Every year a few garlic plants manage to escape harvesting in early summer. The leaves die off and I lose them in the garden. Every…
I’ve just moved the chooks into a new bed, and they are feasting on broccoli that is well past bearing human food. They like the cabbage white moths and grasshoppers on it the best and have lots of fun hunting them.
It’s a too early yet for onions and garlic, but I’ve planted the first round of parsnips for the season. I had left a couple in the garden to go to seed (that’s the picture), and they reckon it’s the right time to plant seed. Parsnips are from the umbelliferae family, and like the rest of that family their flowers are good for attracting predatory insects like tachinid flies, assassin…
I’m very proud of these. Eggplants are one of my difficult crops. In my garden they are prone to attack by flea beetles. The flea beetles themselves are a nuisance – they chew holes in the leaves – but not critical. But they spread virus diseases and the nightshade family (that eggplants belong to) is very prone to virus diseases. And I live in an area where wild tobacco (Solanum…
My garden came through the frizzle weather of the last couple of days not too badly, though the dam is low now and I’m very much hoping we don’t get more of it before decent rain. Stacking to the north, shade, mulch, and plant selection did the trick though.
My pickings today loaded up my kitchen bench. Mangoes are biennial, and this is a mango year, so I’ve been making smoothies and cakes and pickles and chutney and sorbet, and giving lots away. The spring this year was wet enough for the pomegranates to fruit well – often our springs are too dry – and the tamarillos are all ripening at once. I’m back to growing enough tomatoes to…
I live smack bang in fruit fly territory. Bactrocera tryoni – Queensland Fruit Fly. They seem to be getting, if anything more prolific as the climate heats up, and I think over the years I’ve tried every known method of control, short of spraying, which I can tell without trying it wouldn’t work.