Africanaussie

The theme for this months Garden Share collective is taste.  Here are the others participating. We have had an extended wet season, and so my garden is not as far along as it normally is at this time of year.  I purchased an eggplant and jalapeno and planted them in the far back corner.  the eggplant has to go into a pot because of the bacterial wilt in the soil.  Even then they dont always survive.  it is just a case of wait and see.  I thought I had lost all the tatsoi and rocket in the flooding rains, but they seem to be bouncing back nicely.  Fresh greens in a salad is the best taste ever, and I am sure loaded with vitamins and minerals compared to what we can buy in a plastic packet.  The bed along the side fence has a few volunteer cherry tomato, and one capsicum which is doing very well.  there are also a couple of cucumber, which go back and forth between looking on their last legs with powdery mildew and thriving....  I planted out a few snow peas to climb that fence

This year I am going to add some polystyrene boxes to plant tomatoes in.  Large tomatoes don't do well here - we have bacterial wilt in the soil, and I think a myriad other diseases that are commonplace here.  I like tomatoes though, and I did get some free seeds to experiment with.  I am going to try a sort of wicking bed system as in the past I have had blossom end rot as well which indicated uneven watering.   I am putting some boxes front and centre.  They are resting on the front of the the asparagus bed, making use of every inch of the garden.  I hope I wont be disappointed. assemble what you need: The idea is to drill a  drainage holes about a quarter of the way up the box.  Add drainage rock - I used quincam, scoria is another good one to use.   Below this line the boxes are filled with small rocks for drainage. . Now I am not sure if there should be standing water here, or some people even use sand.  There is conflicting advice about what barrier to use ab

I just made the linkup -  check out who else has showcased their lovely gardens here . This months Garden Share collective is supposed to focus on leaves.  Now I could have a happy leaf photo or I could show you my cucumbers.  I was going to take a photo, but it is all too sad. My cucumber was doing OK - little bit of downy mildew which is to be expected in this climate, but I gave it a spray with liquid  seaweed with a little bicarb mixed in and it seemed to be doing just fine.  Then the rains came, and it rained, and it rained.  The highest rainfall recorded in this area in May in 96 years! We had 200ml overnight a couple of weekends ago. I had noticed a little insect damage and sprayed with garlic chili spray, but of course the rains washed that all off, but they still carried on chomping.  I saw a couple of catterpillars, so the whole bush got another spray of garlic/chili, but now the whole bush has died. I also had a lovely bed of tatsoi and rocket, but they just collapsed w