Fun in the Cool Weather

What a great day!

Reprieve from the heat of the last 4 weeks, with a little rain last night and a humid yet cool day of 24°C compared to a hot 35°C yesterday.

I ran a few errands, donated 7 bags of clothes to the MS shop, and then back before 1100 to start work in my garden.  I planted some capsicum and chilli seedlings, and the sole surviving Tomatillo seedling.  I emptied one of the compost bins onto three of the garden beds to give them a little more oomph, and then hand watered each bed from the tank with 4 cap-fulls of Powerfeed in each watering can.  It took 12 cans to water the lot!  Then, I spread more straw and chook manure that I had been saving from cleaning out the chook house, onto each of the unmulched beds.  Kim cut back some of the ivy that grows on our west wall as a sun screen, and then went for a quick swim to cool off from the humidity which was about 95% at that time.  Sticky or what.

At 1345, we all headed off to the monthly meeting of the Melton Sustainable Living group, which I wrote about in this post titled, “Irrigation, and preparing for the summer heat in the veggie garden”. We had a great afternoon at Michael and Carolyn’s place and their garden is an inspiration to dry climate gardeners everywhere.  We also had three new members join today as well.  That takes our merry band of Sustainable living members to 15!  From little things, big things grow.  Here is a snap of some of us listening attentively at the workshop.

About an hour after we got home, it started to rain again, so the garden beds are well and truly soaked now and the tank is full and the overflow is now diverted into the swimming pool.  The beds should hold their moisture well now with that thick layer of mulch and the nutrients from the compost and Powerfeed should soak deep into the bed or get drawn into the plants.  Either way, I know that the all the plants will have shot up by the morning.  Just love that rain and all the nitrogen it brings to the plants.  Much better than that chlorinated muck that comes out of our taps.  The plants don’t seem to do half as well when only watered from the mains.  Even tank water makes them grow faster, which is why I try and use the tank water at least twice a week.

Tomorrow, after a busy week of other stuff, I am starting the irrigation project for the main vegetable beds that I mentioned earlier in the week.  Inspired by Michael’s set up, I am going to see if I can do away with the requirement for a pump and see what I can come up with.  He showed us some dripper fittings that work very well from a low pressure water flow.  I will give that a go and it will be my project for Sunday.