Tag Archives: weeding

In the Garden

1 Comment

After a break of almost 3 months, I finally made it back to the garden today.  I have really done nothing since before we went to the UK at the beginning of November and since we arrived home in early December my intentions have been thwarted by hot weather, Christmas preparations, another holiday and numerous social events as well as being busy at work.

However, I woke up at 5am today and decided to bite the bullet before the sun became  too intense.  2.5 hours later I came in after having made a start on some weeding in the vegetable garden enclosure.  In all honesty, you could barely see where I had been but I felt better knowing that at least I had made a start.

We went shopping this morning and as well as food we managed to buy more than a dozen plants.  Later this afternoon GMan and I weeded the area in front of the house.  This runs the full length of the house and is planted with numerous hibiscus shrubs and covered with mulch.  Where the hibiscus are well established and close together there was very little weed, however, there are still some substantial gaps and some unwelcome plants had become quite well established.  Of course, the area is almost overrun with cherry tomato plants but I am prepared to accept them as they are food.

The next job was to tackle the raised garden bed containing the sweet potatoes.  When we planted them some months ago we placed a panel of old pool fencing over the bed to keep the scrub turkeys away from it as they just dig up the potatoes and eat them and completely destroy the plants.  We had intended to remove it once the plants became established but that did not happen.  The plants had grown right through the fencing and far, far away…………  It was not easy to remove and in the process we discovered that there was a good crop waiting to be harvested.

Here is our haul.

2018-01-06 01

I can see sweet potato fries, sweet potato mash, vegetable curry and baked sweet potato in our future.

In a recent post I published a list of some of the projects we intend to tackle this year.  One of them was to create a garden outside the vegie garden.  My intention is to create a mostly native garden with a seat in the midst of it. At the moment it is just grass but that is about to change.  Today we took the first step and bought a selection of plants which will form the basis of this garden.

2018-01-06 02

This is the result of our garden shopping so I am quite keen to see my planned garden come to fruition.  Not of all the plants we bought will be for that area but we have plans for all of them.

Hopefully, I will have some more photos to share before too long.

We are planning to make an early start again tomorrow as it is really the best option during the summer months here.

The Patch – An Update

4 Comments

In my post from yesterday I mentioned the new garden hose.  GMan unpacked and set it up today.  Here it is.

2015-07-05 01The hose retracts onto the reel inside the case which swivels on the black spindle.  Here is another view with the hose slightly extended.

2015-07-05 02The 30 metre hose extends from the existing tap to the vegetable garden area.  We do need more hose to reach the blueberries and the yet-to-be-built beds on the far side.  We put some of the new fittings onto one of the old hoses and hung it inside the garden area.  That way we can extend the new hose, attach the extra bit and we can water the whole of the vegetable garden area with ease.

2015-07-05 03GMan put this bracket on one of the posts to store the extra hose.  The bracket was one that had come from my father and proved to be perfect for our needs.

I have really neglected the garden for several weeks but nevertheless we still have things growing.  I weeded the flower garden that I made a few months ago and found that I even had some flowers.

2015-07-05 04These heartsease had managed to grow from seed and thrive among the weeds.  I have weeded the bed and transplanted some so that there is now a border of them in front of the sweet peas.

2015-07-05 05Finally, I wanted to show you the garlic that I have growing and also the celery which is now ensconced in cut-down milk bottles to encourage the stems to grow upright in a bunch rather than spreading out everywhere.

2015-07-05 06I hope you have had a great weekend and that the weather has been kind enough to get outdoors.

War on Weeds

6 Comments

It is the height of summer here and over the past 4 weeks we have been blessed with warm to hot days (27 – 32C) and intermittent showers and storms.  The rainfall has been over 100mm in the last fortnight.  Your can almost hear the vegetation growing and everything is green and lush.

2015-01-15 01Unfortunately, the weeds are loving the weather and thriving as much as the plants that are supposed to be growing.

Since we live on an acreage, we are never going to have a pristine garden but I do prefer not to have it overgrown with weeds so it seems to be a never-ending battle to keep them at bay.  The Duke tends to use a combination of whipper-snippering, glyphosate and simply pulling them out.  The glyphosate is banned from anywhere near the vegetable garden but unfortunately it has been a necessary evil on other parts of the block.

I recently received some information from my friend, S, over at My Life is A Balancing Act.  Although she hasn’t posted this on her blog, I think it is worthy of a mention.

Super Effective Weed Spray – Cost: $2.50 for 4 litres weed spray

  • 4 litres white vinegar
  • 1 cup salt
  • 1 tbsp washing up detergent
  • Mix well. Spray on weeds to kill them. This is a very effective weed spray so only spray it on the things you want to kill. It is excellent for weeding paths and pavers and along the edges of garden beds.

It sounds easy and even piqued the interest of The Duke.

Before I rush out and buy a bulk quantity of vinegar I decided to test it out.  There is no shortage of places to try.

This is a patch of the weeds in what can best be described as the future garden bed in front of the verandah.

2015-01-15 02We have planted several hibiscus shrubs that are the beginning of the new plantings and there are some old shrubs which will need to be removed but there is a lot of bare earth which the weeds are really enjoying!

I had 1 litre of white vinegar so made up a 1/4 mix of the recipe and filled a small spray bottle.

2015-01-15 03I sprayed weeds until I had used up all of my mix so now it is just a matter of waiting.  According to S, I should see wilted and dying weeds within 24 – 48 hours.

I will be back on Saturday with an update on this project.  If it shows signs of being successful, I will be looking for somewhere that I can buy a bulk quantity of vinegar and also buying a backpack sprayer as S suggested because my hand is exhausted from just spraying a small area of weeds.