The last couple of weeks have been a frenzy of activity - moving out of our Farrer rental property and into our new house in Waramanga.

Projects completed this week:

1. Built a wicking bed from the old bookcase I was using in Farrer to grow some radishes and cabbages. See Scarecrow’s Garden for more info on constructing wicking beds, because I couldn’t find my camera while constructing it.
2. Planted in the wicking bed approximately one dozen Purple King climbing bean seedlings that I had previously sowed in toilet rolls, and one dozen seeds of Tongue of Fire, (a red-specked bush bean variety), three small tomatoes on the corners (so that I can stake them if they grow), one Black Russian tomato that I bought as a healthy plant from Woden trash and treasure on another corner, and some rows of watermelon radishes and black spanish radishes.
3. I ran out of space in the wicking bed, but planted three zucchini plants (if they all survive I’ll be eating a lot of zucchini!) in some beds that didn’t have very nice soil, so we’ll see how they go.
4. We added a cat flap for Tabatha to the back door (she approves)
5. In my roaming around the property I have found an almond tree stuck between an overgrown shrub and the back fence receiving no water and little sunshine, but still forming some nuts. There is also a developing tree that looks like maybe a plum next to the water meter and it looks like its survived there without any water or care for a little while. Unfortunately though both the almond and the tree next to the water meter have some kind of leaf curl - maybe a fungus? Out the front I also found a Meyer lemon tree and another tree that looks like it could possibly be a fruit tree, but I’m not sure yet as it has only started budding. I also found a twiggy-looking annual in the back yard which turned out to be a rocket that had gone to seed. Got plenty of seed pods from him!

Tomorrow is a public holiday so I’ll see if I can find my camera and add some photos.

PS. Didn’t have too much luck with the lettuces in the move. Two that I potted in ordinary pots keeled over and died. To be honest I didn’t have much faith in them because they were limping even when I was watering them once or twice a day. The lettuce in one of my three polystyrene wicking boxes is is going gangbusters, but recently I started noticing a lot of ants hanging about, and lo and behold I have aphids living on them. I thought that aphids only lived on unhealthy lettuce but apparently not. I’ll try again with some heirloom cos variety that I bought. Time to make a second wicking bed! (aargh, digging up the back lawn in clay soil is like digging up concrete).

I currently have six little cabbages growing from when I planted them last May. They all look like pretty healthy, happy cabbages (I presume anyway since I have never grown them before). But I got a preview of the Cabbage Leaf Butterfly already; once a day for the last week, I have found a fat green caterpillar munching away at my cabbage leaves.

So for now I have resigned myself to picking off caterpillars until they run out of eggs, but this puts me in the mood for an experiment. Only three of my cabbages seem to be affected, and the other three untouched. Also, I have eight very small cabbages that have popped up from seed planted into toilet rolls. This gives me 11 little cabbages to play with. I read about a couple of ways to stop butterflies from laying eggs in cabbages and I’m going to try out the suggestions on my own cabbages:

1. Use decoy butterflies to trick the real butterflies into thinking their nesting place is already being guarded. Apparently butterflies are quite aggressive and will defend a cabbage patch from intruders. Butterflies seeking to lay their eggs in some cabbage see the decoy and fly off to find a new spot.
2. Create a butterfly-proof barrier by covering a cabbage with part of an old nylon stocking and letting the cabbage grow within the stocking until it is ready to eat

I am a bit wary of the stocking idea, a) because I don’t have many old stockings, and b) because slugs might happily live under the stocking. On the other hand, the decoy idea might not work at all if we have particularly smart butterflies in our area! So I’ll try both at the same time with an unprotected control group and see what happens!