It rained for the first time from Thursday to Saturday and the garden is bursting with joy. My rainwater tanks are full and now it's growing time, as most of the preparation is done.
Spring is cactus flower time and this Mammillaria is putting on her best show
The roses are just about to start flowering
Most of the scraggly plants I bought on sale are doing extremely well although I am not yet bored enough to go looking for a four-leafed one in there
Just for fun, I decided to try growing pineapple tops: I left these two to dry for a few days then stripped off about 1cm of the bottom leaves and suspended the tops in a glass of water. After about a week, I had roots so I potted them up. They will go into the vegetable patch as soon as I take out the rest of the peas which are dying off in the heat.
Four out of 15 of the horned cucumber seeds I mentioned last month have sprouted
Which brings me to the usual spring problem: getting seedlings established despite the best intentions of my cats
That's Toffee above and using the vegetable garden for a toilet and scratching out plants is his favourite thing. Behind him are what's left after the beans got decimated in the late frost. I established those seedlings by covering the soil with the white mesh that you can see in the top left. Now, I'm sprouting more in trays to fill up the bare patch where he's lying.
He isn't the worst offender though, the two youngest love having wrestling matches in the plants, that's why I put all the pots in among the bean plants to try and protect them from their boisterous antics
These are the results of another wrestle-fest. I suppose in 6 months I'll have some well established little plants to sell at the succulent show. The other morning I woke up and it looked like a little tornado had been through the bean section, pots knocked everywhere. Got into the kitchen and found a dead baby snake on the floor. That seemed to have been the youngest one's handiwork, he was so proud of his poor little harmless young Brown House Snake that he had killed. RIP, little snake
This is how I keep my spinach and kale in one piece
Saving the cycad: the rocks are pretty but that isn't their primary function
This Agave will grow into its pot, provided the cats don't pee there. So far, so good with the pebbles as toilet deterrent.
As much as the cats drive me crazy, they do keep the mousebirds out of the vegetables: mousebirds are like flying rats and they can decimate your garden in a few days - they have a real taste for kale and succulents so it's a case of pick your poison.
That's where I'm at for this month, @gertu and @mipiano, why not join us with some garden pictures? Look here for details @riverflows/is-it-october-already-more-garden-journal-fun-on-hive
