night. I cant camp out in the garden. Erecting a scarecrow is another idea but I think whoever visiting in the night is quite clever to see through my plot. I thought of using chicken wire to wrap around the growing pea plants but they prove not very flexible, and with the holes, the pea plants can still be destroyed. Then I thought of plastic sheets. Perhaps I can try that since they have no holes and are very flexible to go around the pea plants. Moreover, my pea plants are a mildew-resistant specie, so I need not worry about this problem with them all wrapped up at night.
The purple buk choys will suffer similar fate as the oriental radishes if not taken care of, so I will probably use covers for them once they grow bigger. They get pest problems such as caterpillars and aphids. I reckon pyrethrum sprays will have to be used on the leaves of the radishes and buk choy once aphids start coming.

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"All that mankind needs for good health and healing is provided by God in nature...the challenge of Science is to find it." - Paracelcus, the father of Pharmcology, 1493 - 1541