Bog Garden Construction Started

There has been more rain since my last post and of course many more activities, so I only managed to pop out to start on the bog garden today.


I dug out a shallow circle in the middle of the triangle today, but there is still so much standing water that only the top edge is visible. I removed some more concrete from it and perhaps the drainage will improve now it's gone.


My plan is to plant each corner with sedge to provide a marker, so nobody walks into it by mistake, and a small shrub in the uphill corner (species undecided as yet). The Sprig has requested edible plants so I'm considering water chestnuts and mint in addition to native plants.


I am also considering building a small wall on the far side so that less driveway runoff enters the area. This bed has been waterlogged for two months, after all. Didn't smell the best when I was digging it up.

I've been digging elsewhere in the garden as well.


This grille is one of the entry points to our vast retention pit, where runoff from our driveway, patio and garage roof collects. Note that the water is very high and the soil is not level with the top of the grille, so we've had overflow around the shaft. This isn't much fun to step in by mistake, and the unevenness of the ground is rather dangerous. I've now made the area surrounding the grille level. There are plenty of uneven areas in the back yard for me to dig up for fill. At the moment the soil is soft enough and the weather cool enough for it not to be a great chore. I had not expected to do this work until autumn.

Enter the Bobcat

After demolition, there's always mess to clean up. In our case, there was gravel on the driveway that needed to be put into the retention pit, the spoil from the pit, and then the bricks from the house.


Enter the bobcat! The driver is bringing gravel from the driveway to the pile.


Then he'd move on to grab some spoil, which he'd take out to the truck (just visible at the top of the driveway in the photo above).


He was very quick indeed; it was difficult to take photos. By the end of the day, my back yard no longer contained a huge heap of clay.


Another view:


The two pit drains are only just visible above, but this is what they look like close up. Not great, alas.

Another List of Gardening Activities

One day, my horrible garden sheds will be demolished, which means that the contents have to go somewhere else.

Have you ever looked at your garden shed and contemplated having to pack it? It occurred to me that disintegrating bags of lime and blood-and-bone are not packable, so I did something radical on the weekend... I used them up! The lime went on my vegetable patch and the native plants got the blood-and-bone -- it's their favourite fertiliser.

The Geek and I put up some more pea-netting and the Sprig helped me plant 'Purple Podded Dutch' peas under it. I'm still deciding where to plant the snow peas, as I never have much luck with them.

The new pea-netting used to hang at the back of our house, where I had a small brick-edged garden bed and a 'Nelly Kelly' grafted passionfruit. Now I don't know if this happens with all of them, but the stock suckered unstoppably and inevitably the graft died off. The stock has been going strong for years (still suckering madly), but it doesn't produce edible passionfruit. The same thing happened to Dad's 'Nelly Kelly', so I won't buy one again unless someone gives me a very good reason. But with the wall slated to become an interior wall, there was no reason to waste my netting on an ugly stock any more, was there? And those bricks could be reused, so out they came. The boys had a lovely afternoon building with them.

My cut finger has prevented me from planting up punnets for a couple of weeks, so I turned to that next. I had to plant out a few beetroots and cabbages, and found that the bed was full of volunteer lettuce and bok choy seedlings -- which is great, seeing as I have missed out on planting those things recently!

Seeds planted:

• Beetroot 'Globe Free' and Heirloom Mix
• Cabbage 'Mini'
• Florence Fennel
• Kale 'Tuscan Black'
• Leek 'King Richard'
• Lettuce 'Yellow Leaf' and 'Forellenschuss'
• Onion 'Borrettana'
• Pak Choy 'Red F1'
• Silverbeet 'Five Colour'
• Spring Onion 'Evergreen'

The one thing we didn't get to was building a teepee out of the pruned branches you see at the top of the post. Next week...

No Piles Here!

Or at least, not often. Rhonda Jean at Down To Earth has posted some very useful information about how to make compost. Now that I have chooks as well as guinea pigs, I don't tend to build compost heaps. Why is this?

Firstly, our lawn clippings are left to dry and used as bedding for our guinea pigs. The guinea pigs will eat some weeds adn grasses, so they are fed them directly. Used piggie bedding goes into the chook dome (or run); it may still contain things that the chooks will eat, like stray seeds. Other green waste, like radish tops and weeds the piggies won't eat, are thrown straight in to the chooks as well. The chooks eat some material, then scratch all the stuff around and poo on it, turning it into compost in situ. When I move the chook dome on, I can plant straight in to a luscious composty mixture, and I don't need to shovel anything anywhere.

Not only do I avoid moving manure about, I don't dig my garden beds very often either. I have had problems with my back this year, following a car accident, and this method has proved a blessing to me. It would suit anyone whose back really isn't up to heavy garden work.

It is true that you can never have too much compost. I keep most organic material on my property, apart from the usual things like rose prunings and noxious weeds. If the piggies don't eat something, the chooks probably will. We have a large lawn area with plenty of kikuyu, which needs frequent cutting in warm weather... yet I still never seem to have enough compost. Ah, compost, a gardener's brown gold!

Ghastly Moments in Gardening

Gardeners are a bit closer to nature than most, and are generally less squeamish as a consequence. While digging you inevitably cut worms in half, meet spiders and centipedes, and try to avoid toxoplasmosis, tetanus and Legionnaires' Disease. You deal with poo, with live animals, dead animals. My ghastly moment yesterday involved a half-dead animal in the vegie patch.

Earlier in the day I had laid down newspaper and spoilt hay to renew a garden path there. In the evening, I was nearby planting out lettuces, chillies and basil before it rained, and talking to The Geek. I turned around to pick up some of the hay to use for mulch, and there in the middle of the path was a small rat. Writhing. At first I thought it had been poisoned elsewhere and staggered out to die, but then I realised that I had probably stepped on the poor thing on my way, and broken its back.

"Should we call The Twig over to have a look?" The Geek suggested. I eyed the poor twisting thing and firmly told him No. (What on earth was he thinking?)

It kept writhing. It dawned on me that I'd have to put it out of its misery, or it might be there for a while.

A swift blow with my trowel and the job was done. Now what?

Well, I am a gardener, and I'm not squeamish. I've buried it in the middle of the vegie patch for its nutrients.

Grasses Cause Trouble

Three weeks ago, The Geek noticed the lawn was looking a bit ragged, and brought the Victa out. It wouldn't start, despite tinkering. He changed the spark plug the following week, and it still wouldn't start. Last weekend, he took it to be repaired.

Turns out that it's Bad to tip a mower on its side to clean off the blade. It should be tipped backwards onto the handle. Why has The Geek been tipping it sideways? Well, it's more stable that way, and we have two boys who like helping Daddy clean the machine. And this sensible behaviour has just cost us $95 as it sends oil into the wrong bits of the engine.

The Geek finally got to mow the lawn this morning. It was a beaut day for gardening, too -- sunny, but a cool breeze. The clippings are spread under our carport. When they dry, we use them as bedding for our piggies, and afterwards as mulch in the vegie patch. We have plenty of clover, so these clippings are particularly nitrogenous: I might be able to use them for other purposes than piggie bedding.

One of the unforeseen side effects of using a chook dome has been the growth of lots and lots of wheat in the vegie patch. Today I turned in some young wheat as green manure. I've never
done the green manure thing, and frankly it's not as easy on the back as other methods of soil improvement, but I can see that all that Good Stuff will make a real difference to my heavy soil. I don't really have a choice, anyway. I planted out the whole bed straight after the chooks vacated it, and only a single rainbow chard seedling survived -- the rest were swamped by wheat!

The soil does look much better than it used to, even without this additional material. It is dark damp and full of worms. It's still heavy--I was turning over big clods, but they do crack apart without too many blows of the fork. I expect to plant the bed up tomorrow.