Mulch Madness and Seedlings Galore!
That pile of grapevine we cut down last week was bigger than I thought. I ended up getting the mulcher out and shredding it over three days! It was satisfying to lay it down and smoother some of the weeds coming up on the front.
I found some sunflowers sprouting in the lawn from when I'd given Fern, our doe rabbit, some seeds while she was outside. So I extracted them as carefully as I could and moved them to the front garden. Hopefully the plastic collars around them will protect them from bugs long enough for them to get a bit bigger and stronger, assuming they survive the relocation. So far so good, it's been a few days.
Last year I had some English spinach growing from some seeds I got at a swap meet. It's my favourite type of spinach, so I let it go to seed at the end of the season and never got around to collecting the seeds. This year they are coming up in clusters wherever the plant dropped them. I've thinned some out and transplanted those in other places.
I also neglected to collect the lettuce seeds from the only lettuce that survived the bug army which was entrenched under a nearby brick. It was a rather nice lettuce, so I left it to go to seed rather than harvesting it and this year I've just rubbed the seeds off onto the ground next to it. Now I have lettuces galore sprouting. Maybe a few more will survive the hungry hoards this time.
To the right of the now dead lettuce is a volunteer potato plant.
Oodles of lettuce seedlings.
The nasturtiums can always be counted on to self seed...
...and another plant which had self seeded is the dwarf French marigold. It's not really the right time of year for it, but it doesn't get cold enough here for it to know better. The winter ones are just more stunted than the summer ones. I'll thin these out without transplanting, because they'll self seed themselves again ready for spring.
The best thing about volunteers and self seeded plants are that they are the ones which are best adapted to the environment they're in. If I have to transplant them, then they aren't going to have the as much of a shock as they would get with the soil change when they're moved from potting mix to the ground. I get much better sprouting rates and survival rates too, than with seeds which have been shipped in from miles away.
I’ve dug up the last of the potatoes in the plot nearest to the house and keep trying to edge a little further along into the encroaching grass jungle. This area was my husband's plot for a while, but he doesn't have the time for it now and I didn't really have the time to tackle it straight away. So it just went wild for a bit. Things which didn't get harvested went to seed and the couch grass to one side made it's way in.
I've been gradually working into it from one side, pulling the grass up and rescuing the odd volunteer from its clutches.
I keep finding onions.
This kale isn't looking the best, but it's trying to live.
The rabbits have been helping by turning it into droppings for the garden.
PolarBear is such a helpful little chap.
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Polar bear is a fantastic name for a little white rabbit. I love it.
Glad the garden's doing well. I like the idea of growing what grows, instead of trying to force the wrong things in the wrong places.
The avocado tree isn't looking healthy. Dan reckons its an iron deficiency, so I grabbed a Chelate spray mix from Bunnings and gave the leaves a good misting. See if that helps.
Let me know how the avocado goes after the spray.
I've tried forcing things to grow and it often fails. So I let them figure it out themselves as much as possible now. It's much less time consuming.
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Hope your plants are doing well and you will have some decent harvest. For the first time i planted some yellow peppers and red chillis. They are growing well.
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They're looking good. I never did get around to planting any of them last spring. I hope I can get some in this spring.
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It is always nice to have some tomato, pepper and spring onion with your breakfast especially if they were grown in your garden.
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Can't wait to see an array of fully sprouted lettuce
Don't jinx me! The bug army might get them all yet!!😲
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J likes gardening, so he would always plant things in their neat little rows in their neat little sections...and then let everything we didn't harvest go to seed and just look after the next batch when they cropped up and most of what we were doing ended up being chicken defence XD I love semi-wild gardens more than neat orderly ones anyway ;D
Yay cute helpful fluffy bunny!
It's taken me a while to learn to love wild gardens, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist and fall for those neat, tidy looking gardens. But random ones are must as nice, I'm realising.
Excellent post. "I keep finding onions" Tell me about it! Same over here! There's one corner in my garden where there are so many they keep each other from growing. But the best wild growing baby I found was this: https://steempeak.com/weedcash/@mayb/surprise-look-what-i-just-found-in-my-spinach
Haha! Maybe they're breeding in that corner.
Now that's a nice surprise among the spinach. 😁
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Ooooh - a couple of nice, practical ideas I can use here! Thank you. The plastic collars for seedlings are clever - gonna try that! And our indigenous friends on the Burmese border have an invasive weed problem, so this post reminds me to add a mulcher to our fundraising budget and to start collecting waste cardboard for weed matting under the mulch. Love to see such practical, constructive posts - ideas and simple techniques I can adapt for our tropical world. Much gratitude.
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I love seeing other people's gardens. It inspires me to work on my own but I seem to be too troubled to work it enough to fill the empty spaces and make it look beautiful. Also I think I need a thicker layer of mulch because it looks like my legumes and strawberries are suffering from dehydration.
More mulch never hurts, in my opinion. It's so dry where we are, that come summer we have to water no matter how much mulch there is.
I hope your legumes and strawberries make a good recovery.
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Thank you.