It's my second summer doing gardening. I welcomed some good rainfall on Tuesday and it is showering a little again today.
Samuel and I found a ladybird on one of the chilli padi plants. I am not sure if that is the one I rescued from Coles supermarket few weeks back. It could well be. It seems comfortable on the plant and then I realised that there were actually aphids on the underside of some leaves. Good fellow..hope you have a great feast and get rid of them!
All my five calendula plants are doing great, flowering. Also some withered flowers have already produced seeds.
The two common mint cuttings took off fantastic and are growing fatter each day.
One nasturtium seedling emerged.
One strawberry delight runner growing into a new strawberry plant after I buried it in a small pot of mix. This way, I can keep having new plants without having to buy them. More runners developing from the mother plant.
A baby cucumber emerged from the vine. Several male flowers also have bloomed. I am trying to expose the two cucumber vines to buzzing bees for pollination as they are quite obscured by the pots and netting.
Another capsicum ripening to a bright orange. The smaller ones are ripening first. The two larger capsicums will get to grow larger before ripening. Cannot wait to snap a picture of that happening soon! Meanwhile more capsicum flowers are developing.
My purple king bean plants are also producing flowers.
And a baby purple king bean too!
Strawberry delight...yum...I harvested them before the earwigs did.
All three tomato silvery fir plants are doing great and putting on fruits. I had to prune off a lot of leaves to allow better air circulation.
I hammered a nail on top of the fence and used a string to secure the trellis for the bitter melon and cucumber (burpless). In summer during heatwaves, the wind can be extremely strong.
Also mulched the cucumber vines and bitter melon vine with sugar cane mulch.
Between the bitter melon and cucumber vines, I am preparing the soil for my buk choy and silver beet. Not a lot of space but I will try to squeeze in space for some leafy vege.
Buk choy seedlings waiting to be transplanted.
Purple buk choy seedlings.
I did not have enough white cloth so I could only shield part of the patch next to the garage :
Ended up using my hubby's old work shirt to shield my bitter melon but it worked now that it is still short :
Kaffir lime, eggplant supreme, lemongrass at Patch C & cyclamens at Patch D were also shielded by pieces of white cloth :
Patch A has a piece of beige tablecloth and I used it on my purple king. Not on the tomato beef steak since it has not produced a single fruit and taking up so much space :
Some heavier pots were under white cloth and a layer of netting. The strong wind beat at the cloth and I had to secured the four corners with strings :
Patch F was also protected by white cloth :
With this, the whole garden did not suffer a single casualty. The front garden was not covered but I had hubby watered the whole of it first thing in the morning since we were within water restrictions time. By 6pm, the air was still hot and stuffy. I went out to remove the white cloth as the next day was a real change of weather...cloudy and possible thunderstorm! Think the weather here in Melbourne changes faster than a woman's mood haha...
