thriving

I have had an endless supply of herbs and salad greens and so have my friends. The lemon tree has finally taken off and has new shoots, leaves and flowers a plenty. The coriander has gone beserk you can see it sticking through and lifting up the bird netting..... have been fertilizing with seaweed mix every couple of weeks and given the garden beds a soak with a 'slow' hose

a new challenge

hmmmm...no-one warned me about the next 2 challenges...birds and sprouting mulch !!! after preparing the beds and putting so much work into it, I was surprised to wake up one morning and see the garden beds completely dug up...yep bush turkeys and pidgeons...not peewee...he wouldn't do that. So I put my thinking cap on and got on the internet to find a solution and came up with this idea...and it has been hugely successful !!




the sprouting mulch...well that's another story...I got up one morning to find every garden bed covered with 5cm bright green sprouts....eeeeekkkkk, the straw mulch must have had heaps of seed in it and yes it sprouted..so spent the next few days weeding it all out !

heidi decided she had better come out and keep an eye on things as well.....

mulching

next step was muching and planting... I watered or soaked the beds first and then covered with straw. I coverd the paths with straw as well but it looked like all too yellow so I ended up using tea tree muclh and a few old pavers from the garden as edging. so did my reasearch of what to plant together and did the following.....1. basil, purple basil, coriander, chilli, lemon grass....2. parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme [just like the song] lemon thyme, dill, oregano, comfrey......3. lemon tree, spinach, marigolds....4. aloe vera, peppermint, nastursiums, lavender .....5. lettuces, rocket....6. this bed i am still digging urrghhhhh !!!! I also planted a lavender, a cutting from mum in front of one of the beds.

soil

next step was to ad the soil...organic bio mix and added 1 cup of organic fertilizer pellets per bed. this is made up of blood and bone, compost, manure and all things good and natural. Peewee still came to check on my progress each day....didn't worry rocke was hanging around as well. Rocke loved the digging and of course the new soil pile

digging

so...digging and digging...coached by someone in the know..I dug up the grass and laid the bricks in place..hard work was keen to take a few short cuts but no...must be done the right way and it paid off in the end.


had a friend Mr. Peewee overseeing my work !!!