Chooks and worms do the bulk of my soil building, but compost can only contain the micronutrients of the ingredients that go into it. Using some ingredients from trees that deep mine subsoil, and some weeds that are dynamic accumulators helps, but the hero for micronutrients is seaweed, and the best way I’ve (yet) discovered to process it is by fermenting.
Usually I leave the slugs to the bluetongue. I’d hate to starve him (or her) into deciding to live somewhere else. But he’s a bit too well fed, and I’m not. A cup with an inch of beer, buried so the rim is at the soil surface, overnight collected all these. The chooks will feast on beer marinated slugs.
It’s a great year for mozzies. This week they seem to have all metamorphosed from wrigglers at once, and for the first time we have had to start putting the mosquito net over our bed down of a night. Up until now, the control measures for mozzies have consisted of what we don’t do.
Most times I do my picking walk first thing in the morning before breakfast. It usually takes about half an hour, and its the most productive garden work I do. I walk with a bucket and a basket.
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.
It’s such a good disguise. It looks just like a ladybeetle. If I didn’t catch it actually in flagrante eating the leaves on my squash, I would think it was a good guy.
Aren’t they cute? I found them when I was recycling potting mix from some seedlings that I didn’t need to plant out. There are two different kinds. I think the larger ones might be land mullet eggs, and the smaller ones the little skinks I find in the shadehouse and garden.