Today, I had the intention of sowing some seeds of my planned winter crops like cauliflower, peas and beans. Before that though, I had several things that I wanted to do before moving on to more seed sowing.
The first job was tackling the random and rather problematic cucurbit that has been growing rather vigorously. It has had a bit of powdery mildew of a few of its leaves, which I have been removing as I’ve found them. Yet again (and for the second year on the trot), I’ve been away and it was completely covered in it. Thankfully, it hasn’t spread to anything else I have growing. I decided that I would remove the plant completely just because I don’t want it on my other plants at all. If I grow any cucurbits from spring (later this year), I am going to try and get some sort of trellis set up going on for them to grow upwards rather than across the ground to see if that helps.
The second job that I have managed to complete was staking a few floppy tomato plants. They are now standing upright and sorted (one got a real lean on it this morning all of a sudden). I just hope that I can get some actual tomatoes off them before it gets too cold. We are now heading towards autumn here in Sydney and the days are noticeably getting shorter so we shall see how we go.
I also potted up my little lupins. They are still super small, but now that they have been potted up and thinned out a little, I am hoping that they will really crack on and grow now.
I was just about to start sweeping up but it decided to rain at that point. While I enjoy gardening, I don’t really fancy getting soaking wet for doing some sweeping. Anyway, sweeping on wet ground is not an effective way of doing things, so I will leave that until it has drier up a bit. Looking at the forecast, that wont be until next weekend from memory-rather annoying! I also decided to leave the seed sowing for today-if it is dry tomorrow morning, I’ll sow a few seeds to get going with them.
As is usual though, I was having a good look at my plants while out and about. On my strawberry plant, I have found a strawberry. I am going to leave it another couple of days to see if it gets any bigger, but if not I’ll have a taste. It is an alpine strawberry, so doesn’t grow as big as the strawberries you normally see in the supermarket (this one is really, really small).
My borage plants are growing quite well. Both plants have flower buds and one has a flower open which is really good. I am happy that I have now something flowering outside, even if the flowers are small!
According to the wonderful organisation of the Bureau of Meteorology, the maximum temperature could reach 26 degrees Celsius with a high chance of showers. It’s not that warm and we haven’t had that much rain yet either. At 10.23 this morning, my weather station gave me the following stats:
- 22.3 degrees Celcius
- 84% humidity
- 57.4 Watts per square metre of light
- No wind
- 0.5mm rain
- Relative pressure of 1021.9 hPa, absolute pressure being 1004.2 hPa.
Fairly rubbish weather really. The humidity is the most annoying thing though-you can’t do anything without starting sweating, even hanging up some washing earlier was annoyingly sweaty and that is not a physically hard job to be doing! I am hoping the humidity disappears until spring very soon.
On a side note, my so was an absolute darling earlier. He decided that, because it is international women’s day today, he bought me an orchid plant. It has lovely pink-purple flowers and variegated leaves. Hopefully I won’t kill this one like I did with the last one I had! I will have to do some reading on their correct care so I can keep it going.
While I have had a semi-successful day in the garden today, it would have been nice to do a bit more. There is always tomorrow to do some more bits and bobs in the garden. I often find that doing little and often means you get more done anyway. So on this rather cloudy Saturday, I wish you a good weekend and happy gardening.