Garden

After a lot of rain this month, some of my grass has gone black and rotten.

All the googling in the world hasn’t helped me find out what exactly it is – things that sound like it, don’t have pictures and most things I found were dealing with lawn diseases, not pasture moulds.

Here it is – it’s black and very rotten. When I pull it apart it’s powdery and the black dust (mould spores?) stick to my fingers. You can see in one photo where it’s been bashing against the wall.

You can click the images to enlarge them, or mouse over for descriptions.

I need to find out how to eradicate it – if simply cutting the grass will work, how likely it is to spread and what else it might infect.

Ideas?

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When we bought this house in early 2008, we joked that it came with a ‘dead’ eco-system. The only spiders were redbacks, the only birds common farm varieties, the sparrow and the starling. Both pests and in plague proportions.

We’ve been slowly and steadily building things up, hoping that we could address the imbalance without resorting to chemicals to kill the ‘bad’ spiders. We planted a garden, we reseeded the lawn, we had horses for 6 months and we’ve got poultry – at a steadily increasing number.

All these things have worked to decrease the ‘bad’ bugs and spiders and restore a balance to the system. We haven’t seen a redback spider in a while, the huntsman spiders are increasing in number and we’ve got a few black house spiders hunting in various corners outside.

The bugs appear to be a good mix of everything and the ducks and ducklings spend most of their time darting through the grass catching everything that flies. The chooks scratch out the beetles and grubs and my paddock has never looked so lush, with the grass desperately needing whippersnipping – it’s waist high in places.

It took twelve months for the small garden to look any good – that was 12 months with the soil covered entirely in hay to promote moisture and growth. We’ve had good results with everything I’ve grown in there since.

Obviously some parts of the paddock need work, my big garden in particular. I’m slowly building that up with potting mix, sheep poo and left over horse poo. Next time I see the farm manager I’ll corner him and ask for some more spoiled hay for the garden, if they’ve got any.

One of the best things about having planted flowering shrubs and getting the whole cycle of things sorted out is that the native birds are coming back

I saw a honey eater the other day and the welcome swallows are hanging around.

Welcome swallows have to be one of my favourite birds. They are cheeky and let me get rather close with the camera. Not to mention flying around my head in circles when I’m out in the paddock, making me wonder if I’d accidentally fallen into a cartoon and hit my head.

This current pair is looking for a new place to nest – they had attempted nesting in the old water tank, but all their nests have fallen off and broken. I’m not sure if it’s the mud they’re using, or the metal of the tank. Something isn’t working for them in any case.

In amongst all the partially built and broken nests, I found an entire one. They had made it to the lining stage, before it fell off. No eggs lost though.

It looks like they’re favouring my barbeque area as a nesting site, or that general area. Needless to say they’ve been flying in and around my kitchen windows, darting in and flying around Nathan’s head before flying out and assessing the situation.

It’s been great to watch and I can’t help but be pleased that they are back. Not to mention, this isn’t the only pair. I counted 4 different pairs taking a bath in our puddle last week.

Lovely.

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November Gardening + babies!

by Veronica on November 10, 2010

in Animals, Garden

I didn’t expect to have to cover my frost tender plants in early November, but it seems the seasons conspired against me and the first week of November saw me in the garden with sheets and towels, covering the plants that would have died if frozen.

A week later, I’m hopeful that the frosts have gone for the year entirely, but I’m not holding my breath. In a small fist shake to the weather gods though, I have planted out some of my frost tender plants from their seedling boxes and crossed my fingers that the chooks don’t find their way into the new! shiny! big! garden.

I’ve had a lot of things planted, including things that you don’t normally find available in seeds in Tassie, I’m experimenting with honeydew melon, rockmelon and water melon, as well as luffa and some giant pumpkins – amongst other things.

After buying a load of seeds from here [side note, much recommended, shipping is fast and the seeds are amazing], I decided that my ‘small’ garden wasn’t big enough – at least, it wasn’t big enough after I planted the entire middle section with climbing beans, peas, kohl rabi and potatoes – we moved all the tyres from the tyre arena and created a garden, about 10m square (30ft thereabouts).

One problem? The grass and soil in that area of the paddock is horribly compacted, from years of previous owners driving cars on it. So turning it over isn’t an option, not unless someone in Tassie has a machine to do it for me, for free? No.

So, I got experimenting. I laid some cardboard to kill off the grass a bit and then covered it with horse manure, sheep manure and potting mix. It was a little bit messy and I wasn’t sure it was going to work – but I planted my corn in there anyway.

Over the weekend though, I had an even better idea and just filled some boxes from the fruit and veg market with sheep manure and potting mix – without flattening the boxes first. This way the sides keep the soil in for the beginning, the bottom rots out slowly letting the roots through and the grass hopefully doesn’t get too strong a hold in amongst my vegies.

Of course, I’m still waiting to see if this is going to work how I hope, so cross fingers for me, yes?

My tomatoes and other seedlings aren’t large enough to plant out yet, so the ‘big’ garden only has basil, rockmelon and corn in it at the moment.

And babies!

I mentioned on twitter that I had a chook broody and I thought all her eggs were rotten. No, she proved me wrong when a fortnight ago she appeared with 4 chicks. These were my first babies out of my own eggs (from the rooster who attacked Amy and made delicious dinner) and I found it really interesting to see what colours they are.

My rooster by the way was a Rhode Island Red X and the hens who laid the eggs were Australorp X’s and a Rhode Island Red X hen, so having 3 red/browny babies wasn’t a surprise. No, the surprise came with a black and white baby. I have no idea how a black/red hen and a red rooster produced black and white baby, but hey, it happened and I’ll be interested to see if it stays black and white.

Plus, the ducklings I have left. The mother is marked for ‘no more babies, ever’ because she’s such a terrible mother. From 16 eggs we got 12 ducklings and 2 weeks later I have 5 left. Sigh.

But they’re cute!

And my ‘older’ ducklings are just getting their feathers, so they’re firmly in the middle of an ugly stage. However, they’re growing fast enough that if we’re really lucky, we might get a roast duck for Christmas.

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Spring Gardening

by Veronica on October 9, 2010

in Garden

It’s Spring finally and I can begin to plant all the things I’ve been waiting all winter for. I love gardening. There is something about playing in the food I am growing that gives me some peace and helps when I’m feeling panicky. If all else fails, I go and get my hands dirty.

Some things have been growing all winter and are now waist high, leaving me wondering if I’ve got room to dry strings of broad beans for winter.

This is about 1/8th of the beans I’ve got growing. Amy *might* have accidentally dropped 200 bean seeds into a freshly dug patch of garden and picking them up was too hard, so I just dug them in. This is what happens when you’re a lazy gardener.

So I have a metric shitload of broad beans growing and I am really not a fan of them. Although I can imagine drying them and adding them to casseroles and soups next winter will be fantastic. Dear family, be prepared to have loads of beans shared with you.

I’ve also got growing my standard things – kale (two types, russian and tuscan), lettuce greens, celery, beetroot, leeks, spring onions, garlic, cauliflower, radishes, capsicum, potatoes, parsley, chives, silverbeet, rainbow chard, strawberries and peas.

Planted but not yet sprouting I have carrots and beans (4 different types) and some sugar snap peas. Plus coriander, basil and mint.

We moved the A-frame that had been used for pulling out car engines by our houses previous owner into the garden too. I’m hanging my herb baskets on it in the hope that sunlight convinces something other than cress to grow. These baskets hold the aforementioned mint, basil and coriander.

The a-frame also gives me something to run our soaker hose over. Soon I’ll be planting strawberries in hanging baskets too and hoping it works. The plan is also to grow climbing beans up the frame, to hopefully make the frame part of the garden.

I went seed shopping yesterday which always makes me happy. I came home with purple runner beans, cucumber (2 types) zucchini, rockmelon (2 types, an experiment), corn and kohl rabi (another experiment).

I’m starting to wonder if maybe I need a larger garden – because I still have to plant enough tomatoes to make sauces with and I want to plant another 20 pea plants so I can freeze or dry some peas for winter.

It’s all very demanding and amazingly relaxing, especially when my social anxiety is playing up. Bring on the gardening. Just please, let’s not hide any snakes in there.

Unrelated: New theme! I bought Thesis, so I’ll probably have a play with the colours and stuff soonish. My brother’s girlfriend is drawing me a header in black and white, so I’ll have a graphic to pop up soon too. Until then, thoughts on colours, sidebar arrangements, things you’d like to see more of? Or we can talk about gardens and Spring.

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Gardening in winter.

by Veronica on August 9, 2010

in Garden

This winter has been a long cold one garden wise and I am more than ready for spring to come. June kicked my arse a little bit and by the time I’d recovered, July was here, the month of frosts and dry icy days – not much good for growing things.

So I paid for June’s laziness by not getting any greenery from my garden over winter – which was a total nightmare. The dogs (before they died) dug out the onion and lettuce seeds I did remember to plant and just ugh.

I’ve been making up for it though, with a full day of planting. Winter isn’t over yet, but I’m crossing my fingers that these little guys will survive until Spring – without the chooks or ducks molesting them. Of course, my ducks can fly, so this might all be in vain.

So I planted Kale,

Iceberg Lettuce and Mignonette Lettuce,

Celery,

Rainbow Chard,

As well as spring onions and leeks.

Also growing I have severely eaten cauliflower. Look what the chooks have done to it!

And rocket in my hanging basket:

I still have a patch full of broad beans growing – Amy dumped an entire bag of broad bean seeds into a patch that had been planted with beetroot, lettuce, onion and carrots, unfortunately 100+ broad bean plants choked out my other seeds. Strangely enough, the broad beans have survived, despite -7C temps and cats/dogs/chooks/ducks running over them. Tough little plants.

I did some modifications to the gate, to stop the chooks and ducks being able to squeeze underneath. Pretty? Definitely not, but so far, it’s been effective.

I also left the soaker hose on a little too long.

Although, some of the inhabitants were rather pleased about the rapidly growing mud puddle.

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