Redbacks and Rain

The time between Christmas and New Year is a time to tidy up, start new projects and think about plans for the year ahead.

I had not thoroughly checked our garden furniture and noticed some tiny and tidy white balls on the garage wall that were guarded by a fat red back lady. I had not turned over the garden chair for a while and noticed some fuzzy webs that were bursting out of the corner joints of the wodden chairs.

We ended up killing five fat red backs, first using spray and then squashing them on some bricks. Red backs are creatures I would not want to share my garden with and although sad to kill them they had to go. We sprayed the furniture and the shed side, trying to avoid the hunting places of the daddy longlegs.

And then the rain came, 16mm total. I calculated that we have the rainwater tank fed by 80m2 roof area. 1mm rain collects 1 litre of water per sqm. 16mm therefore might have deposited 1280l water into my tank. What a catch! I love the sound of water dripping into the tank. It filled up by a third and the danger of running out of water by the end of January is banned. The water should last until well into March. Great start for the year. Here is the Watercorp chart showing the rainfall until today:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
2011	16.4												16.4
2010	0	0.2	40.4	25	88.6	51.4	142	63	43.6	20.6	11.6	17.4	503.8
Average	9.5	12.7	19.5	44.1	117.5	175.7	169.7	133.6	80.6	52.2	22.1	12.8	850

But the water did not only bring happiness. The wet and humid climate brought me some mildew, diligently identified by some permaculture friends yesterday. Affected were one pumpkin and today I discovered mildew as well on a zucchini, all in the first bed. I cut them off and the cut-offs went straight into the bin. Cutting off the leaves also brought a bit more light onto my tomatoes.

The weather is better now and the humidity has disappeared. Hopefully I called all of the midew fungus. My grapes and the tomatoes look fine. A least for the moment. But I will keep a proper look out for the signs.

The rockmelons have set fruit. They still love the climbing frame and I love it that I can see it grow without even bending over.

I removed all pumpkins from the second patch this morning and put them straight into the compost. Now the capsicums have the place to themselves and get more water and light. The first fruit has set here as well.

After the rain I replanted a zucchini from the first to the second bed, did not get enough space where it first was and will now grow with two sisters. With the plant I took a good chunk of earth aiming to not disturb the root system. The earth looked great, healthy, moist and in good shape, despite being removed from the very far corner of the first patch. The rainwater had penetrated at least 15cm. I think we did something right when preparing the ground or it had something to do with many years of leaving the soil ti itself after an intensive gardening period on the block in the fifties to seventies. Definitely not the sand only soil type one would expect in Perth.