Winter rain and new seeds

Winter has come back and dumped a lot of rain down on Perth. It is very windy and quite cold around 15 degrees celsius only. Both watertanks have filled up and the earth is moist and in good shape. The lettuces thrive and the tomatoes needed to be tied better onto their stakes to withstand the wild weather. It's real winter in Perth, but it compares well to similar days in April in Europe.

But as is has not been raining all the time, I could pick a sunny time during the afternoon to seed some zucchinis, cucumber, capsicums, eggplants, basil and a few sunflowers to attracts birds and insects.

I used three plastic seeding trays, filled them with compost and inserted one or two seeds into each segment. The idea is to see how the plants go and eventually cut the weaker one to have just one plant out, survive and start off strong strong. I seeded four to eight seeds in one or two rows, with the intention to repeat this process in about two weeks time after the next new moon.

Last year I marked each row off with the initials of the seeds but to no avail, as I did not give them the intention the seeds deserve. This year I left it, feeling comfortable that I remember what I seeded when the seedlings grow.

Both rainwater tanks have filled again after I started watering last week during temperatures around 23-24degrees. The rainfall record this year is looking better than last year although we have so far not reached average rainfall in any of the 2011 months:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
2011	30.2	0.4	0	19.4	85	171.4	161	115.2	65.2				647.8
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

More details available here: http://www.watercorporation.com.au/R/rainfall.cfm

Preparing for winter

Preparing for winter sounds like a strange task while Perth is about to crack the record of longest period over 35degrees. Another three days and we will be getting there. However some plants seem to cope well with the weather. The sweet potatoes are thrieving and the basil is looking healthy, this variety of basil has very straight flat leaves and is planted in a pot.

I sowed beans seeds into one of my raised garden beds, using toilet rolls and good compost. Now wo weeks after putting them into the ground, I realised that the slater must have had a party at that spot. The young shoots were raiserbladed off at the moment they tried to get out of the ground. This has been a lecture for me. I now have removed all straw and exposed the nicely protected area to the sunlight. Only the basil is doing well in there as well, or should I better say it is surviving ok.

My daughter and I seeded, zucchini, eggplant, kohlrabi and coriander for the cooler season. We put them high up onto a wooden garden table into green plastic seedling pots, 20 together in one tray. My daughter is watering it eagerly in the morning and evening and the pots are in the shade most of the day, onmly the afternoon sun is on them for abut two hours. So far a no-show. But it seems to be working much better than the egg cartone we used at the last try, as these dried out quickly and only two of the 24 seeds have actullay come up, but they are looking quite frail.

The cat has caught another mouse, I found it outside the backdoor, already dead but not nibbled on, on the morning after the last one was caught, This time I did not measure it. But friends told me that once a "Nedlands Possum" reaches 30cm it is definitely no longer a mouse. 

Here you go, medals for the cat!