dear diary, 24th February

CHOOKS

Dusted the coop again. Won't have a chance to properly wash-and-dry it again for at least another week. Need to dust the girls before this weekend.

PREPARING

Dug out the first northern lawn edge up against the triangle garden, dug out comfrey and planted.

HARVEST

2 Braeburn apples, 4 golden delicious (still green). Tomatoes still not ripening.

NOTES

Grain mites transferred inside the house. Most likely off a bugspray can - at least, that's what I'm hoping. Doesn't seem to have hit any grain yet, but the other problem is that the place is a dust-trap. God only knows what bits and pieces of food, crumbs, scraps, whatever, have gathered in, under, over, around the dining table where I discovered the mites on a bottle of tequila and margarita mix. Wiped down what I could up the end, but we're probably going to bomb the kitchen-dining-lounge-hall tonight.

dear diary: 21st Feb

CHOOKS

Cleaned out the coop. Mites, some of them blood-fed. Didn't manage to scrub it down (rain was pending), but rinsed it down and out with water, then changed the floor from the wooden slab to a wire grille. Bedding was transferred (messily) to the small all-green bin where it will stay until at least September. But doubtless plenty of the mites and their eggs ended up on the ground and will make their way back to the chooks. Luckily I bought 9kg of diatomaceous earth for sprinkling, but I have the awful feeling it may need a chemical bomb, as un-permaculture as it is. Although I wonder if sticky bands might work around the legs after a good rinse-off?

Someone once said, perhaps a little cheekily, that mites were part of keeping chickens. I'm not particularly happy with that conclusion, but certainly the situation I have them in at present (wooden coop, plenty of places for them to hide and breed) is not helping.

PLANNING

Cement floor for coop, raised-and-bolted wooden frame so coop can be sprayed down and water can drain out the bottom. Metal walls, metal roof, metal grating for roosts. Maybe an insulated roof to reduce the heat during the summer overhead sun.

NOTES

Will have to do another coop-clean in a fortnight's time once the weather dries out. It's going to be showers for the next 10 days, easing back off around the 6th March (we hope). But overall, the wet and the warm this summer hasn't helped the bug situation.

dear diary: 20th Feb

A small change in programming. I'm going to be posting to this with a lot of 'diary entries': things that are going on in the garden. i'm a lot faster typing than I am writing, so hopefully will get more down. The main problem is that text is very rigid and I don't have a lot of space for scribbling 'notes in margins'.

May have to use the comments for that.

CHOOKS

Tractor moved onto PLUMSTONE bed on Thursday, leafy greens stripped within two days.

Goongbao is broody again. She's in the cage of shame.

Automatic door is playing up again.

Shantung is laying but not every day, 2 out of 3.

PRUNING & PREPARING

CHERRY TREE: hard prune. I feel like I should prune it way down to stumps so that new growth sprouts up.

DUAL PLUM, 4APPLE: still needs to be done.

4 STONE, DONUT PEACH, DUAL PEACH: will need another hard prune come midwinter.

APRICOTAVO bed: planted out Clucker Tucker in eastern half (western half still has beans) for when chook tractor goes on

GARLIC: 3 cloves in seaweed solution to get roots (plant out somewhere accessible for green shootage - BACK WICKING perhaps?)

ELDERBERRY: dug it up from front picket bed. Decide what goes there - APPLE or BLACK SAPOTE?

Sieved some compost: about 6 forkfuls before exhausting

PLANTING

STRAWBERRY: runners in water waiting to be planted out into their own pots

SHALLOTS: planted roots into BABYPOD1, hoping for green shootage.

RIPENING & POLLINATING

TOMATOES: large cherry, and large lobed-types, orange ovals in LOWER BED

PUMPKINS: chook corner pumpkin is producing itty bitty fruit but they're not pollinating

PUMPKINS: Sugar baby under apples is producing a couple of fruit, pollinating okay.

HARVEST

POTATOES: plant has died off in washing line planter - dig out potatoes (if any)

BASIL: a couple of plants still going

APPLES: golden delicious not going golden just yet, Gala all picked

NOTES

Missing: 20 ANEMONE Mistral ( bordeaux, magenta, rosso sfumato, tigre) - [Tesselaar]

Also missing: 25 RANUNCULUS mixed [Tesselaar]

SWEET POTATO: peg down (Katerina's advice) particularly where roots

winter plans for winter plants

Did I say I wouldn't bother with BRASSICAS again?

Okay I lied.

Mind you, I do have all these seeds that need planting out, and since I've got them, I might as well, and it's not like I have a shortage of netting (although I fear the netting has a surplus of grain mites in it), so...

I planted out my brassica seeds in January, most of them have reached the typical "small seedling" stage at which point they get stuck until such a time as I find somewhere to plant them out.

There is not much bedspace in which to plant them out.

There's FRONT WICKING but I suspect there's a leak, VEGEPOD (did that last season, got aphids), TRIANGLE RAISED (still has eggplant and watermelon), TRIANGLE GROUND (has tomatoes, eggplants, and sweet potatoes growing all over it and is difficult to net besides...).

I could maybe use one of the smaller vegepods (VEG1 and VEG2) but they have a habit of drying out and letting aphids in besides. Oh, and at least one of them has grown leeks+black aphids, which I keep forgetting to soap-spray. Hm. I might need really fine netting for the small VEGEPODS. Must ask Margaret where she gets her netting from.

Otherwise, I have to find somewhere to do ONIONS (don't want to use the FRONT WICKING again because I used it last winter). Technically BATHTUB didn't grow any of the onions but plenty of the carrots. But it won't be very sunny... *grimace* Again, TRIANGLE RAISED and TRIANGLE GROUND are both still full of plants...