garden attempt number 60-gazillion

i go through phases with gardening. These phases revolve around things like - who is home that i can order around with a shovel, and how far do i have to carry the watering can before it all gets too hard.

They also revolve around things like the chickens eating them (potato patch 1, as an example), bugs and creepy things eating them (first grand tomato growing venture, with the horrid red mites and their even more horrid tomato viruses), and the sun generally cooking the daylights out of them.

Anyhow, i started another effort. I can't say today, because today was the planting and protecting from chickens part of the effort.

A few weeks ago the guinea pig hutch finally rotted into nothing. So they got a new house (smaller, metal and more portable!) and the old one was thrown away. Where the old one had been sitting was a pile of partially composted sawdust laced with guinea pig poo and straw. So I had handy shovel-bearing 15 yr old dug it through with some soil and water it, then mulch the spot with pea straw.

It rained a number of times after that. And I left it all there.

Today I weeded some grass out of it, happily planted out a bunch of vegie seedlings (all far too close together, but what the hell) and put a chook protector fence around it.

So although the million millipedes and earwigs and brown spiders that I disturbed today under that mulch might not be very happy, and might even wreak a terrible vengeance on me by eating my precious little plants, at least I tried.

I planted the things the kids asked for. So we have sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, multi-coloured capsicums, non-heading lettuces, lebanese cucumbers and strawberries. And for me - basil.

It's right near the water tank, so I might even remember to water it occasionally. It's near the back door, so that might help too. And the chook fence is actually the frame of a donated greenhouse - which makes for easy shading come stinking hot season.

I'll cross my fingers, and maybe we'll eat something out of the garden this year. Maybe!