Calendar of Garden Activities.

17-19 October 2011 Lawn and garden watering in the mornings due to hard windy weather.
18 October 2011 New top soil (free from neighbour!) for two areas of garden.
18 October Planted yellow capsicum seeds.
19 October - Scorching windy days. Leafy greens and hydrangea mild wilting.
19 October 2011 Fish fertilizer for calamondin cumquat and eureka lemon.
19 October 2011 Epsom salts for calamondin cumquat (testing for Magnesium deficiency)
20 October 2011 Lawn and garden watering in the morning. Temp 30 deg cel, windy and hot - sown    Peacock's ladyfinger/okra seeds - sown more coriander seeds.
21-22 October 2011 Cloudy and drizzles and at times showers. Hooray!!!
22 October 2011 Pruned Big Fig (Fleming's Brown Turkey fig), Yellow Peach tree and Carolina Black Rose Grape Vine. Wanted to experiment with pruning deciduous branches apart from winter and see the results.

While we were looking at our yellow peach tree few days ago, we spotted a lovely lady bug. We welcome lady bugs but that made me suspicious. Upon closer examination, I realised that most young shoots of my peach tree have been infested with green aphids (pests) :

I took a few days to think about what actions I should take to destroy them. The tree is a little big for pyrethrum spraying. This morning as I was examining the leaves again, I found baby lady bugs (pic below) on the leaves.  They were not a great number compared to the aphids but I was very pleased to see them. I read they eat even more aphids than their adults. I showed my son how the lady bug babies looked like, much like some spidery creatures :

'Big Fig' (Fig brown turkey) was naughty this year, not a fig in sight. So I decided to chop off one branch :

 And watch what the cut branch will do :

I think I have successfully propagated my Thai Basil from cuttings.  They are not withering since propagation at least 2-3 weeks ago. And if I am not wrong, some stems are actually growing new leaves. Celebration!!!

Today's harvest : a basketful of pak choy for chix macaroni soup. The picture uploaded could not be rotated. It happened to a picture of spinach recently. Hmmm same basket...maybe that's the problem?!

These are the tender flower stalks of pak choy. Yesterday my friend Fina came for morning tea.  She brought her parents to see our garden.  Her Dad pointed out that the flower stalks are very tender and delicious, so I harvested them too.  I have too many pak choy flower stalks and they will give me way too many seeds (perhaps millions!) so it is good that I can eat them instead!

Our lunch today : Chicken macaroni soup.  In the pot are my wonderful tomato silvery fir which I have frozen from last summer/autumn and bay leaves from my garden. Yummy!

Rainbows in our Backyard!

This morning after all the work, I fixed up the nozzle and watered the garden.  And we were so excited to make double rainbows with the fine mist. My boy was having so much fun.

Before all the fun, we planted some watermelon seeds.

And then some native daisy seeds.

I caught a snail and we studied it.

I spotted a spider web on the pomegranate tree and asked my boy to spray the web with water so we could see the fine water droplets.

Four stringless pioneer bean plants have emerged.

Harvested a big basket of pak choy.

And a basketful of spinach too. (Picture could not be rotated not sure why)

And a big basket of gai choy for soup again!!! Yummy!

Yesterday we had homeschool out on the front patio table as the weather was superb.

And we harvested arum lilies and dutch iris bronze perfection plus a few plum tree twigs in our tall vase.