Snail Hotels

Okay I have a confession to make. I like these little alien creatures. I mean what's not to love about that face!

But unfortunately my veggie garden and these little guys can't coexist together.  And I also have a really hard time squashing them too.
I have fed them dishes of beer, which they love very much and I imagine them dying happy and well inebriated, but it's hard to keep the dishes topped up and rather horrible having to scoop out the drowned snails and slugs in the morning.
So I have come up with a better solution; Snail hotels!
1) Snails like to hide under things, so if you over turn a pot in the garden and leave it, there is a good chance that snails will make it their home.
2) I also worry about how snail bait affects my worm population. And once it gets wet, it deteriorates fairly quickly.
So what I did was simply to put snail bait in a dish and over turn a pot over it.

You leave the snail enough room to get in under the pot and place these in areas that you know snails hide out. For added weather protection you can use a bit of twig or stick to block the hole in the pot. The snail bait stays dry and when the sails find this new home they have a last meal waiting.
About the only thing you have to remember with these is to top them up and also watch out for those pesky spiders, they like moving into these as well.
I also use an environmentally friendly snail bait, one that does not harm birds, dogs and cats. and I still sprinkle it around new seedlings, just till they are large enough to survive a hungry snail who is after a snack on his way to the hotel.
 So there you have it. I still don't like killing them but I do want my veggies. At least this way I can keep them under control.

Juice Fast part 2

Well it's a week tomorrow when I started my juice fast. It strictly wasn't really an all juice fast. I ate nuts as well and on the third day added a tin of plain tuna for protein.
Yesterday I had  a light evening meal. I am keeping with the juice for breakfast and possibly lunch too. The two things that I am trying to avoid at the moment are gluten and sugar.
My skin did improve some, but I think I have to keep with my changes for a while to see some real results.
One thing that this exercise has given me is more incentive. I have spent a great deal of time in my kitchen and have interest again in cooking, now all I have to do is keep up the momentum.
Winnie has also been dragging my arse out for exercise, which has been great.
One extra bonus of this is that I lost 3 kg. It's not really my goal to lose weight with this, but I could stand to lose some. My main goal is to tone up and get healthy. At 45, with rampant diabetes in my family, I can't afford complacency and I am getting sick of my lack of motivation for anything but sitting on my backside and doing not much. I am also getting sick of not feeling as good as I could.
I know this is not going to be a quick fix, and there is not such thing as a magic pill to do the work for me. I spent many years getting my body into this shape and I am realistic in thinking this is going to take a while.
So the plan is to have juice veg as much as I can, to try and give myself the right level vitamins and minerals I have been missing.
Eat healthy meals that use as little fat, gluten, salt and sugar as possible, as well as keeping away from processed food where I can.
And lastly not deny myself things that I like, but have them as they are meant to be; treats that are had on occasion and not on a daily basis.
It's time for long term changes.

Winnie gets the all clear for another year

It's been six months since Winnie had his second stent put in. Since then we have drastically changed our diets and it's a relief to say that Winnie got a good result on his on his stress test today and we don't have to go back to the specialist for another year! WooHoo!

Companion Planting.

I have always been interested in companion planting, ever since I started gardening. The idea of plants working together or against each other I find fascinating.

Today I gathered plants to put under my nectarine tree; Sweet violets, tansy, pyrethrum and chamomile. I have already planted garlic and am planing on planting a couple of strawberry plants under there too.
All of these are meant to help the three stay free of pests and help nourish it too. The ground around this tree can get quite dry and hydrophobic during summer and I am hoping these plants will act like a living mulch and keep the ground shaded and moist.

I also planted mint around my blackberries. It doesn't actually affect the blackberries themselves but it is meant to confuse harmful insects with their strong sent. I did find out though, that mint makes parsley grow better, which is great because the blackberry patch already has a great crop of parsley.

I am still leaning new things all the time about this subject and hopefully me garden with thrive on that knowledge.

Lemon Tree!

I have a number of projects that I want to get going this year. One is planting a lemon tree. So today I finally got one!
We are now the owners of a Lisbon Lemon. It's a beautiful and healthy plant and I am so excited to finally have it and a little nervous about getting things right for it's care.
Still have to get the bed for it finished but hopefully it will be int the ground in the next couple of weeks.

Juice Fast.

Okay, back to health.
I have not been kind to myself over winter. I slacked off on my juicing and started eating too much sugar again.
And my bodies been telling me what it thinks of all that. My skin is not good at the moment, even though I stopped drinking milk. And I have just not been feeling well in myself lately.
I have been skipping meals too, breakfast being the main one, sometimes not eating till early afternoon. All habits that are not good for someone who has diabetes running through the family.
I decided to go a little extreme this time, instead of just adding juice in to for my breakfast. I thought I would attempt a 10 day juice fast and see how I go.
With the way I am eating now it can't do any harm and if I don't succeed, I can always keep juicing for breakfast and lunch then have dinner with Winnie which is still pretty good health wise.

So this is the first day. Breakfast this morning was a juice of; Celery, kale, carrot, apple, parsley and cucumber.

I am using my cold press juicer so there is lots of body to the juice, it's not a pure liquid and is not oxidized by a fast spinning proses. An added bonus is I really like the juice and feel energized from it.
Now all I have to do is get through the sugar withdrawals. Blah!

Spring is hitting hard already!

Winter has been quite mild here, but we still got some good rain with it which was really nice, the ground is nice and saturated.
Now it seems we are getting an instant spring. The weather is already really warming up fast. We usually don't start planting some of the more frost tender plants till October but there has been no hint of frost and I am nervous that we will be heading into an early and hot summer, so I am getting suck in with my planting now, just in case.
My strategy is to plant things as close as possible this year, utilising smaller areas and keeping things well mulched.
If it gets too hot too fast I will have to abandon the annuals and just concentrate on the trees and berries.

I have already gotten into the blackberries and cleaned them up.

The lemon balm has self seeded in a couple of places and I want to plant some other mints in this bed too. I have left some weeds behind too. Dandelions, small oxalis and a type of broad leaf grass that is great for insect photography.
There is a nice crop of self sown parsley on the right and I want to add some other herbs too.

I took a risk and planted a herb garden this winter, shifting rosemary bushes and sage into a new bed and adding other culinary herbs.

The larger bushes have all seemed to have taken and it already looks good. I will add some basil to this plot, Winnie is using a lot of it in his cooking.

The raspberries are still getting cleaned up. It's hard to believe we ate the last fruit off of them only a month ago, I trimmed the last cane the other day.
I have planted veggies in the corner. It's a nice sheltered spot with really good soil and until the veggies take over this spot completely I will utilise the space as much as I can.

The lone boysenberry is till in the other corner. You can't see it very well because it's being dwarfed by the giant parsley bush and the pineapple sage that managed to survive last summer.
There are raspberry suckers coming up all over this patch and I'm not sure how well they mix with  the boysenberry, so I might have to shift it.

Well that is what is happening for now. the rest of the garden looks like a jungle and the weeds are huge. My mad weeder (winnie) has been working hard, but there is still a lot to do.
We are still planing out the new berry beds and the place for the lemon tree, that's going to be the big project this year and I will leave it for another post.

Worm Stations

Okay this is another one of those ideas that you find on the internet, as you do.
Worm stations; The idea is simple, you bury a pipe of bottomless container, with a lid, in the ground and use this as a worm farm/compost type system.
Now I do have my bathtub worm farm, but I very rarely take material from the top, because the worms are always still munching away on it, even though I change the sides I feed them on. I mainly use the liquid that comes from the bottom of the tub. So I thought that this was a great idea to get my worms out there into my garden.
The worms I have are tiger worms, they like compost and won't just live happily in soil, they need lots of decaying goodness to munch on, hence making them these feeding station.
So I took some old pots that I have and knocked the bottoms out of some, others already didn't have a bottom. and set up my stations, using terracotta pot bases as lids.

These were set up over winter and I am happy to say that the worms are still there munching away and they seem to be working will so far.
The big test will be over the warmer months. I am interested to see if they have a big effect on plant growth.

First plantings for spring!

Was feeling a little crappy this afternoon, but instead of going to bed I went and worked in the garden, just pottering around and putting in the first of the veggies for this spring.
Planted; Beans, lettuce, spinach and beetroot.