September 2014 (1)

Its the first day of spring and after a week of beautiful mild, sunny, wind free days, its pouring down and its cold and blowing a gale.  Still, the garden's loving it.

As you can see I fitted exclusion netting last week.  We are already getting visits from those pesky Cabbage White Butterfies and Whiteflies.  I sprayed the Brassicas with Bacillus thuringiensis before fitting the nets to kill off a few caterpillars that had hatched and were starting to make a meal of my cauliflowers.

The light feeder bed is getting into a higher gear and I am harvesting lettuce and silverbeet at the moment.   I have planted my onions and a couple of replacement lettuce and the bed is full again.

The legume bed is generally OK, but I am disappointed with my dwarf peas.  Only a few flowers have set pods.  This is the second year this particular variety has failed, despite a great crop of climbing peas last year grown in the next row.  The broad beans are growing very well, are in full flower and are setting plenty of pods, so I think the dwarf peas might be getting too much nitrogen from my soil and putting on too much leaf growth.  We'll see how this years crop of climbing peas go.

All the vegies got a spray of aerated compost tea a couple of weeks ago, and so far there is no sign of mildew or rust on my legumes.

The wide row in the middle of the bed covered with mulch is being prepared for cucumbers and a butternut pumpkin.  I will be sowing seeds later this week, so I will need to build a third relocatable climbing frame for them soon.

This is the heavy feeder bed and I am harvesting broccoli, turnip and cauliflower at the moment, and the cabbages are not far away.  I have sown cabbage, turnip and broccoli seeds to be ready for transplanting into the vacated spaces once the soil is fed and matured in a couple of weeks time.