Sex Without Strings!

Aren't there some super plant names?!  This time it is a bean plant.

After all the work I have finally started planting my veges.  So far I have sown the following in punnets to transplant later:

Silverbeet 5 colour mix

Garlic Chives, Sage, Thyme, Parsley Continental, Lettuce Royal Oakleaf, Mignonette and Flame, Silverbeet 5 Colour Mix, Chilli Tobago, Capsicum 7 Colour Mix,

And 7 colours of capsicum!

Capsicum Mini Sweet, Cabbage Red Drumhead, Broccoli Di Cicco and Romanesco, Tomato Currant Mix, Wapsipinicon Peach (what a mouthful!) and 3 Colour Zebra, and some cherry tomato & basil.



Some are in a self watering propagator, others in egg cartons. It will be interesting to see the comparison in performance.

A self-watering propagator

And the fully biodegradable, reuse option of the cardboard egg carton.

These have been put in the mini-greenhouse that Mr & Mrs Skivvy picked up from that German shop that starts with A.  The plastic is off-gassing in a big way judging by the smell, but I'm willing to give the thing a go for now.  At least it will keep the seedlings from being eaten by other garden residents.

 Speaking of other garden residents - I promised to try & get a photo of Blacky during her moult.  Well here it is, I tried to maintain some of her dignity and did not show her bare hindquarters.

Blacky the Australorp - not quite her glossy self.

A bit of a contrast to her normal quality of dress!  She is also limping quite badly from a fall.  Usually, even with her wings clipped, she can fly up a bit over a metre, and keep herself controlled when jumping down, but with so few proper feathers at the moment she fell from the clothesline, about 2m, when I was trying to coax her down to put her to bed.  I think she even cut herself.  So I am keeping a close eye on her, and leaving her be if she puts herself to bed on the clothesline again (it's undercover and high enough to be safe from cats and dogs).

On Saturday afternoon J4 helped me plant some seeds direct into the vege beds.  So now we are watching for the following to come up in a couple of weeks:

In Bed 1: Broadbean Aquadulce, Beans Sex Without Strings and Sugar Snap Dwarf, Pea Greenfeast and Peanut Virginia.

In Bed 2; Carrots St Valery and Red Nantes, Beetroot Bulls Blood (another good name), and Garlic Cream, Oriental Purple and Australian White.

In the Straw Bale Bed; Potato Sebago.

Carrot St Valery

And 3 types of garlic.

It feels really exciting to finally have some veges in the ground!

Also this weekend I made blocks to raise the workbenches in the shed.

I bought a length of 90mm square treated pine and had eight 150mm long pieces cut off.  When I got home I screwed furniture cups (you know, the things you put under furniture legs to protect the floor or stop slipping) onto the top.

One bench is up and feels reasonably stable.  Not as good as flat on the floor, but a much better working height.

I've had another idea, that might prove much better, though.  When I can find some other solid table tops, or large enough pieces of wood to make them from, I might screw these blocks (minus the furniture cups), to the top of the existing benches, and then screw the new table tops to them.  this would raise the working height while creating a large storage shelf and keeping the legs solidly on the concrete floor.

It has been a highly productive & busy weekend - we also went to L6's soccer match (his u7 team won 4-0), attended the Green Heart Fair and picked up a couple of bags of free native plants (thanks again BCC), and watched SMD play in his Over 35 soccer match (they lost 2-0 in a very hard fought match).

One of the species of plant that was in the bag was the Midyim Berry, which I was just about to buy for the garden, so very nice to get that.

Midyim Berry - pretty, practical and edible!

Hope your weekend was as enjoyable as mine.

See you

Ravs