Another beautiful week!

(Sorry this is a little late; on Thursday/Friday I was getting what are best described as ‘flash migraines’ where some tiny thing seemed to set me off into agony for an hour, then slow recovery, then BAM another one. Thankfully they have not carried through into Saturday!

Wow, this is what I was actually looking for in Spring. It is not freezing cold in the mornings anymore, we get some dashes of light rain (RIP my laundry on the line), and the rest of the time it is beautiful sun… all that combined with someone telling me that Japan is actually quite a cold country to live in is making me feel more content here!

All of my plants are growing at a rapid pace and I bet yours are too so I thought I would do a quick fire check in of things we are tackling at the moment…

When you can’t do, weedeat

We are zipping around strimming (weedeating) around desireable plants in areas that would be garden beds but have been utterly neglected. It’s no good if you have thick stemmed plants growing, or agapanthus, but everything else is cut down to the ground, the desireable plants are weeded around, and all of the chopped up stuff sits on top to hinder new growth.

This is great if you are confident with a weedeater, but if you aren’t, you can put 5+ bamboo stakes around the plants you want to keep and the lines will hit the stakes… not the stems of the plants.

If you have concrete areas or patio that have weeds in all of the cracks, weedeating them will give you a really nice finish. You can then pour boiling water on the cracks.

Finding all sorts of mulch

Trimming back hedges often leaves you with delicious trimmings. Don’t put them underneath the same plant, because it can encourage pests and disease- the plants emit a smell after trimming which attracts bugs that want to eat it; if they have fungal issues then the fungus is better able to spread as you haven’t removed it.

Most of the time the same trimmings are fine on a different bed, as the problems afflicting them are not likely to afflict different types of plants. So if you have another garden bed that you would like mulched, put those trimmings on top.

If you are not precious about your lawnmower and the trimmings are a bit long (not thick! No big chunky bits!), you can put the trimmings on the concrete and run them over with the mower (and catcher) a few times to chop them up.

Making a plant tonic

Prepared to make something smelly? Fill a bucket with all sorts, some good ones are-

• Eggshells

• Banana peel

• Seaweed (washed off first to reduce salt)

• Weeds

• Animal manure (but not from cats or dogs, as that can be a bit dodgy to handle)

Or a combination of the above, fill the bucket with water, put a lid or cover on (so you don’t get mosquitoes), and leave it for 2+ weeks. This will create a liquid fertiliser that is free, good quality and great for your plants.

I strain it into my watering can and put the solid goop on my compost or in my worm bin. Then when watering, I just add a dash and water it in with the hose.

Want to go a step further?

After straining off the water, add a few spoons full of molasses and stir/shake it up. Leave it for about an hour or so and you will have fed the beneficial microorganisms and they will have bred. Then use it to feed the garden as above. I find one watering can will do me for about a week.

This is a bit fun at work, because we have huge barrels of the stuff, and when I add the molasses I need to remember to ‘burp’ the containers that we transport the fertiliser in, as the reactions in the liquid result in an air buildup in the container!

Weeding, hoeing, weeding, hoeing

There is a tiny patch by my back door which is always weedy. I make sure I pull at least a couple of weeds a day, usually when I am going to pick herbs or say hello to the chickens, or wander around aimlessly trying not to do the dishes. It doesn’t take long to pull a few, and I leave the weeds sitting on top (because they aren’t invasive and don’t have seeds). As a result I haven’t actually sat down to weed my garden once yet this season. Every time I go by, pull a couple more weeds… (that and mulch!)

Here is the before…

Here is the after. This is one of the issues with letting plants self seed, instead of collecting the seed, growing it in pots and replanting. I have tomatoes, dill, silverbeet and magenta spreen. Usually I would be able to just hoe around the plants I have planted, but with self seeding plants everywhere it is careful weeding!

Check out this tree I chopped

Just a bit of a gloat now about a cabbage tree which I took two limbs off of for a client in Petone. Glass windows on either side of me and a tree growing into a gutter but it fell perfectly! Woo!

Hope you had a great week everyone, and I hope that everyone going to the Te Horo Garden Show either takes lots of pictures or sees me there! (One or the other, I have a nasty headache and everyone around me has the flu, so I’m worried I will miss it!) (edit: missing it :( )